Today’s choice
Previous poems
Oenone Thomas
Because I don’t know any other way
I replace my left hand
with a hook, my feet
with jackhammers, both
my eyes with spangled
mirror balls.
I raise my right hand, and
in its palm, I roll another’s
choice of dice. I stud my scalp
with stars, stripe my cheeks
and lips in welts.
I form the phrase how dare you
from hot tacks and nails, I fire it up
into the sky’s great
vacancy. It is no longer
a question.
Oenone Thomas is a writer, child psychotherapist, and chocolatemaker. She was Poet in Residence, Cuckmere Pilgrim Path, 2024/25. Her collection from this adventure, Self-Portrait as Scallop Shell, was published last summer.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots
Linda Ford
My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.
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.