Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rose Ramsden
The Last Train Home
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats, wanting to see the dust rise like smoke. Floating to the ceiling, dirtying the lights. The doors hissed open and a stranger emerged. Approached with a stare that unwrapped the skin from my bones, trickled down the neckline of my shirt. He held out a hand to my dad and grinned. Gums like the flesh left on cherry pits. I gazed at the ugly pattern on my seat. The filth beneath, festering.
Rose Ramsden is a UK based poet currently studying for her Creative Writing Masters at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her work has been previously published by bathmagg, The Punch Magazine, and dubble, among others. You can find her on Instagram @RoseRamsden.
Daniel Rye
When did the slowness
of this afternoon
merge with the chugging
boat engine in the harbour?
Anna Ruddock
Let it be okay that it took me a while to get here
If not better then equally fine to be
the goldfinch . . .
Laura Fyfe
How do we pull ourselves back
when we’ve nothing to hold on to?
Find a way clear
or stay? Wait.
David Belcher
How to not exist
Allow yourself to be elbowed aside
become a non-person
an avoider of lingering looks
Simon Williams
I Want to Become
a weasel, in a sleeky, twisty body,
all eyes and teeth like a deadly zip.
Zoe Davis
I joined a secret society
advertised in the back pages of a magazine.
I forget which, but I found it nestled
in 8pt font and fancy border
between time share apartments in Lanzarote
and the commemorative plates.
Callan Waldron-Hall
long weekend ← or ← perhaps ↑ summer holiday →
from the back of someone’s car boot ↑ the strange →
sweated plastic all pink and blue and folded →
Amy King
We’re drinking wine in your kitchen, months before
the hot oil of my concern begins to spit.
Jenny Robb
You notice the crepe of your neck and belly first.
This skin you bake in the sun.