Today’s choice

Previous poems

Paul Stephenson

 

 

 

Attraction

Like one of those horses
on the carousel

going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole

for three minutes
then stopping a while

then starting again
for three minutes

sliding up and down a pole
in circles going round and round

on the carousel
like one of those horses

going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole

for three minutes
then stopping a while

then starting again
for three minutes

sliding up and down a pole
in circles going round and round

on the carousel
like one of those horses

 

Paul Stephenson’s debut collection is Hard Drive (Carcanet, 2023), shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize. His last pamphlet was Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He recently co-edited the ‘Ownership’ (92) issue of Magma Poetry and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh. Website: paulstep.com

Jo Farrant

We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.

Opeyemi Oluwayomi

They are piercing knife between
the city, detaching the body from the head,
& squeezing the blood out of the flesh,
so there can be an end to what hasn’t begun.

Rhian Thomas

I sit to fumble some intrusion from my shoe.
A shard of stone, no bigger than a thought, its ridged face
cutting like some old lover, like a baby or
an old preacher drumming something that irks like a worn out song