Today’s choice
Previous poems
L Kiew
Brine
I leave everything on shingle,
meet surf like a sibling,
crest over playful breakers
and chase the moon’s tail.
There was salt in my kisses.
It preserved us for a while,
resisted the putrefaction.
Skin on sea-stained sheets.
My mind’s water, the wind
changing direction over it.
With knickers around knees,
I squeeze out our last.
Cold presses stones
into cheeks. A whip of air.
Fog congests the cove,
crusts spittle onto lips.
A chinese-malaysian in London, L Kiew works as a charity leader and accountant. Her pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books (2019). L Kiew’s first collection More than Weeds was published by Nine Arches Press (2023). Website www.lhhkiew.co.uk
Adam Horovitz
We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught
in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait
as he has been waiting these past two years . . .
Sue Spiers
A woodpigeon calls
his five-note matins.
Petals ratchet wide
as the sun rises.
Alison Jones
Distance from the ground has become
a way of reminding myself,
how the earth turns her swaying tilt
John Coburn
Inside May’s warm beauty
I think of God and of the Virgin Mary.
I’ve always loved Mary.
Joe Wright
three sheep and a sharp wind, behind
which I feel involvement start
to tug.
Clara-Læïla Laudette
I’m six days late
and this is known as a
delinquent period.
Jan Swann
You seem very far from home
and who would after all choose a grit pocked
pavement to languish on
Gwen Sayers
Clouds spit on the coffin,
wring oily rags, splash
a woman, her violin
cased in sunken purple.
Dave Wynne-Jones
And did she break your heart?
A woman asks, perhaps imagining
A fallen chalice . . .