Today’s choice
Previous poems
Paul Stephenson
Attraction
Like one of those horses
on the carousel
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole
for three minutes
then stopping a while
then starting again
for three minutes
sliding up and down a pole
in circles going round and round
on the carousel
like one of those horses
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole
for three minutes
then stopping a while
then starting again
for three minutes
sliding up and down a pole
in circles going round and round
on the carousel
like one of those horses
Paul Stephenson’s debut collection is Hard Drive (Carcanet, 2023), shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. His last pamphlet was Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He recently co-edited the ‘Ownership’ (92) issue of Magma Poetry and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh. Website: paulstep.com
Peter Leight
There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation . . .
John Grey
there are some lives
lived poolside
and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –
Adam Flint
All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.
David Van-Cauter
You are pleased to see me
in my gothic T-shirt –
those bats, you say, have been your friends.
Mark Wyatt
yes of course/ it was idyllic, reclining (pint of/ cider in hand) poolside in the harvesting/ sunlight
Catherine Shonack
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.