Today’s choice
Previous poems
Scott Lilley
Doppelgänger
I’ve seen dozens of you about the Fylde,
face all vape, fatigue, some wild sense of
beard, black hair to border it all. Oiled
up Kieran, out cold in the ring; pensive
Kieran, pacing the promenade; I’ll have
spent my own self in this loop of turning
and returning to Asda checkout checking
out what must be your eyelids on the cashier.
It’s tiresome— keeping up with it, learning
your new names. The nights that crack open
like a Strongbow come cloying back; here,
you point, Orion’s belt, your face all teeth,
me not knowing for certain where your finger
points, you, buckled up, almost onto something.
Scott Lilley lives on the Fylde and is studying for a PhD at Lancaster University, his previous work can be found in Wet Grain, 3:AM, and Butcher’s Dog among other publications. Instagram: @poetrytalkingguy
Jeff Skinner
Can’t hear yourself think only the bass line
of a heart thumping. Your head’s clamped.
Chalice Am Bergris
It is not like an egg cracking
or an exquisite shiver of shattered glass.
Piers Haben
When I lost loved ones last year
I thought my childhood fears would return.
Lesley Burt
There’s a house in a suburb of between-the-wars pebble-dash & bay windows, where the soundtrack is sighs, tuts & bellows, the clash of plates & jangle of cutlery.
Gabrielle Meadows
She gets into your bed
like when she was little.
Flowers grow out of the wardrobe,
moss claims the windowsill
Alice Huntley
I had a leaf in my hair when I arrived
the receptionist thought it was a hairclip
Gemma Blakeley
My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown
and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.
Nick Cooke
Molluscous receivers, would that you could
turn your talents inwards, and pick up
all that goes on in the cerebral swamp . . .
Luke Moran
There’s a
flash of colour
from the hedge.