Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Thompson
I no longer prioritise, I choose who to disappoint that day
I’m a cardboard loo roll with one sheet left
wet grounds scraped from the coffee pot
a biro tip scratching at paper in circles.
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
If it was important, they’ll chase me.
Working from home means
I can hear my son growing up without me.
Like an ex-lover texting again
saying they need to process
there is another survey asking
do you have confidence in the management?
They never offer a free vote.
Business is autocracy; this is what we vote for
like eating the last stale biscuits because
they are there, and takeaway takes longer.
Such things squeeze my love
leave it to be sifted through each evening
with the daily leftovers.
David Thompson is a poet from Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire. His work has been published in magazines and anthologies, most recently by Acumen, Broken Sleep Books and The Interpreter’s House.
Lucy Wilson
Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me.
In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight;
like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea.
Amirah Al Wassif
The God I know works as a baker in a local shop.
From time to time, I see him feeding the kittens bread crumbs soaked in milk.
Cliff McNish
Heaven For starters, the standard works everyone gets: three trumpets blown in unison; your name acclaimed to the galactic hegemony of stars; plus assorted angels with ceramically smooth hands (the nail-work!) casting wholesale quantities of petals (flowers of the...
Paul Stephenson
Rhubarb after Norman MacCaig And another thing: stop looking like embarrassed celery. It doesn’t suit. How can you stand there, glittery in pink, some of you rigid, some all over the shop? Deep down you’re marooned, a sour forest spilling out beneath a harmful canopy....
Holly Winter-Hughes
You stand behind me / catch my eye / take the snatch of silver
Laura McKee
after the accident the plaster
held her still
Melanie Branton
At boarding school, I had no idea what to do
with myself. Most of the time,
I hid myself in a paper bag . . .
Lucy Calder
I arrange my books in order of height,
on a bank of cow parsley,
amid the random oscillations
of a cool breeze
Tanya Joseph
I know others blossom
but I vomit ectoplasm,
and squaring the corners of my bed,
the nurse reminds me I’m not dying.