Today’s choice

Previous poems

Farah Ali

 

 

 

Notes from nature on how to survive this:

1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog

2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches

3. Spikes are effective, mollusc shells cumbersome

4. Warning! sea urchins maim and poison in any depth zone

5. Wear red, hiss, spray, rattle in worst-case scenarios

6. Injured starfish grow another limb, they don’t miss the old one,
barely remember it, apparently

7. Hide, freeze, or gallop away from prairie rain and savannah shadows

8. *Important* octopuses can be harmed by their own ink cloud

 

 

 

Farah Ali has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the Touchstone Awards. She has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Rattle, Right Hand Pointing, tiny wren lit, Tokyo Poetry Journal and many others.

Emily A. Taylor

I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.

Steph Morris

No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,

Eryn McDonald

It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green

Stephen Keeler

The days were huge and kind
and sometimes after school

we’d buy a bag of broken biscuits
for the long walk home

across the heavy heat of afternoon
on lucky days she wouldn’t take

the pennies offered up in supplication

Joseph Blythe

I swear I felt the swirly patterned paper
rip from the walls of my childhood bedroom.
It was the same stained cream shade as my skin –
pockmarked, cut and scabbed, dry and peeling…..