Today’s choice
Previous poems
William Collins
The Things We Carry
We carry the scars of Section 28
that were stitched into our skin
during lunchtimes dodging fists
and after-school ambushes behind the bike sheds,
where onlookers’ cheers drowned out the blows.
We carry the silence of Clause 16
pressed into our bodies like bruises
earned in drills we dared not fail,
where boots snapped in time but hearts beat out of step
defending a country that does not stand up for us.
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.
William Collins is a Creative Writing graduate currently teaching English at an international school in the north of England.
Kathryn Anna Marshall
Grandad keeps pigeons and canaries
in the same cage. He has never hurt me. He probably could . . .
Cindy Botha
That way a river crimps eddies in its skin
is this matter of my unreliable breath.
Colin McGuire
You’d come in the front door
and whistle, I’d be upstairs
and whistle back
Gerry Stewart
In My Last Phone Call Did I say it looks like rain? I meant the sky is black with a thirst only crying can quench, clouds smothering the hills. Did I say this was my home? It was a mistake. The walls are collapsing even as I paint myself into a...
S Reeson
There is no evidence anywhere that Albert Einstein ever said the definition of insanity is ‘is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ except there he is, all over the Internet, being attributed with having done exactly that.
Annie Kissack
No place to put a man
and hope he’ll stay together.
The sensible nouns are already exiting the side door.
Rachel Curzon
There is as much darkness
as she wished for. As much moon.
Abu Ibrahim
When young boys go missing,
the neighbourhood rallies a search party.
We panic like a bomb’s ticking
Debs Buchan
Tish was always coming home
home with its broken bricks and scrap fires
always the smell of something burning