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.

Francis de Lima

Oh London. U useless city. Map to

                                                                        nowhere land. Tight stretch 

                                                                        open eye. The underground metal. 

The night tube. The railway. Smog

Over coaltrip. The presence

                                                                          Of machine upon machine. U

Miriam Swales

When I was 12, I knew the weight of a human head.
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (a bit of dark comedy).
It grew from there. The curiosity. The calculations.

Annie Kissack

      Girl Awaits the Psychic Investigators They’re late. The table is laid with a clean cloth, all normal and neat. Our visitors, city men, may find it hard to navigate the path but we can wait. They hope to gather evidence of a haunting; whether he’ll...