Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steph Morris
Tag
He arrived with a Christian name stitched
in place, forwards and backwards down each folded-back
end. On the first day the other boys
and girls tore it off, taking the surrounding cloth along.
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, hung
all sissy, who ran from balls, read poufy books.
All sorts poured into the gash at first, nice words
said in some nice place, like Butterfly or Flower, but not
said by those hardened kids, entitled to hurt, who
sharpened their hate to turn Stephen
to Stephanie. That label stuck, glued over the hole
for good. Or bad? Either way Steph kept it.
Steph Morris’ poems have been published in his pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! (Fair Acre Press), in the anthologies Joy//Us – Poems of Queer Joy and Becoming, from the Poetry Pharmacy, and in magazines and gardens.
Rose Lennard
Each year we climbed to that place high above the ruins.
Melanie Tibbs
People came to find out what ‘Garage Sale’ meant
in a small village landlocked county early burning comet tail
of Thatcher’s Britain.
Alfie Nawaid
a cowboy is that split second of doubt between victim
and victor, quick whipcrack out the corner of the mouth,
Stuart Rawlinson
I’m nineteen, I’m ancient.
I am so hungover
one of my eyes has fallen out…
Susie Wilson
Ceilings don’t hold water well.
Burst a pipe at the top
of an apartment block
to test this theory, if you will.
Andy Breckenridge
Abertawe After Richard Siken For CHD Tell me about the time I mansplained that Swansea is the English for Abertawe and means town at the mouth of the River Tawe. And about when, from the hill above Rhossili beach Lundy Island’s spectral mass...
Mark Wyatt
Daedalus
Plato loved his incessant questioning
of the natural world’s engineering
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
I tempt you with morsels
of soft-skinned peach, a pear sliced
in quarters, pipless and skinless.
Lesley Burt
Red-hot-pokers blazon her two world wars in flowerbeds, and in her hearth. The coalman drops odd nuggets under gaslight for neighbours to fetch in a bucket.