Today’s choice

Previous poems

Alex Searle

 

 

 

 

Something started you to wake,
leaving sockprints in the parquet,
there was only the dark,
until a hair sliver of light
softly glowed on your feet asleep.
Behind the closed door,
he was there,
your father,
smoking quietly
with himself
staring at the black,
a familiar witness
to the screaming matches
riddling your ears.
You creak on the cold wood
wanting to go in and lie in his lap,
but the light turns off,
your feet become invisible again,
he does not emerge.
You go back to bed,
the light stays black
but he does not emerge.

 

 

Alex Searle is a South African-based writer of essays and poems exploring childhood, relationships, culture and the embodied masculine. He is also a musician, podcaster and corporate poet. He publishes frequently on Substack @alexsearle

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.

Adam Horovitz

We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught
in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait
as he has been waiting these past two years . . .