Today’s choice
Previous poems
Nick McGaughey
Slow Worm
And here you are slid from the rain
under my door, “s” -ing along the cool
checks in the hallway. I’ve had slugs
silvering the skirting, a hissing squirrel
cornered by the stove, even a mouse
that made his den next to the cat food…
but never any beast with such elan:
Cleopatra’s necklace, a serpent,
burnished from the Nile, slinks
across the mosaic of my day.
Nick McGaughey lives in Wales. He has new work in Poetry Wales/The London Magazine/And Other Poems and Stand. He performed two sets at “Poetry and Words” at the Glastonbury Festival in June.
Zoe Brooks
Stars in Class Our teacher would give out stars – gold stars to the bright supernovas, silver for the hard-working planets, and none for the boy at the back a black hole that sucked in everything she threw at him and gave back nothing. The...
JT Welsch
Sonnet A body longing how long? to be there by 10am FedEx promise a plastic box like for recipes or receipts pouring like cake mix in the rain. JT Welsch's books Orchids (Salt, 2010), Hell Creek Anthology (Sidekick, 2015), and Flora...
Tara
Chew Toy My body, my stomach, my chest is a ball A dog runs after it and Occasionally gives it a little chew It’s that lurching feeling That sinking A mix of fluttery anxious butterflies And deep sorrow Heart races and mind is overactive All you want to...
William Bedford
The News is in The news is in. Grey fears can go away now. These flames are black and green, the colours of disease. It isn’t true! But only because I keep my eyes closed. If I open them, the wall offers an Arctic ferment of blues, the ceiling is...
Stuart Ross
Join us for a live zoom reading from Stuart Ross and Bloodaxe poet Clare Shaw in our new occasional 'Live from the Butchery' series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their home. The reading will take place on Sunday 28th June, 4pm GMT, 11am EDT. Please...
Phil Vernon
Fin The first bars are the seeds from which the music grows, but even the music’s surprised when it flowers; by what it knows. The first snow lands; each further flake that falls is laid on the flake before, and turns the world to white and shade:...
Mbizo Chirasha
Country Train of My Country I see from a distance, its metal backbones disappearing into the blue haze of our day. It moans and vomit its human snort into the silent heat. Kacha kuchu ka……cha Kuchu……uuu Kachaaa Kuchuuu. Kweeeeeeeeee. The sound steps...
Priya Subberwal
how to lose your mind at the end of the world (an instruction manual) step one: stare out the window for hours on end. pretend you’re making eye contact with someone. step two: envision a post-apocalyptic future, where you only eat canned beans,...
Zach Murphy
Why the river? Shannon sat in her tattered recliner chair and scowled at the cheesy infomercials on the television. It’d been exactly four years since the Mississippi River took her son Gus away. Gus was a freshman at the state university where he...