Today’s choice
Previous poems
Oz Hardwick
Horticulture for the Transcendental Age
It’s the ghost of my mother again, glow-handed, and draped
in the hair she cut off before I was born. She is cradling an
aspidistra, or what could, indeed, should be and aspidistra,
because of course I have no idea what kind of plant it is, but
I have always liked the name aspidistra, be it in an Orwell
novel or a music hall melody my grandmother used to sing.
The ghost of my mother knows the names of everything, but
she can’t tell me, because ghosts, whatever you have heard
to the contrary, can’t speak. So, although her lips open and
close, nothing emerges but stars. One day, when she plants
the aspidistra on one of these stars, it will grow into a new
planet, which is just like ours but a little bit brighter and
more hopeful. She will tell me the names of everything then
because, naturally, she won’t be a ghost.
Oz Hardwick is a prize-winning prose poet, whose most recent collection is the chapbook Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog, 2024). At time of writing, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
Rebecca Brown
She’s grateful to be alive with these tumours crackling in her bones
Alan McGuire
Going downtown was pre-drinking, save money, buy confidence.
Going downtown was queuing outside Walkabout, a drunken reality show.
Going downtown wasn’t a release, but a rite of passage.
Ryan O’Neill
Where can we go on holidays this year,and when will we get a house if you’re away for two years,and now you’re crying,and it’s £4 to park for the day . . .
Anna Vercambre
Shall we build you out of cardboard? Shall we build you out of tin cans?
Sue Johns
To keep an engine thrumming,
to perform the perfect cleft
how much strength, how many attempts?
Freya Cook, Amii Griffith and The Mollusc Dimension on our fourth and final day of our Pride Feature
Love Poem to June After Paul Monette if every window filled with light it would refract ten thousand rainbows at least twelve would hit you and if i say you are beautiful in this light you would say this is your light the only one you want to be...
Aisha Odette and Carmilla for the Third Day of our Pride Feature
Glitch
Last night
my brain dreamt
of freshly-braided hair
mine, cocoa sipped pre-bedtime
yours, morning-wet mascara…
– Aisha Odette
(un)natural
They are unfamiliar to me.
Every sand grain,
every stone,
every leaf,
every needle,
every trunk,
every path…
– Carmilla
Beth Davies, Fee Marshall and Fiona Broadhurst for Day 2 of our Pride Feature
Trick Question
It was a simple game.
One wall meant Yes. The other meant No.
The teacher would ask a question and we’d each run towards our answer.
Once, she asked “Have you ever been in love?”
At six years old, I ran with certainty towards Yes.
I reached it but found myself alone.
Surprised, I looked over at the others
crowded together on the other side.
“Don’t you love your parents?” I asked,
with all the indignance of a child
who doesn’t understand her mistake.
“Don’t you love your friends?”
Beth Davies
Ace Sex
Sex is when a train runs into a portal
Flies off to outer space
It’s when you suddenly remember the old block tellie
With no channels
That you had to switch on at the block
Sex is
I think it’s an ice cream
One of them novelty flavours like
Popping Raspberry Unicorn
It’s a weird fad but we’re pretty sure
Salted Caramel’s making a comeback
Fee Marshall
Polyamory is wrong
(Mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!)
Polyamory is less orgies, or threesomes
& more Google calendar, blocking out
precious time, increments of love
portioned out as slices of 3.14159,
infinite, neverending & always fulfilling
Fiona Broadhurst
Lara Mae Simpson and Siobhan Dunlop for Day 1 of our Pride Feature
How to Love the Word “Lesbian”
We took the bus in tutus & fairy wings,
gripped on to the cowboy hat
trying to fly from your curls in July’s breeze.
In Trafalgar Square, floats of rainbow
companies waltzed by & we rolled
our eyes, couldn’t see past tall men,
– Lara Mae Simpson (they/she)
On nights I am
a girl again
I am unemployable as
woman don’t do the
work beg at corner
of ends on leg
too short for the cripwalk
-Noah Jacob
dreaming of the velvet goldmines
i want to be a skinny pretty boy rockstar
without the height or the coke habit
or needing to strictly be a boy at all
-Siobhan Dunlop (they/them)