Today’s choice
Previous poems
Margaret Poynor-Clark
Releasing My Stays
Inside my bedroom I take a fresh blade
pull off my jumper, examine the ladder
in front of the mirror cut through my laces
rung by rung,
watch my grey marbled flesh
emerge from its carapace,
fold by fold.
I’m letting go,
I’m letting it all hang out,
First to go is he who wants me,
wants me to cook him dinners,
drink with him and him alone.
Next is my piano teacher
who says, I will never progress
if I don’t practice my scales.
Then, that old school friend
who phones every six months
to check which one of us is in front.
Am I loosening too quickly?
Am I throwing too much away?
I hear my mother say, Be careful dear,
there may be no one left to save you.
Margaret Poynor-Clark lives in East Lothian. Her poems have been published in IS&T, Pennine Platform, Dream Catcher and anthologies To Light The Trails by Sidhe press, and Ukraine Anthology by Wildfire Words. She received a mentoring award from The Wigtown Poetry Festival in 2022.
Sarah Nabarro
Your smile
Woke something –
Up.
If you knew,
Mike Wilson
My reptilian brain calculates the minimum I’ll do to escape
the weight of obligation …
but before I finish the math, we regress into college kids
rushing the street Julia barricades with furniture
to keep out the law by breaking the law.
Allyson Dowling
Night drops by
In a coat of onyx and blue
Lights up his silver pipe
And asks how do you do…
Emily Veal
boudicca you’re a brewery down the road i drank a bottle of your finest on the train back from bury st edmunds the red queen (no one will call you ginger) i see you everywhere realised you were also the wetherspoons round the corner the one with...
Lesley Burt
tongue it various from burr to babel swish to swirl
rushes between buttresses plaits threads of currents
where swans lord-and-lady-it along the centre
trips over own flow with
fish-out-of-water flash salmon’s silver high-jump
Sam Szanto
This love was. Slowly it becomes formless,
drifting, softening, snakeskin-empty,
the part it has played in who I am now
secreted in a pocket of a coat
Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts on World Poetry Day
When you enter mountains, afternoons stretch
and lengthen like days; mesmerise.
下午进山的人都会多活上一天
他们从这山望着更高的山
搓着通红的大手望山气变化
Bel Wallace
Trespasses Forgive me The E flat on your baby grand (not quite in tune). This same finger in the crack that goes clean through the bungalow’s supporting wall. Then flicking dust from the fringed edge of your floral lampshade. Noticing that they...
Arlette Manasseh
You were the pine, softening the dirt I grew up in: the one I climbed in the breeze. Wanting to describe you, I had called you Paulie. That is not your name.