Today’s choice
Previous poems
L. Haiman
O is the Mother Letter
My baby is hungry. Grabs
me with both hands. I am
an apple, apparently no will. I give in
to his teeth and hate it. Him I love! I can’t say No and even when I do
I go back
On my word. It must be that consent is
Ancient.
Older even.
A code written
In our body, a binary of unspoken NO’s / misspoken YES’s,
I guess it must have started with a
( o )
Breast.
And mouths to feed: the need
to quench and satiate an Other at the great
Expense of self. Give comfort, forfeit
Feeling safe.
L. Haiman is a Romanian-born multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Margate, UK. L. Haiman’s work explores bilingualism, cultural identity, and intergenerational trauma across concrete poetry and prose. L. Haiman’s poetry writing has appeared in West Trade Review, The William and Mary Review, and Ink Sweat & Tears and was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.
William Collins
We carry the shame of Paragraph 352D
folded into suitcases at foreign borders,
where love is questioned like a crime,
and disbelief stamped heavier than visas.
They tell us to run for our lives —
but only if we can do it quietly.
Oz Hardwick
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.
McLord Selasi
I walk the flat barefoot,
step over old dreams
still curled like cats
in the corners.
Warren Mortimer
& you’ll understand if i leave open this theatre of air
not as the invite for another loss
but to honour their world unwilling to collapse
Jena Woodhouse
Language reinvents itself,
coruscates in signs on walls;
falls silent, mute as clay and stone
on tablets that enshrine its form.
Martin Rieser
The river is an old demon
& my heart is an infirm creature
The river is sure of its way
& my heart is capable of lies.