Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Hanlon
Location of Incident
Not in that parking lot,
not in that residential area,
not in that blue car
splashed with mud.
Not in that leather backseat —
fingernail torn.
Not in that stuffy air
clouding windows.
And not —
not in this heart.
Yet —
not not in it either.
David Hanlon is a poet from Cardiff, Wales. His poetry appears in numerous magazines, including Rust & Moth, Anthropocene and trampset. His latest collection, Dawn’s Incision, was published by Icefloe Press. You can follow him on Twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @hanlon6944.
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.
Graham Clifford
The Still Face Experiment
You must have seen that Youtube clip
where a mother lets her face go dead.
Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her.
Susan Jane Sims
After you died,
someone asked:
What was it like
in those final sixteen days
waiting for your son to die?