Today’s choice
Previous poems
H.J. Thomas
Black Cherry Ice Cream
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
faster than we could catch it.
And you laughed,
mouth red,
sunlight flaring in your lashes.
I watched the boats move below us –
slow beasts with canvas wings –
and thought:
this is joy.
Not fireworks,
not promises,
not certainty.
Just you,
offering me a bite
from your side
of the cone.
And the sweetness –
sharp and floral,
ripe as August before it turns.
H.J. Thomas is a poet based in Durham, UK. His work explores grief, queerness, and hope. He is working on his first collection, still here, and a second, Songs of Vancouver Island. Previously unpublished.
Nick Cooke
If when you go to the barber today
He asks if you’d like him to ‘tidy up your ears’,
Think of all the wildest sprawling vegetation
That will never be tidied, or trimmed, by clippers or shears,
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots
Linda Ford
My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.
Ryan O’Neill
we hug and i act cool
as the american fridge ice
shattering on kitchen tiles
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.