Today’s choice
Previous poems
Colin Dardis
Mausoleum
A house is a machine for living in.- Le Corbusier
I have never climbed a tree,
never broken a bone
and will never walk on water.
I open my little window
and worry about possibilities:
imprudent intruders
of bird or cat, the wind, the cold.
The sky often tells me
when it’s time to close up again.
Some days, the house
is where you do your dying.
The true living waits outside.
Colin Dardis is a writer and editor from Northern Ireland. He edits the Poem Alone blog, and is co-host of Purely Poetry, an open mic night in Belfast. His recent collections are My Life Is A Film I Haven’t Yet Watched (Buttonhook Press, 2025), and with the lakes (above/ground press, 2024). www.colindardispoet.co.uk
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.
Gordan Struić
Still —
I kept
writing.
Sometimes
just:
“Hi.”
Margaret Poynor-Clark
Inside my bedroom I take a fresh blade
pull off my jumper, examine the ladder
in front of the mirror cut through my laces
rung by rung
Jenny Hockey
That’s when she went to ground,
after she disobeyed, painted her plastic tea set
red, hidden away in the playhouse they built
down where bindweed draped
Sue Proffitt
You and I have had many talks since you died.
Nick Cooke
If when you go to the barber today
He asks if you’d like him to ‘tidy up your ears’,
Think of all the wildest sprawling vegetation
That will never be tidied, or trimmed, by clippers or shears,
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.