Today’s choice
Previous poems
Peter Devonald
Father
He is sulphur, he is fire
and brimstone, he is deep
shame, the colour of night,
sound of slamming doors.
He is bitterest regrets,
dark chocolate, olives and kale,
The Telegraph and Magritte’s
pipe, the treachery of images.
Moments replayed on repeat,
light goes on underneath a door,
locking of bedrooms, moss and ivy
on windows, a crack of light, still.
The air sours with acrid shampoo,
turgid reek of cigars and alcohol,
it’s hard to pretend and play at
happy families, rigor mortis grin.
We cling to positives, desperate,
distressed, we do it to ourselves,
you do realise that, don’t you?
Stilted breath sucked from rooms.
Peter Devonald is a multi-award-winning Stockport writer. Winner Broken Spine Readers’ Choice Award 2025, Loft Books Best Poem 2024, Waltham Forest 2022, FofHCS, two HoH’s, runner-up Shelley Memorial and N2tS 2024. Widely-published/anthologised. Forward Prize, two BotN and Children’s Bafta nominated. linktr.ee/pdevonald x.com/petedevonald
Sef
The body is not solid. The body is almost perfect.
Jon Miller
The upper floor of the old byre
a darkness made of owl-stare—
its blink drinks you in.
Salvatore Difalco
No green swell this evening
will detach me from my hat.
Annah Atane
That night,
the stars had slept. The wind
silent as something dying.
Jake Roberts
hamlet asked it to the dark night sea
where do waters end and i begin
Miguel Cullen
The pelican is so dovey, with her funny crème anglaise feathers with pink and her split-ended crest and mouth.
T N Kennedy
inside the apiary it is always spring
human beings and honey bees cohabiting
Kate Vanhinsbergh
We Should Probably Get Up Now
but, outside, the world has paused:
the wind has put down its loneliness
Bel Wallace
Interior My dear, I washed you out of my sheets. And now I sleep softly in them. My dreams are sweet and free. I opened the windows to air out your smoke. I liked it for a while, how it held the past in its wispy fingers. I emptied your cigarette...