Today’s choice
Previous poems
Laura Sheahen
Outsider
What is the ancient curse they know that you don’t
Moving along their mouth-lines and their eyebrows
Lowering their lids, tensing their nods or shrugs
No spell has locked their lips but they are silent
Watching you try, watching you fall again
(Jeweled box with hind-heart bloody in its depths
Mirror that will not show a child its face
Quiet are mice and insects in the castle)
The shoulders shrug the eyes refuse beseeching
And every throat grows closed Hushed with the secret
Watching you stagger
Watching you try again
Laura Sheahen is an American poet who spends part of her time in Tunisia. Her poems have been published in PN Review, The Manhattan Review, The Lincoln Review, and other journals. She writes criticism for The New Criterion, ArtsFuse, The Irish Times, and other publications. lsheahen.substack.com
Tamara Evans
Travel West. Submerge yourself
in the M4’s homeward drift.
Rushika Wick
slid in bass-drop dams up
pierced ears, furred
with youth, his vest drinks sweat,
Helen Smith
lunchtime, in the maths department
arranging pencils by colour
two friends, carefully sorting
into clear plastic tubs
Carolyn Oulton
Unexpected as burned stone,
what am I supposed
to do with this memory?
José Buera
Aircon crickets through the night
outside my parents’ bedroom
since brother and I are not allowed AC
given the dangers of cold air to children.
Abraham Aondoana
We did not inherit land,
only remnants of fields they burned—
black fields scorched before we understood
Lorna Rose Gill
Maybe I remember getting brunch;
or the time the dog ate my croissant;
Adam Strickson
He couldn’t play rugby – the oval slithered away
whenever he touched it and he fell in the mud
or more often was pushed with some viciousness.
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe