Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jane Ayres
Deathbed Fantasia
as now melts & nowhere goes nowhere
we wash up breathless
a box of blue light star-cushioned
harvesting morphine-thick razorlick-blueberry-pinch
& my sub-tropical heart
will punctuate the idea of treacling hope
puncturing the sense of a book
Opacity.
(it is not enough it is not enough)
find the version of yourself with sharpened corners
urge it forwards
& now the blue makes sense. kind of.
Jane Ayres was shortlisted for the 2021 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her first collection edible was published by Beir Bua Press (July 2022) and micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me published by Porkbelly Press (October 2023)
Stephen C. Curro
calm river
again, his fishing line
caught on a tree
James Norcliffe
Sarsaparilla Road
travels through swamps
and reeds, over a black
water creek and a narrow bridge
David Hanlon
Not in that parking lot,
not in that residential area,
not in that blue car
splashed with mud.
Mana Misaghi
we make sure to pack a deck of cards for the train, or a sunday afternoon visit to the park. the cards will give our hands something tangible to do . . .
Taḋg Paul
An algorithm guides me through the keys
Each stanza nested in a formal loop
Mat Riches
Hey kid, this won’t mean that much to you yet,
but I didn’t taste my first proper curry
till at least twenty-one . . .
David Sapp
Aimless between
Dropping out
Of art school
And absolutely no
Friggin’ money . . .
Gareth Writer-Davies
it’s a special kind of empty
the footed earth, saluting the sky
Sam Szanto
It beckons from between plasters and hand cream,
the box bright-white, the lettering green.