Today’s choice
Previous poems
L Kiew
Brine
I leave everything on shingle,
meet surf like a sibling,
crest over playful breakers
and chase the moon’s tail.
There was salt in my kisses.
It preserved us for a while,
resisted the putrefaction.
Skin on sea-stained sheets.
My mind’s water, the wind
changing direction over it.
With knickers around knees,
I squeeze out our last.
Cold presses stones
into cheeks. A whip of air.
Fog congests the cove,
crusts spittle onto lips.
A chinese-malaysian in London, L Kiew works as a charity leader and accountant. Her pamphlet The Unquiet was published by Offord Road Books (2019). L Kiew’s first collection More than Weeds was published by Nine Arches Press (2023). Website www.lhhkiew.co.uk
Rachael Hill
Those times my tongue becomes a lemon
filling my mouth with bitter pith
John Doyle
I hide a knife amongst a bush longing to burn,
days like these are plots from a heathen’s bible.
William Coniston
My second cousin twice removed arrived in May
at her old nest in the eaves of the ruined barn.
Simon Williams
A white cloak that folds like a shopping bag,
like a Pac-a-mac with pagan overtones,
much larger when unfolded than a pocket,
a TARDIS of a cloak.
Emma Page
I grow shoots, acid green;
climb the walls,
surprise myself.
Mary McQueen
It’s starts in utero, painted wood carvings thick as a
finger, gift
wrapped in nostalgia.
Alan Hardy
Made a list.
A record.
The dishes she ate.
Monuments visited.
In Paris.
Susana Arrieta
Tempting death with every cobblestoned step
his face was a collection of broken records
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 . . .