Today’s choice

Previous poems

mulika ojikutu-harnett 

 

 

 

Monocle

remember when we lived
in the shrubs? stewed in a shared
room. its stench. our own
ripeness torturing lungs
scored elastic.

remember as well
as thieving, together we hauled
the laundry of our bodies
pretty-with-dumb into
a service kitchen

unable to see further
than a bus length
to trouble beverley
cooking. noses grifting
for food. left over.

crumbs from our parents
unfinished plates. your glasses,
trodden in haste, worn monocular
milk-bottle lens
held to eye as quizzing glass.

and remember too
we sinned in the maelstrom.
knowing nothing of aging. how
easy bone breaks by some
-thing as simple as coughing

 

 

mulika ojikutu-harnett (lowercase) is a Nigerian-Brit producer, coach, and analytic psychotherapist published in PERVERSE, Clarion, Agbowó, Tentacular, Under the Radar. Her poem ‘Bruisewort’ was awarded in the international Kent & Sussex Poetry Society Open Competition judged by Kit Fan (2025)

May Grier

I wasn’t to know
that it was a three-tusked
beast; that there was not one,
not two, but three
that grew the seed of me.

Trelawney

What is holding you back from building your wormery?

You can’t say there isn’t the time. Everyone has the time
when it comes to a wormery. Born with the right tools to hand.

David Van-Cauter

…4am and the birdsong begins, a wet January in a new city and I’m alone watching a man in Minnesota, murdered for protecting a woman from a fascist hit squad. . .

Paul Moclair

Their shore leave over,
. . . the spirits of the dead are bid farewell
until that time next year, when ritual
grants them reprieve again.