Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rizwan Akhtar
Love
What fell between an abrupt shower
and a sky’s attitude was your memory.
In the small presence of wind
under a tree, I stopped renovating
your image, after the silence
ploughed over, the days we spent
in front of each other, agreeing that
the well-being of lovers is not a
a subject history ever broached.
Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of Poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan. He completed his PhD in postcolonial literature from the University of Essex, UK in 2013. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.
Sharon Larkin
Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...
Hélène Demetriades
Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...
Srinjay Chakravarti
* the tattered scarecrow: a raven perches on its shoulder * fireflies . . . sparks from a hammer on the anvil * spring dust sparrows squabble in the forenoon * a dry leaf on the ground . . . a death’s head moth * a silent gong inside the pagoda . . ....
Setareh Ebrahimi reviews ‘The Shape of a Tulip Bird’ by Christopher Hopkins
This book has an unusual premise in that it’s about something you wouldn’t want to read about. It’s about one of the most difficult subjects – child loss – and yet Hopkins’ writing allows the subject the sensitivity and accessibility that it needs. The...
Sam Hickford
John Clare on the Tube Frit by the crankling train that storms the brigs of Harrow clock-a-clays & woven twigs are soodling passengers - theyre sleeping tight clothéd in rawky natures faded light & younkers maul & lease their mothers...
Yash Seyedbagheri
Professional Crier My sister’s a professional crier. She cries on cue, lilting, soft cries or wails as anguished as a cantor’s song. She makes money too. They hire her to cry at the ballet, at dinner parties, Episcopal Eucharists, even at...
Teika Marija Smits
An Early Lesson in Fake News One paper said that my mother, The Venus of Vodka, was blonde; another that The Russian Doll was a sexy redhead. A third was certain that the nude model, From Russia With Love, was brunette. She planned world...
Nisha Bhakoo
Tenant Tides rise as I sleep. I wake up to a desert mouth and the sound of drilling. Panic shooting up spine. The scaffolding holding the building together usually blocks out the feeble Berlin, February sun. But a ray reaches my forehead today....
Yuanbing Zhang translates Hongri Yuan
Each Rock is A Potala Palace The sunshine is mellow wine and there are golden palaces inside the sun. Where a giant is its master, he told me that I was his shadow on the earth. I will still be much greater, like a mountain, each rock is a Potala...