Today’s choice
Previous poems
H.J. Thomas
Black Cherry Ice Cream
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
faster than we could catch it.
And you laughed,
mouth red,
sunlight flaring in your lashes.
I watched the boats move below us –
slow beasts with canvas wings –
and thought:
this is joy.
Not fireworks,
not promises,
not certainty.
Just you,
offering me a bite
from your side
of the cone.
And the sweetness –
sharp and floral,
ripe as August before it turns.
H.J. Thomas is a poet based in Durham, UK. His work explores grief, queerness, and hope. He is working on his first collection, still here, and a second, Songs of Vancouver Island. Previously unpublished.
Tom Blake
We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.
Kate Bonfield
Coming home to days of heat
trapped beyond the door, to time skewed
by time away, the house bigger and
smaller than before.
Precious Ejim
I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow never stays.
Jackson
I want to tell my mother,
I made a successful loaf
in the bread machine you didn’t know
you were leaving me
Kath Mckay
How to become two-dimensional
Die. You’re soon reduced to a photograph.
Lugubrious Co-op undertakers will zip you in a bag
and keep you cold . . .
Cindy Botha
atlas bear
black-footed ferret
cape lion
Jasmine Gibbs
This morning – Blackstar,
Bowie, those jazz swan songs
sputtering from the CD player,
wild trumpets that convulse
through negative space
Jane Pearn
the pool holds my face
my breath
ripples the water
Robin Lindsay Wilson
The single crimson rose
she wears in her lapel,
to test his imperfections,
draws him into detail