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.
Gita Ralleigh, Julian Matthews, Jackie Taylor on Colouring Outside the Lines
The hue of brides, appliquéd dark with henna.
Citron’s acid curl, vernal blades between teeth.
Sue Moules
I sell the postcard
of multi-coloured sheep
over and over again.
Kevin Denwood
Name called.
Not mine.
Wasn’t I
here first?
L Kiew
I leave everything on shingle,
meet surf like a sibling,
crest over playful breakers
and chase the moon’s tail.
Margaret Baldock
We launched, lovingly
into dark and silky water
unknown yet benign.
Krishh Biswal
You did not ask for knees —
They found the floor themselves.
Not from command,
But gravity.
Tamara Salih
That winter the snow kept rising,
a slow white wall climbing the windows,
each morning untouched,
Alicia Byrne Keane
I’ve been reading about ghost apples.
They are a real phenomenon, like how
everyone we can see on the wide street
outside this building is still living,
Gareth Culshaw
I tried to work from a van. Sitting in the passenger
seat listening to a guy whistle. His frown, a cloud
he lost when his mother died. Each wrinkle