Today’s choice
Previous poems
Francis de Lima
Portrait
Oh London. U useless city. Map to
nowhere land. Tight stretch
open eye. The underground metal.
The night tube. The railway. Smog
Over coaltrip. The presence
Of machine upon machine. U
behemoth. Sea urchin. Fricative city.
And yet. Nightlamp burning into
the chippy down and out. Art in
the stuck gum on the Millenium.
And Wren
turned St Pauls upside down to count
a broken weightline
distance into the future. Momentum scream.
A liars’ cant. Tragedy at play. But so vast
Life in the kingdom. Test tube. Raucous.
Speakers in the round. Wringing poems.
Irish epiphany. Cream of glass.
Capable of cracking. Capable.
Brittle plant. Chewing.
Something growing. On Primrose
Hill.
The heath. Episodes and vignettes.
Untouchable happiness. Insulated time.
Francis de Lima is a Finnish-Brazilian poet living in London, where they recently completed their MA in Poetic Practice at Royal Holloway. Many of their poems can be found in literature magazines and some have even been nominated for an award or two.
Abigail Ottley
She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...
Frank Phelan
I am most visceral
when being disarmed
by a song, a lyric
written and sung…
in the broad New Yawk vowels
Katherine Duffy
The ferry pushes the sea,
forces a long, white reply
that speaks of where we’ve been
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.