Today’s choice

Previous poems

Oenone Thomas

 

 

 

Because I don’t know any other way

I replace my left hand
with a hook, my feet
with jackhammers, both
my eyes with spangled
mirror balls.

I raise my right hand, and
in its palm, I roll another’s
choice of dice. I stud my scalp
with stars, stripe my cheeks
and lips in welts.

I form the phrase how dare you
from hot tacks and nails, I fire it up
into the sky’s great
vacancy. It is no longer
a question.

 

 

Oenone Thomas is a writer, child psychotherapist, and chocolatemaker.  She was Poet in Residence, Cuckmere Pilgrim Path, 2024/25. Her collection from this adventure, Self-Portrait as Scallop Shell, was published last summer.

Dharmavadana

She barely glances at you when you chink
your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still
spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls,

Tim Dwyer

      Shedding Annamakerrig It begins high up the chestnut tree with leaves on the twigs on the tips of branches where sap has slowed. Turning amber carried by the breeze they touch the earth, rest on the grass where autumn begins   Tim...

Sandra Noel

The sea happens to me today

not because I’m the woman in the bakers
brusque turned rude
or the peaches              still hard in the bowl

Grace Lynn

Sunlight saunters in long, thin wires through the fallow field
of my bedroom. You approach, a migrating heron
in a runny yolk collar and suntanned shorts, a white-light emissary
of hope. . .

Miriam Swales

I’m waiting for news I don’t want to talk about
and scrolling through old photos to escape.
After some swipes, I see you walking away.