Today’s choice
Previous poems
Tom Blake
After Gaston Bachelard and Sabrina Carpenter
We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.
After a while we walked like we were on stilts
made from string and sweetcorn tins.
We milled ginger biscuits
in our sheets.
We saw the dream house up in the distance
even when the curtains were closed.
Half the battle was not to doodle crenellations
on those final blueprints.
The house grew so large around us
that I could cat out on the bottom stair
waiting for you to pass over me,
an unmoored tower.
I promise none of this is a metaphor.
Tom Blake is a poet and music journalist who has two chapbooks out with The Red Ceilings Press: Ƨ (2023) and Peach Epoch (2025). His poems have appeared in Anthropocene and Perverse, and he is a regular contributor to KLOF magazine. Insta: tom_blake17
Chrissie Gittins
When you’ve used one handle to open the door,
use the other handle to close it.
Morgan Harlow
She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
Antony Owen and Martin Figura on Remembrance Day
Let fathers bind their sons
to altars, so the wind
might winnow the chaff.
Stephen C. Curro
calm river
again, his fishing line
caught on a tree
James Norcliffe
Sarsaparilla Road
travels through swamps
and reeds, over a black
water creek and a narrow bridge
David Hanlon
Not in that parking lot,
not in that residential area,
not in that blue car
splashed with mud.
Mana Misaghi
we make sure to pack a deck of cards for the train, or a sunday afternoon visit to the park. the cards will give our hands something tangible to do . . .
Taḋg Paul
An algorithm guides me through the keys
Each stanza nested in a formal loop
Mat Riches
Hey kid, this won’t mean that much to you yet,
but I didn’t taste my first proper curry
till at least twenty-one . . .