Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sally Spiers
Windless Day
Night’s white noise is over. Day arises
to stillness. Light crouches behind windows,
presses through chinks. Dawn’s chorus
conceals a speck of silence that casts a shadow
stretching vast across the floor.
Double-checking in the cereal bowls, Day reveals
emptiness disguised as a cornflake. A stale
sandwich left overnight curls at the edges.
Day crawls like a hangover along city roads,
behind mountains, trawls the dark mirror of landfill
and finds her reflection no longer ripples.
Wind has grown up and moved away,
packing every half-decent breeze and musty blow.
As if the last breath of night has stranded her high
on a cliff face. A forgotten guillemot jumpling
sits on a ledge. No-one left to encourage its leap.
Sally Spiers is retired and lives in North London. She has had poems published by the International Times, Artemesia, Brighton and Hove poetry competition, South Downs Poetry Competition and Wild Fire. She won first prize in the Charm Poetry competition 2024. She is an active member of the Peace movement and organises a London wide poetry study group.
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.
McLord Selasi
I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.
Warren Mortimer
& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse
Jena Woodhouse
Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.
Martin Rieser
The river is an old demon
& my heart is an infirm creature
The river is sure of its way
& my heart is capable of lies.
Sreeja Naskar
glass-tooth morning.
salt mouth.
i left the stove on just to feel wanted.