Today’s choice
Previous poems
Matt Gilbert
A Rat Decides to Change its Place
Disgust springs up from the guts
to meet a sprinting lump
of furry muscle.
Only to be ambushed
by a brilliance of nose, a skittering
perfection of racing claws,
Sleek brown legs, pumping
from the stewed-tea shade
of rain damp oaks
scud towards a pool, below
a crumbled, redbrick efficiency
of Victorian engineering.
Solid body plunging into water,
with the same gratifying, staccato plop
a stone makes, as it hits the target.
Matt Gilbert is from Bristol, but currently lives in South London. His work has appeared in various publications, including Dust, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Rialto. His debut collection Street Sailing was published by Black Bough Poetry in 2023.
Audrey Cotterell
In a corner chapel of the abbey
I lit a small candle, and sent the flame
as a message only half composed
Dylan Foster
there’s not much you can do
when the planets
are telling you to stop
Jeff Skinner
Can’t hear yourself think only the bass line
of a heart thumping. Your head’s clamped.
Chalice Am Bergris
It is not like an egg cracking
or an exquisite shiver of shattered glass.
Piers Haben
When I lost loved ones last year
I thought my childhood fears would return.
Lesley Burt
There’s a house in a suburb of between-the-wars pebble-dash & bay windows, where the soundtrack is sighs, tuts & bellows, the clash of plates & jangle of cutlery.
Gabrielle Meadows
She gets into your bed
like when she was little.
Flowers grow out of the wardrobe,
moss claims the windowsill
Alice Huntley
I had a leaf in my hair when I arrived
the receptionist thought it was a hairclip
Gemma Blakeley
My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown
and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.