Today’s choice
Previous poems
Hannah Linden
Humanoid
I was cutlery left out in the rain, rusty
by morning, a side-slipping fiddlestick
desperate for music, starved for company.
You were a knockoff BOGOF version
of a briny punk with a commitment phobia
permanently out of your habitat and time zone.
We were observable repairs, reorganised
schedules looking for a fix, butchered
invoices and recriminations.
They were observing aliens, measuring
intonation and feedback loops. And we
let them cut into us because we felt
we owed them for letting us play ‘being
human’. And we were wild and free
as they loaded us into the future machines.
Hannah Linden won Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021 & 2nd prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), shortlisted for Saboteur Award 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social
Anna Brook
I want to borrow gods
(as Adrienne does,
though she knew better)
their sad logic
their templates
Nigel King
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
Mohsen Hosseinkhani translated by Tahereh Forsat Safai
Men are the color of soil
Women are sitting on the ashes
Stephen Komarnyckyj
you are the shadow slipping through the mirror
Jo Farrant
We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.
Douglas K Currier
Afternoon hangs in the air, and the birds leave.
Frogs begin to talk to each other, and the heat congeals.
Stephen Chappell
If you could call that friend,
the special one,
the one you always love and know loves you
Marius Grose
Until the dead, sucked from leaf mould graves
are rising in forest sap, to make connections
inside strange green brains
Andrew Keyman
a day later you’re in l.a. picking out cars with the magic
only money can buy