Today’s choice
Previous poems
Chrissy Banks
Some of This Is True
Sun comes out, my body opens
all its folding doors, its windows.
Sun comes out, my body floats –
like feather, cirrus, floats across the grass.
Sun comes out. Under the apple tree
in the hammock, my body lays me down.
Sun comes out, my body sighs –
or purrs maybe – yes purrs.
My love returning home comes wandering
to where my body stretches out..
He brings me mango juice
brings plump black cherries.
He strokes the fur on my arm.
Chrissy Banks lives in Exeter and co-hosts Uncut Poets. The Uninvited is available from Indigo Dreams and Frank, from Smith/Doorstop. She won third prize in the Bridport Poetry Competition 2024. She has been published in Penumbra, Frosted Fire and Under the Radar.
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark
Juliet Humphreys
Though I am not a painter
this is to be a portrait
of my parents and my sister.