Today’s choice
Previous poems
Alice Huntley
The tenderness of beans
slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans
to run my thumbnail once more
down the dark seam of your housing
over broad lumps and bumps
that split open to fuzzy white lining
where you lie like silent siblings
waiting to be held and counted:
six, seven, and sometimes a baby eighth
I used to wish I could zip up the pod,
put you all back where you began
nestled in darkness – but then
I’d miss the ritual unclothing:
hot blanch of kettle water
sharp squeeze at one end
as each inward green – so bright and tender –
leaps from my fingers with a squirt
leaving odd empty pouches
and a little seal at the end like
two lips pursed in kindness
Alice Huntley is an estuary girl, born by the Humber and living by the Thames. She has an MA in Chinese Studies and writes & reads with local poetry groups in Richmond and Twickenham. Her work deals with memory and the body and has appeared in Mslexia, the Waxed Lemon and Ink Sweat & Tears.
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence
Tom Nutting
They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.
Emily A. Taylor
I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,
Eryn McDonald
It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green