Today’s choice
Previous poems
Peter Devonald
Father
He is sulphur, he is fire
and brimstone, he is deep
shame, the colour of night,
sound of slamming doors.
He is bitterest regrets,
dark chocolate, olives and kale,
The Telegraph and Magritte’s
pipe, the treachery of images.
Moments replayed on repeat,
light goes on underneath a door,
locking of bedrooms, moss and ivy
on windows, a crack of light, still.
The air sours with acrid shampoo,
turgid reek of cigars and alcohol,
it’s hard to pretend and play at
happy families, rigor mortis grin.
We cling to positives, desperate,
distressed, we do it to ourselves,
you do realise that, don’t you?
Stilted breath sucked from rooms.
Peter Devonald is a multi-award-winning Stockport writer. Winner Broken Spine Readers’ Choice Award 2025, Loft Books Best Poem 2024, Waltham Forest 2022, FofHCS, two HoH’s, runner-up Shelley Memorial and N2tS 2024. Widely-published/anthologised. Forward Prize, two BotN and Children’s Bafta nominated. linktr.ee/pdevonald x.com/petedevonald
Bel Wallace
Interior My dear, I washed you out of my sheets. And now I sleep softly in them. My dreams are sweet and free. I opened the windows to air out your smoke. I liked it for a while, how it held the past in its wispy fingers. I emptied your cigarette...
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A new diary asks I make an affirmation,
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I have nothing to offer –
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No holly or ivy. But pomegranate,
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Towards the Solstice
owls fly closer in December twilight,
call to each other across the garden.
Martin Fisher
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Craig Dobson
Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.
Steven Taylor
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City