Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ben
The Language of Inflections
When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics
and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers
shuddered around its edges. The way she said
‘yes’ was a stone dropping down a bottomless well.
When he said ‘trust me’, it was a foot testing
for woodworm and when he said ‘forever’, it was
the dripping of fuel and the lit cigarette.
His smile was a drawer slamming shut.
When they both said ‘I do’, it was fire and ice
and in the darkness of the night, their breathing
was the sound of children, cowering beneath blankets,
praying that monsters lack acuteness of hearing.
Ben lives in the south of England between the forest and the sea.
Kitty Donnelly
Manual For Bereavement Clearances There’ll be Bibles. Multiple Bibles. Mementoes of a porcelain era: plates and china, knives and forks in Sheffield-stickered boxes. Decide if the dead are at rest. Talk to them, the previous inhabitants, justify...
Ruth Fry
Stocktaking In Scots law, the foreshore is defined as the area between the high and low water marks of ordinary spring tides… and is presumed to be owned by ancient right by the Crown. - Fifth Report of the Scottish Affairs Committee, 2014 Head...
Marie Little
The Picture A bird made a sound like a fist on our window. Mum tiptoed towards it as if it was sleeping then cupped it in her hand. Just a baby warm and silent. She stroked it talked to it wandered around with it still in her hand – still, in her...
Chris Kinsey
Chris Kinsey grew up in rural Herefordshire but always wanted to head for the hills in Shropshire and Wales. After a degree in Yorkshire, she settled in Mid-Wales. She’s had five collections of poetry published. Her most recent: From Rowan Ridge was...
Gareth Writer Davies
Gilestone Standing Stone the map tells me not much (there are so many megaliths hereabouts) on the point of giving up there it is three metres tall girthy like a pollarded oak its reason now lost in depopulation maybe it was erected here for its...
B. Anne Adriaens
A child’s coat There’s tiny me on a strip of concrete. There’s the tiny coat I’m wearing, fluffy white: the brightest spot in the image, this coat my mother says she loved, this coat my mother says was so well made, a gift from someone who had...
Pat Edwards
Speaking in code I once heard a man speak in tongues, just sounds like words, but not words. He told us he was filled with the spirit. I once heard remuterations in the air, cirvivulating on the breeze, uncanny in their lisonulance; breathless...
Sophie Diver
Ghost, Moth They want you out of this House of forgotten tea in which you are floating Like a calcium slip This house in which you yield As a sweep of onion skin In old dishwater Disgusted by yourself hollowed out In the flesh of an armchair An...
Oliver Comins
On the Hill No-one has seen me outside the bungalow. I am a rumour behind windows that reflect the sky and reveal nothing of an indoor life. I could pretend there is an extensive lawn in front of me, leading down a gentle slope to a pleached hedge...