Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rushika Wick
quiet
slid in bass-drop dams up
pierced ears, furred
with youth, his vest drinks sweat,
high-tops, Moog-loop
domed cap punctured
with embroidery, brailled
ethnographic record, reverb
haze of brisk lavender, wire mesh
trash of the park, sun-burnt song,
something about the power
of gaze, arc of hand to the ring’s
negative space – astrological
movement in the ecology of court,
echo, orb, limbs
stirring over him inter
a pattern. pattern up – this belonging
this world, the bounce
the squeak, hot bodies on bail
from sentences of looming
adulthood, the classroom
the death of a father
Rushika Wick is a writer, editor and paediatrician. Her first collection Afterlife As Trash (Verve 2021) was highly commended in the Forwards. She is interested in the poetics of witness, infections and cyborg identities and co-edited the Disease Anthology published by Carnaval Press in 2022. Rushika currently holds a scholarship at the Poetry School x Newcastle University MA in writing poetry.
Bob King
The first wristwatch was first worn
in 1810, despite what old turn-it-up
Flintstones episodes might have you
believe.
Brandon Arnold
Alone, I drive along the midnight, winter road. My left hand at the 12 o’clock position of the steering wheel. And I coast. I let out the day’s long breath, which started out today as a sigh.
Steph Ellen Feeney
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach . . .
Anna Fernandes
My stubby maroon glove spent a chill night
on the velvet ridge of Clent Hills
tangled in summer-dried grasses
Jo Eades
It’s Wednesday and / again / I’m laying pages of newspaper on the kitchen table / tipping up the food waste bin /
Sue Butler
We cultivate the knack
of getting down on the floor and
back up three or four times each day.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite