Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jake Roberts
onwards
hamlet asked it to the dark night sea
where do waters end and i begin where the
moonlight shimmers on a cragged rock
to which i tie my errant being
hard against the night
solid against the wind
it still erodes but just more slowly
it cries for help but just more softly
love’s song it sings but just more sad
we couldn’t make it last
except as reverie
hamlet asked it to the voiceless sea
must i be thrust biannually
into water’s salty anti-memory
to be nothing but the fish who takes a timid bite
from the waves’ sick surface surging rolling
hard against the rock
solid against its grain
the washed-up dolt with shrunken cock
sandy naked by the wet brown groyne
is i
the winter sun
and the creaking windows of a seaside town
who sing towards the english sea
o blue i crack and break and leak
i don’t know what i want to be
Jake Roberts is a poet, critic and teacher based in London. Instagram: @jakegrxz
Dragana Lazici
the days are long but the years are short.
seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back.
i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot.
Abigail Ottley
Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away
Maggie Mackay
The teacher is an old spindly man. Grim, out of a Grimm’s tale. Scarecrow hair, thinning. Unsmiling.
Natasha Gauthier
The tawny clutch appeared
on high-heeled evenings only,
slept in a nest of white tissue.
Romy Morreo
She only speaks to me these days
through groaning floorboards in the night
and slammed doors.
Emma Simon
No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light
mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.
Kushal Poddar
The furniture covered in once
transparent now foggy sheets
craft the room a morgue, and we
identity the bodies
Erich von Hungen
And the yellow moths
like some strange throw-away
tissues used up by nature
circle the lamp hanging above.
Helen Frances
I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.