Today’s choice

Previous poems

Annette Iles

 

 

 

You Again 

across the street 

I am washed off my feet
my heart 
splashes up into pieces 

as if someone has thrown a stone
into the pool of me

all these years 
I thought myself dry ground

but I am a stream  a loch  a river
brim full 
sequinned with light

you smile
I ripple and shimmer 

 

Born in New Zealand, Annette Iles is a Midlands-based poet. Her first pamphlet On New Street I See a Mermaid was recently shortlisted for the 2026 International Rubery Book Award.

Gordon Vells

Impotent in family life and ineffectual at work,
sometimes he would spend a full quarter-hour
just circulating the mini-roundabout on his moped,
dizzy from the power of blocking everyone else.

Patrick Wright

i protest     say how when i’m gone i’d like to rest before the choice to return & go through 
all this again     you sigh as though that’s absurd & endings are just endings     we’re mulch 
& nothing but endless fucking 

Francis de Lima

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

Miriam Swales

When I was 12, I knew the weight of a human head.
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (a bit of dark comedy).
It grew from there. The curiosity. The calculations.