Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kit Duke
Photograph, 2008
See the statue: grain flecked
ridged with carvings
the smooth intonations of eyes
set quietly into the face
See me: four years old
palms to the stone
and my face tipped slightly forwards
to kiss the mouth opposite.
Our foreheads touch. Even as a child
I knew what love was,
one face fit into the other,
a sort of bracing of the hands
while the bodies found harmony
I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.
Kit Duke is a queer writer and poet based in Stroud, England. He writes a lot about belonging, in all senses of the word. You can find him on Instagram, @kitduke24, or Substack, @kitduke.
Rupert Loydell
With the completion of mindset
my life is in order, two weeks after
the day before.
Rachael Hill
Those times my tongue becomes a lemon
filling my mouth with bitter pith
John Doyle
I hide a knife amongst a bush longing to burn,
days like these are plots from a heathen’s bible.
William Coniston
My second cousin twice removed arrived in May
at her old nest in the eaves of the ruined barn.
Simon Williams
A white cloak that folds like a shopping bag,
like a Pac-a-mac with pagan overtones,
much larger when unfolded than a pocket,
a TARDIS of a cloak.
Emma Page
I grow shoots, acid green;
climb the walls,
surprise myself.
Mary McQueen
It’s starts in utero, painted wood carvings thick as a
finger, gift
wrapped in nostalgia.
Alan Hardy
Made a list.
A record.
The dishes she ate.
Monuments visited.
In Paris.
Susana Arrieta
Tempting death with every cobblestoned step
his face was a collection of broken records