Today’s choice
Previous poems
Wendy Clayton
Everything Changed except our Way of Thinking
I’m always thinking about how I can find more human beings. Or how I can have a better relationship with a human being. Why you are you. And I am I. And why that should be a problem. It wasn’t when we were young. Until you became more you. And I I. I am sorry. It is a sorrow. Always has been. Now we can’t even
let the bees out.
Wendy Clayton taught English and general subjects, was active and published in several poetry journals: A Pennine Platform, A Pennine Anthology, The North, Indigo Dreams, Shearsman, Osiris, Tears in the Fence, Stand, The International Times, The Fortnightly Review, Stride and forthcoming in Stride, Stand and in Pamenar. Her poetry was long-listed for the Erbacce poetry prize, 150 out of 15,000 – in summer 2022. In the same year she participated in the Carcanet summer course with Michael Schmidt and John McAuliffe. Twinship and Consciousness, was published in October, 2021, With others she worked to found an alternative school in Geneva.
Royal Rhodes
Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.
Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.
Jeff Skinner
It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after
she says, when finally I get through.
Annabelle Markwick-Staff
I devoured the Olympics, filled my mouth
and scrapbook with sticky ephemera.
Charles G. Lauder
beneath night’s skin he unearths raw stones
serrated encrusted enigmatic cold
Arlo Kean
we are at a cafe just round
the corner from hampstead
heath & sipping berry sunrise
Paul Stephenson
Goya was an octopus that smelt of funerals on Mondays.
Sundays, the scent of getting ready.
Jessica Mookherjee for International Women’s Day
The pain comes plucked from a field
in a garland of sunlight.
Jenny Pagdin for International Women’s Day
After many moons
I am perhaps readying to speak.