Today’s choice
Previous poems
Claire Lynn
Out of Place
I lie back, arch my throat,
pretend to relax. Contemplate
ceiling tiles, and women
who do this weekly
for pleasure. A basin
strangles me. The palm
of a hand realigns my head: this
is how the ironing board feels
when you dance with it.
I agree to a full fringe
because I can’t identify
the part of the question
I don’t understand. Christmas
seems to come round faster
each year. My small talk
shrinks. I spray
DON’T SPEAK TO ME
across my reflection.
I’d like to foreclose, cut
the blow dry, but am helpless
as a mermaid; surrender
to hot brush and serum.
Release lifts my hair
like the tail of a kite. I run
all the way home.
Claire Lynn was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2025. She won the Tyne and Wear Metro Poetry Prize in 2023, and has been published in magazines such as Butcher’s Dog, Pennine Platform and Alchemy Spoon.
Clare Bryden
seek justice
and you hold
a seashell to your ear
hear
Gail Webb
He cuts. I lie still, teach myself
to dream of St David’s Bay,
seaweed strewn on incoming tides,
surfers slice big waves in half.
Kim Cullen
I pull a dress over my head
calm foggy blue linen
sleeved in lavender,
press frizzed hair
Mark G. Pennington
Vigo in Autumn is still a furnace
the nightjars
roost on ram-tarmacked roads
and hot guapas carrying fish baskets
Ivan McGuinness
Begins
in a bubble
strained by chalk.
Where the brim-full hill cries,
weeping tracks merge
Elizabeth Wilson Davies
There are places in Wales I don’t go: reservoirs that are the subconscious of a people – R S Thomas
Cofiwch Dryweryn, that two-word protest,
white on blood-red background, landscaped in green,
Kay Feneley
Some days I must immerse myself in the waters
These days are more than others
Monday 09.06 – a sewage overflow has activated
David I. Hughes
He does not shout. He charts.
Where treaty lines once hung like old nets,
he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade.
Anne Stewart
Huddled on the cat’s blanket,
hyenas crying through the night.
Scribbled notes regretting tea,