Today’s choice
Previous poems
Raluca David
Here is a cross
You said you’d never die
here.
Here are your Sundays watching your children’s birthdays
on your screen. Here are your winters crating up grocery trucks,
pineapples scratching rough skin. Here are your summers
slating the roofs of Europe. You said you’d build
behind your elders’ house. A villa, bright orange concrete.
Here is a cross.
Upon the morning mist a divination line, a black bedsheet
a poem in dye, words fold onto each other: Hopes, Home, How
soon. A yellow T-shirt saying Ole Ole Ole. A pair of warm socks.
You will make it through, you know that much.
What through means, you don’t know.
What is on the other side
of through.
Raluca David has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri NW Prize as well as the Starkie and Dart Poetry Prizes, and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her poetry has appeared in the Oxford Review of Books. Instagram: @ralucafdavid
Rhian Thomas
On my phone a newsreel shows a car boot lifting
just above the flood. Tail lights like eyes
caught in a comic gasp, while its body, like the carriageway,
lies under sixty million litres of last night’s rain.
Sue Norton
Today I tipped the packet of coffee
into the cafetiere instead of the tin.
Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in.
Steph Morris
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts.
Kathy Pimlott
Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars Twilight: one after another security lights click on illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns, triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed, click off. The sky is a layer cake...
Sharon Black
My thoughts are skittish,
peck at whatever they find.
I flick each whitewash flake
into the bin. Shadows on the walls
Vanessa Napolitano
Floors are unvacuumed. Spices remain un-alphabetised.
I bless the spaces between the furniture to keep everyone safe. Seven.
Ben Verinder
Nostalgia as Yogi Bear
Ruminates through you for something tasty,
prizes of the Jellystone mind.
Jane Spray
I’m just an ordinary dryad
not like fancy Eurydice with her sun god father
keep things simple I say I don’t have her dilemmas
Paul Stephenson
The poem of the mask disguises meaning.
The poem of the diet lost seven words.
The poem of the snowman melted.
The poem of the invisible man.