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.

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

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.