Today’s choice
Previous poems
Chalice Am Bergris
The Insanity Ensemble
It is not like an egg cracking
or an exquisite shiver of shattered glass.
It is not a supercelery bone snap
or a wired ballerina bend.
A cortisol swoosh
floods your certainty
a prefrontal cortex throb
threatens thunder.
A neurotransmitter harpsichord
plucks delusions
the slide of an unconscious tear
as you slowly lose your mind.
Chalice Am Bergris is physically and mentally disabled. She has been published in Europe, Asia, Africa, America and Australia. She has won the the Over The Edge Poetry Prize in Ireland and is in the Best New British and Irish Poets anthology.
John Bartlett
mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds
Maya Little
I’m trying to stop thinking about what I want to not // be. Sometimes I have looked into my heart and found that // everything’s packed up.
Liz Byrne
I want to be two-tongued again
To go back to the time when I slipped
from one language to another with ease,
Matthew Thorpe-Coles
You retreat back to your bedroom,
your headset cooler than any
sunlight . . .
S Reeson
only now is it apparent how
dishonouring a body is a crime
Paul Connolly
At Aber Falls
he felt nothing
water sheeted
past grottoes
snakes of tributary
lazed along
Cindy Botha
I notice her because she doesn’t have a dog
in an afternoon of dog-walkers
Alex Josephy
the goddess of the library
extends in cloth-bound curves
along a lettered shelf
Ben Banyard
There were hundreds of them, all in period costume,
each generation explained who they were,
queued like at a wedding reception to greet us.