Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sally Jenkins
The Biology Department
Funny how Year 8 is doing bones
now, of all the weeks. In the prep room
we strip flesh off chicken wings,
steep the bones in acid til they bend
like rubber, and the girls shriek.
Cardboard femur and tibia
jointed with split pins swing,
and I sing while I work: the toe bone
connected to the foot bone,
now hear the word of the Lord.
I carry the skeleton in my arms
from Art back home to Science.
We sway like Fred and Ginger,
my fingers falling between its ribs
makes me weep.
I carried your crushed weight home
Mum, in a paper bag ribboned like a gift.
Tucked you under my bed to sleep.
Sally Jenkins is currently studying for the MA in Poetry Writing at The Poetry School, London. This is her first publication.
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.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence
Tom Nutting
They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.
Emily A. Taylor
I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,