Today’s choice
Previous poems
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
My mute twins on tricycles. Femme fatales.
Relay racers. Nightmares wished upon stars.
In my brain you’re pendula on speed.
My climax on the horror film screen.
You are landmines inside me,
birth and death simultaneously,
two tickers, with all a heart’s grief,
none of its mercy. You’re mad for procreation.
You’re my future on the run.
My past gunned down in the street.
Elaine Baker is the author of poetry chapbooks: Dancing in Babylon, Winter with Eva (both V Press) and five-point-palm (Red Ceilings Press). She lives in the wilds of Norfolk. Find her on X @kitespotter, Instagram @elainebaker76 and at: www.elaine-baker.com
Fianna Russell Dodwell for Mental Health Awareness Week
I’ll tell you a bedtime story . . .
William Manning for Mental Health Awareness Week
My room is infested with bedbugs
I’m covered in bites, not love bites
Anna Brook
I want to borrow gods
(as Adrienne does,
though she knew better)
their sad logic
their templates
Nigel King
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
Mohsen Hosseinkhani translated by Tahereh Forsat Safai
Men are the color of soil
Women are sitting on the ashes
Stephen Komarnyckyj
you are the shadow slipping through the mirror
Jo Farrant
We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.
Douglas K Currier
Afternoon hangs in the air, and the birds leave.
Frogs begin to talk to each other, and the heat congeals.
Stephen Chappell
If you could call that friend,
the special one,
the one you always love and know loves you