Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rushika Wick
quiet
slid in bass-drop dams up
pierced ears, furred
with youth, his vest drinks sweat,
high-tops, Moog-loop
domed cap punctured
with embroidery, brailled
ethnographic record, reverb
haze of brisk lavender, wire mesh
trash of the park, sun-burnt song,
something about the power
of gaze, arc of hand to the ring’s
negative space – astrological
movement in the ecology of court,
echo, orb, limbs
stirring over him inter
a pattern. pattern up – this belonging
this world, the bounce
the squeak, hot bodies on bail
from sentences of looming
adulthood, the classroom
the death of a father
Rushika Wick is a writer, editor and paediatrician. Her first collection Afterlife As Trash (Verve 2021) was highly commended in the Forwards. She is interested in the poetics of witness, infections and cyborg identities and co-edited the Disease Anthology published by Carnaval Press in 2022. Rushika currently holds a scholarship at the Poetry School x Newcastle University MA in writing poetry.
Steph Ellen Feeney
The brief invisibility of fathers I do not draw but here I do. Heavy looping lines. That scar of road. Weeds through the stones. The olive tree, persisting. Wild fennel, and him bent over it. The way that he inhales the leaves. Pours rice like...
John Tustin
We Are Alike We are alike, you and me. We are alike. You die of love, I die of love. You die without love, I die without love. We live to love, We live without love, We live until we die And then You must die alone, I must die alone. You and me,...
Chrissy Banks
The Nearly Times Once, when a group of horses bolted and reared, eyes white, legs flailing, trampling whatever was under their hooves. Once, wheeling too fast on a bike down Richmond Hill, tumbling off. Stilled on the tarmac, a human speed bump....
Kashiana Singh
5 Haiku Origami cradle songs on the drive home… my empty womb * my mother’s knitted sweaters- I unravel knots * tears- water raining into an empty cup * drifting snowflakes- I restore the fragile lace of my wedding veil * encounters- his world is shaped by her...
Adaeze Onwuelo
Every Girl's Dream White egg dress black shoe suit doughnut sugary ring thrown flinty dandruff and white rice copy and pasted vows wedding receptionists are only here for the liquor vacancy signs is their twin eyes a head dress of heaven? A...
Peter Bickerton
Conspiracy theorists As they conspire, I agonise: it’s a glass door sudden at full pelt and that sickness as the wind escapes. Peter Bickerton is a writer, scientist and resident poet for Thought For Food. Peter’s poetry has featured...
William Doreski
Sunday Before the Hurricane The sky looks wary. The trees confer in muffled rustlings. I should start my generator, make sure it’s willing to cough enough power to support me through a rush of wind and rain. Hardy knew about wind and rain, his...
Xan Nichols
Haiku in the hope of an easing of lockdown Sunrise early May all flame and pale duck egg blue; Clouds of lilac grey Just before sunrise - a muted bloom of russet On the chilly ground Above the skyline blazing - the risen sun like a young god Tree trunks east facing...
Helen Ross
He carried a grudge from Land’s End to John O’ Groats His starting point, a granite mass; cliffs tumbling, arrows pointing to nearly nowhere, lost as Camelot hiking hurt in all weathers, spitting distance in rhythm with his stride. Every step more...