Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Vanhinsbergh
We Should Probably Get Up Now
but, outside, the world has paused:
the wind has put down its loneliness,
its fear of never being seen, or known,
and next door’s kids have stopped screaming
through the wall. The cats are curled up
around our ankles, and you say you like me
like this, with the sun falling in slabs
through the window, onto my hair,
my curls glowing orange on the pillow.
You touch my cheek
with the backs of your fingers.
In this room, we have nothing but time –
glasses of water; a vase of white roses;
miles of cotton drawn up and spun
from the earth. I could have believed
that all chances, all paths crossed
were love’s quiet design,
the architecture of its concussive maze.
Kate Vanhinsbergh is a poet from Manchester, UK, and can be found on Instagram @kate.vanhinsbergh or X @katevanbergh
Angeliki Ampelogianni
on marble tiles bird like
I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl
A W Earl
Doors
My parents’ house became a place of closed white doors,
where sound hung spare and echoes found no junk
or clutter to rest themselves upon.
Finola Scott
Winter dusk soughs in, dark
clouds threaten, tangle her wool.
Huw Gwynn-Jones
Black is the colour inside black light on
blackened brick and slats
Clare Morris
Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean,
So that she no longer spoke, just looked –
Her world reduced to a search for special offers . . .
Alison Jones
Mrs Norris had thought ascension
would be whirligig rides in bright violet rays,
as the training books all implied.
Sandra Noel
The tide unpleats from her godet,
zig-zags in running stitch
round the base of the côtil.
Matthew Caley
supposedly: if I am to render
‘a man’ then
this ‘man’ must I guess resemble me‹›
Jenny Robb
The nun in charge of the children is thin, her back straight as punishment.