Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sam Szanto
After a Stillbirth
He had been told the trolley
would be in the corridor at noon.
He could get sandwiches.
It was normally for mothers only
but they’d make an exception.
His wife won’t eat anything.
He has to do something.
He cannot sit and be nothing.
He queues behind
a woman holding a tiny baby,
a woman holding a tiny baby,
a woman holding a tiny baby.
He watches the garrulous juggle,
baby, Diet Coke, sandwich.
They don’t seem to notice him
until he stretches out a hand
for a dry egg and cress.
The server says,
“The trolley is for mothers only.”
Amirah Al Wassif
My double sits before me now. I stare deep into her, as I do every day after midnight. When I raise my hands, she raises hers.
Sophie Lankarani
Even though I only once traced your streets with my own feet,
you wandered into my dreams anyway
sliding in through my grandmother’s stories,
Mark A. Hill
She wills his brush in colour
and chalking, fierce hued flaws,
which fall flat on the canvas
Rebecca Wheatley
He thought his heart was broken yet the day began again.
Katie Beswick
We were on my pink love seat
skin touching skin
I was drunk but longing
circled me, like stars
from a cartoon head wound
Kate Hendry
So what if there’s a dead patch.
Remember the havoc
unfettered fire makes –
Christtie Jay
My Lord, let the record show
she remembered everyone else
before this. If you must, take her
in teaspoons
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.
Daniel Hill
On her first day home, she took
to plucking the sky with tweezers—
latched on to clouds and waited