Today’s choice
Previous poems
Genna Gardini
When we die, do we
go back, small cell, atom
slit by light. It takes up
space, an ocean, a planet, a
god. Too large to understand
the scale, although we accept
the concept. Constellations,
tongues of vibration. Unlearnable
logic between us. Our sameness, our
strangeness, lows deep and seismic.
A language translated. Thin whistle.
If we could speak it, we would
crumble. Above us,
a black and wet sheet is washing
forever. Clockless expanse, science
in darkness, the moon’s clean conduction
of time. Satellites, submarines, sink
and climb, and can’t find what’s there, and
what’s there? Listen
to me, carefully. One day
you’ll ask the right question,
and that’s when you’ll see it.
Look! That’s when
I’ll tell you—
Wait—
Genna Gardini is a writer, theatre-maker, and educator. Her poetry has been published widely, most recently in Prairie Schooner, The Amsterdam Review, and New Contrast. You can see more about her work at www.gennagardini.com.
Autumn Richardson
What you are –
bodied light, a store of oil
a hive of warm blood
Rebecca Parfitt
In the back of the taxi on my way to the hospital,
thighs clenched together,
the driver asked me,
Samarth Agarwal
Here — in the absolute zero of space — fireworks!
Look how the crucibles of creation,
those million coloured fingers that stretch light years —
Jenny Scoones
We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
Matt Bryden
Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones,
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.
Kit Duke
I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.
Janet Hatherley
In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal This is summer and Mum can’t put out her trot line with its hooks because of swimmers so I buy three mackerel from the fishmonger. I cycle to the school bus stop one arm on the handlebar,...
Jane Ayres
& my sub-tropical heart
will punctuate the idea of treacling hope
puncturing the sense of a book
Annette Iles
across the street
I am washed off my feet
my heart
splashes up into pieces