Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jake Roberts
onwards
hamlet asked it to the dark night sea
where do waters end and i begin where the
moonlight shimmers on a cragged rock
to which i tie my errant being
hard against the night
solid against the wind
it still erodes but just more slowly
it cries for help but just more softly
love’s song it sings but just more sad
we couldn’t make it last
except as reverie
hamlet asked it to the voiceless sea
must i be thrust biannually
into water’s salty anti-memory
to be nothing but the fish who takes a timid bite
from the waves’ sick surface surging rolling
hard against the rock
solid against its grain
the washed-up dolt with shrunken cock
sandy naked by the wet brown groyne
is i
the winter sun
and the creaking windows of a seaside town
who sing towards the english sea
o blue i crack and break and leak
i don’t know what i want to be
Jake Roberts is a poet, critic and teacher based in London. Instagram: @jakegrxz
Alice Huntley
slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans
Rhonda Melanson
The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand.
Clive Donovan
I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
Gary Akroyde
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts