Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jacob Mckibbin
weeks after being stabbed
my brother saw his attacker
at a petrol station
my brother was alone &
did not get out of the car
even in the ambulance
my brother said he wasn’t scared
even when the white bathtowel
we pressed against the stab wound
soaked up so much blood
it had its own heartbeat
my brother told the police
guarding his hospital bed
at first he thought
he was only being punched
even cut skin doesn’t want to believe
in the existence of knives
even before the guilty plea
my brother said he wouldn’t go to court
my brother is more likely to share a cell
with someone who would kill him
than to admit the person
who tried to kill him
had scared him
Jacob Mckibbin is a poet and writer from Oxford. He has had work published in several magazines including The Rialto and Oxford Poetry.
Patrick Deeley
He sees a stainless-steel spoon
burned off at the base,
a bunch of wild flowers dropped,
Eliot North
Explaining to my little man
about proportion,
he responds with feeling:
a picture of daddy
with thousands of fingers.
Jeanette Burton
What is this, a family outing?
Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him
as I open the car door, climb into the front seat,
remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe.
CS Crowe
Lines He lived next to the funeral home with his three daughters. A cherry picker beeps in the distance. I cannot see it, but I know the light is red. Who brings roses to a funeral? Rain rolls down window glass, but not here, only somewhere in the...
Carole Bromley
I don’t know why I went,
I’d already heard about the time
a colleague’s husband turned up
at the staff barbecue and punched him.
Lisa Falshaw
A mother teaches her Neurodiverse child colours
What colour is the dog?
The dog is brown.
Can you see the brown dog?
Paul Murgatroyd
I am a clown performing slapstick at a funeral,
Cassandra whispering to Narcissus,
an ant on the lawn at a posh garden party
Hayden Hyams
The rain is expected to stop in 8 minutes and start again in 29 minutes
Bryan Marshall
Look at the faint rain twisting
itself into the ground,
making dry things resign themselves
to different states of damp.