Today’s choice
Previous poems
Charlotte Oliver
Repeat
On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger
while her thoughts leak out
in a rill of mutterings.
Nobody sees her
in the busy emptiness
of lunchtime. Inside
my pocket
two small shells – they
are chalky, finely ridged.
I feel the edge of their curve
over and over
like a chant.
In the car park
the ticket machine says,
Change is possible.
Charlotte Oliver writes for adults and children. A New Northern Poet (2023), she is one of The Poetry Society’s Poets in Schools. Her first full collection My Hands Are Still Just Petals is forthcoming with Valley Press in Oct. 2026.
Maggie Mackay
The teacher is an old spindly man. Grim, out of a Grimm’s tale. Scarecrow hair, thinning. Unsmiling.
Natasha Gauthier
The tawny clutch appeared
on high-heeled evenings only,
slept in a nest of white tissue.
Romy Morreo
She only speaks to me these days
through groaning floorboards in the night
and slammed doors.
Emma Simon
No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light
mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.
Kushal Poddar
The furniture covered in once
transparent now foggy sheets
craft the room a morgue, and we
identity the bodies
Erich von Hungen
And the yellow moths
like some strange throw-away
tissues used up by nature
circle the lamp hanging above.
Helen Frances
I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.
Suzanne Scarfone
truth be told
part of me has lived
in this box of disquiet
for years and years
let’s see
Julia Webb
Because a woman woke up
and her head had become a flower.