Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kit Duke
Photograph, 2008
See the statue: grain flecked
ridged with carvings
the smooth intonations of eyes
set quietly into the face
See me: four years old
palms to the stone
and my face tipped slightly forwards
to kiss the mouth opposite.
Our foreheads touch. Even as a child
I knew what love was,
one face fit into the other,
a sort of bracing of the hands
while the bodies found harmony
I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.
Kit Duke is a queer writer and poet based in Stroud, England. He writes a lot about belonging, in all senses of the word. You can find him on Instagram, @kitduke24, or Substack, @kitduke.
Ben Banyard
There were hundreds of them, all in period costume,
each generation explained who they were,
queued like at a wedding reception to greet us.
Lindsay McLeod Espinoza
Venus passed over the south node of the Moon today
Ilse Pedler
She offered up her linen bag to me, said
pick a shell my lady and I’ll tell your fortune
Sue Butler
Squirrels have beheaded all my parrot tulips
and the supermarket is out of chilli, also tabasco sauce.
Cormac Culkeen
the sun is a
white coin
lifted
from the sea
Maurice Devitt
Yes, you gave us your elegant hands
and capricious smile, but as I make my way
to the chiropodist this morning,
it’s your feet I’m thinking of . . .
Martin Ferguson
Pursue the facsimile
of the attendance sign;
here you must join the line.
Peter Branson
Emerge, from way beyond the pale, one day,
clenched feet an amulet about your wrist
Alice Huntley
carved from the tusk of my grandmother
I am learning how to remember