Today’s choice
Previous poems
Miguel Cullen
In Remembrance of Stars Past
The pelican is so dovey, with her funny crème anglaise feathers with pink and her split-ended crest and mouth.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and see Pavarotti
singing Lacrimozart by Salieri.
In the park you had a dandelion flower under your chin
there was an ill pigeon that Jake caught in his hands
a nostalgia that day I just wanted to be free like a spore or see a planet which died 103 years ago
and think, jealous, that you are better
feeling things more, I guess I want proof that I’ve lived.
Miguel Cullen is a British-Argentine poet and journalist. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. Cullen grew up travelling from Buenos Aires, the vast expanse of the Pampas, to south-west London and back again. He has published three collections of poetry, most recently In Dreams of Diminished Responsibility. Miguel’s work has been published in, among other places, Magma, Dreich, and Stand. His books have been named “Book of the Year” in The Times Literary Supplement, and The London Standard.
Adam Flint
All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.
David Van-Cauter
You are pleased to see me
in my gothic T-shirt –
those bats, you say, have been your friends.
Mark Wyatt
yes of course/ it was idyllic, reclining (pint of/ cider in hand) poolside in the harvesting/ sunlight
Catherine Shonack
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.
William Collins
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.