Today’s choice
Previous poems
Mary Mulholland
This poem is a secret
after Elma Mitchell
It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself
in my head where no one can reach it,
laugh, tear it to shreds, or
call it a waste of space, a disgrace.
A poem is grace, a prayer,
my longing for more than I am.
Sometimes I wake in the night
to write it, hear the hushed breathing
of you beside me – waves
don’t lose their power in the dark.
This poem will save me. It gives purpose,
a kind of kindness, a healing balm,
takes me away, the same room as you
while elsewhere.
Mary Mulholland is a widely published poet, most recently Magma 94, Finished Creatures, Poetry News, and her poems are frequently finalists in competitions. Her debut collection is forthcoming this year from Nine Arches and she has two pamphlets (Broken Sleep and Live Canon). www.marymulholland.co.uk
Mark Wyatt
yes of course/ it was idyllic, reclining (pint of/ cider in hand) poolside in the harvesting/ sunlight
Catherine Shonack
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.
William Collins
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.
Oz Hardwick
The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak.
McLord Selasi
I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.