Today’s choice

Previous poems

Charlotte Oliver

 

 

 

Repeat

On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger
while her thoughts leak out
in a rill of mutterings.
Nobody sees her
in the busy emptiness
of lunchtime. Inside
my pocket

two small shells – they
are chalky, finely ridged.
I feel the edge of their curve
over and over
like a chant.
In the car park
the ticket machine says,
Change is possible.

 

Charlotte Oliver writes for adults and children. A New Northern Poet (2023), she is one of The Poetry Society’s Poets in Schools. Her first full collection My Hands Are Still Just Petals is forthcoming with Valley Press in Oct. 2026.

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.

Abiodun Salako

a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.

                                                                                                                                       i am building him a morgue
                                                                                                                                                       for Thanksgiving.

Patrick Wright

It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.

William Collins

We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.

Oz Hardwick

The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.