Today’s choice
Previous poems
George Turner
Patience
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured. Cooking seems too great a price to pay
for eating. Instead, you sit and you look at a book without reading it.
The shower feels like too much. Your pajamas feel like too much.
You tell yourself (falling asleep in your jeans) that tomorrow will be better.
You’ll do things tomorrow. You’re good at waiting for good things.
Wait for the morning birdsong, the greasy tastiness of bacon,
the day’s first robin, the gentle thrum of traffic, the crunch of fallen leaves.
Wait for the smell of paper, the coolness of river water,
the low clouds daubed with stripes of sunset pink and orange,
the peaceful early moon hanging resolute in a pale evening sky.
George Turner is a writer currently completing his BA in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. His poetry has been read aloud in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s Student Showcase 2024.
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.
Graham Clifford
The Still Face Experiment
You must have seen that Youtube clip
where a mother lets her face go dead.
Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her.