Today’s choice
Previous poems
Katie Beswick
Can I Kiss You?
We were on my pink love seat
skin touching skin
I was drunk but longing
circled me, like stars
from a cartoon head wound
I nodded
you moved towards me
and as I parted my lips
little hesitations flew as daggers
out my mouth, though I said nothing
just let the momentous wrongness
come at you rapid, sharp
you ducked your lips were hard
and dry we tried –
oh darling we’re still trying now
the baby’s sleeping between us
and there must be some tenderness
I didn’t shred that first night
unpeeling hurts
sour as unripe oranges
you sucked them down.
Well. You said, That was the worst kiss ever.
Katie Beswick is a writer from south east London. Recent/forthcoming poems appear in Under the Radar, And Other Poems, Barrelhouse, Rattle and Narrative Magazine. Her books include Plumstead Pram Pushers (Red Ogre Review 2024) and the hybrid work of poetry, memoir, cultural history and arts criticism Slags on Stage (Routledge 2025). She teaches at Goldsmiths University of London.
Jennie Howitt
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands.
Matt Bryden
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys –
Colin Pink
to embrace you is like clasping
a fist full of briars
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.