Today’s choice
Previous poems
Tom Blake
After Gaston Bachelard and Sabrina Carpenter
We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.
After a while we walked like we were on stilts
made from string and sweetcorn tins.
We milled ginger biscuits
in our sheets.
We saw the dream house up in the distance
even when the curtains were closed.
Half the battle was not to doodle crenellations
on those final blueprints.
The house grew so large around us
that I could cat out on the bottom stair
waiting for you to pass over me,
an unmoored tower.
I promise none of this is a metaphor.
Tom Blake is a poet and music journalist who has two chapbooks out with The Red Ceilings Press: Ƨ (2023) and Peach Epoch (2025). His poems have appeared in Anthropocene and Perverse, and he is a regular contributor to KLOF magazine. Insta: tom_blake17
Finola Scott
Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage
had whetted the blade to feather lean. Anniversaries marked in metal.
Sarah James/Leavesley
My mother’s knife made the first cuts –
she removed my fertile light bulbs,
then stuffed my womb with shredded tissues.
Max Wallis
god grant us the serenity / to accept the things we cannot change / the courage to change the / things we can / and the wisdom to know el differencio /
Play, National Poetry Day: Heather Hughes, Laura Webb, Jude Brigley
We searched so long for that clover.
Every time the sun shone we scoured
the fields and woods, running past
the children playing with skipping ropes
Play, For National Poetry Day: Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Charlotte Dormandy, Lee Fraser
10 Children dart in the dark, screamers
streaming sweets and neon, their parents
Play, for National Poetry Day: MD Bier, Catherine Sweeney, Rachel Burns
Those hot hot summer days. Hair curling against sticky clammy foreheads.
Pony tails, pig tails or braids. Keep it off our neck and backs.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Ruth Aylett , Brian Comber
They can imagine a forest,
we don’t need this minimalist tree,
we’ll represent a place to live without walls, without foundations or a hearth.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Jennifer A. McGowan, Judith Shaw, Robin Houghton, Wendy Klein
Over and over, you are Dorothy
or Glenda the Good,
me the Wicked Witch of the West
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.