Today’s choice
Previous poems
Natasha Gauthier
Roman curses
Nobody knows what Cicero’s gardener whistled
to his figs and olives, what the consul’s young wife
hummed to herself while slaves combed beeswax
and perfumed oils from Carthage into her hair.
Did bawdy odes to Octavia’s backside
(Ah, Maximus, she is plump as an Iberian mare)
flow from the taverns Ostia, Massilia, Aquae Sulis?
The Romans, leaving behind no music,
choked their sacred springs with curses.
Tiny, jagged metal tongues folded over
and over upon themselves, rolled over
and over like olive pits in vinegar mouths.
Oh goddess, may the thief who stole
my best gloves lose his mind and his eyes.
Minerva sighs at these razorblade grievances,
sulfurous prayers etched in bile, she is bored,
would prefer to be getting songs about figs,
olives, emperors, Octavia’s ample bottom,
instead of junkmail grudges piling up,
centuries-deep, at her patient doorstep
Natasha Gauthier is a Canadian poet living in Cardiff. She won First Prize in the 2024-25 Poetry Wales Awards, and won the 2025 Borzello Trust/New Welsh Review Prize for poetry. Her debut collection will be published by Parthian next year.
Elizabeth Worthen
This is how (I like to think) it begins:
night-time, August, the Devon cottage, where
the darkness is so complete . . .
Elly Katz
When naked with myself, I feel where a right elbow isn’t, then is. I let my left palm guide me through the exhibition of my body.
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The night of his arrest I climbed a hill
to find a deep cave in which to hide
Sarp Sozdinler
As a kid, Nehisi used to sleep in a treehouse. He could curl right into it from his bedroom window. He would have a hard time falling asleep every time his parents got loud or physical.
Three poems on Counting for National Poetry Day: Max Wallis, Julie Anne Jenson, Brian Kelly
I don’t wear them
or have any
but you gave me a pair
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They say change is a constant,
but this constant became a coefficient
always racing to catch me
Scott Elder
What will you do in winter dear when drifts
cover your fingers and shoes
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