Today’s choice
Previous poems
Amirah Al Wassif
The Double
My double sits before me now. I stare deep into her, as I do every day after midnight. When I raise my hands, she raises hers. When I wink with my right eye, she winks back. My childish braid sticks its tongue out at us both.
“Good evening, my double,” I say. “Hello,” she says. “How are things? Anything new?”
I consider the question, exactly as I do every day. Anything new?
The sun rises daily. The moon follows us everywhere. Flowers open and close, yet people still pluck them for others with broken hearts. I still count to a hundred before opening any message. The plagues are here. The jealous neighbor is here. The traumas remain.
We still let the large moths sleep among the clothes in the closet, hoping they are the souls of our dead. We still go shopping, read motivational stories, and ruin the environment while holding conferences on how to fix it. Living on Earth, we book digital outfits.
My double is like a photo negative. Her dreams have a voice; her imagination is larger than the galaxy. Yet, she asks: “Anything new?”
I narrow my eyes slyly—the philosopher. I hug myself to reassure us both. The Earth is still here. Yesterday’s breath is still on the pillow. My aunt is still fighting with her husband. New Year’s Eve repeats.
Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning poet and author. Her poetry collection, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate, was published in February 2019 by Poetic Justice Books & Arts, followed by her illustrated children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories, in February 2020. Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company released her collection, How to Bury a Curious Girl, in 2022. Most recently, her latest collection, The Rules of Blind Obedience, was published in December 2024. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus, Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Reckoning, and Event Magazine, among others.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,
Eryn McDonald
It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green
Gordan Struić
Outside,
the city slides by,
blurred lines
of glass and rain.
Stephen Keeler
The days were huge and kind
and sometimes after school
we’d buy a bag of broken biscuits
for the long walk home
across the heavy heat of afternoon
on lucky days she wouldn’t take
the pennies offered up in supplication
Joseph Blythe
I swear I felt the swirly patterned paper
rip from the walls of my childhood bedroom.
It was the same stained cream shade as my skin –
pockmarked, cut and scabbed, dry and peeling…..
Denise Bundred
Shadowed boats bereft of sail
absorb the surge and slap
constrained by a blue-grey chink
of mooring chains.
Rahma O. Jimoh
A bird skirts across the fence
& I rush to the window
to behold its flapping wings—
It’s been ages
since I last saw a bird.
Samuel A. Adeyemi
I can already hear the chorus of my tribe.
They want the ancient blade,
the guillotine that hovered
above my head like a halo of death.
Mofiyinfoluwa O.
when you
know that your time with someone has almost run out, that is what you do. you look for
tiny things buried in the sand so that you do not have to look at the huge broken thing
standing between you both.