Today’s choice
Previous poems
Angeliki Ampelogianni
Eating figs on the bathroom floor
on marble tiles bird like
I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl
disembogued into this locked space
with depressions of earth staring at me
the bathroom keeps the history of my enclosures
fake windows chewing up oxygen
closing as I count eggs like shapes
completely deterged of sinful shells
the fig a bit dry as I bury inside it
a stain like flesh from a gleaming branch
I shut the door counting again the days
Angeliki Ampelogianni is a Greek poet and teacher. Her work appear in Harana Poetry, Porridge Magazine, Lucent Dreaming and Poetry London among others. She was the winner of the Oxford Brookes International Poetry competition 2022 in the EAL category.
Mike Wilson
My reptilian brain calculates the minimum I’ll do to escape
the weight of obligation …
but before I finish the math, we regress into college kids
rushing the street Julia barricades with furniture
to keep out the law by breaking the law.
Allyson Dowling
Night drops by
In a coat of onyx and blue
Lights up his silver pipe
And asks how do you do…
Emily Veal
boudicca you’re a brewery down the road i drank a bottle of your finest on the train back from bury st edmunds the red queen (no one will call you ginger) i see you everywhere realised you were also the wetherspoons round the corner the one with...
Lesley Burt
tongue it various from burr to babel swish to swirl
rushes between buttresses plaits threads of currents
where swans lord-and-lady-it along the centre
trips over own flow with
fish-out-of-water flash salmon’s silver high-jump
Sam Szanto
This love was. Slowly it becomes formless,
drifting, softening, snakeskin-empty,
the part it has played in who I am now
secreted in a pocket of a coat
Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts on World Poetry Day
When you enter mountains, afternoons stretch
and lengthen like days; mesmerise.
下午进山的人都会多活上一天
他们从这山望着更高的山
搓着通红的大手望山气变化
Bel Wallace
Trespasses Forgive me The E flat on your baby grand (not quite in tune). This same finger in the crack that goes clean through the bungalow’s supporting wall. Then flicking dust from the fringed edge of your floral lampshade. Noticing that they...
Arlette Manasseh
You were the pine, softening the dirt I grew up in: the one I climbed in the breeze. Wanting to describe you, I had called you Paulie. That is not your name.
Lynn Valentine
A Bad Spell
The rowan by the house is cracked in two,
her bark ragged, grown good-for-nothing old.