Today’s choice
Previous poems
Andrew Keyman
what you mean to me
wiping tears with drink coasters in soho
revolving around how you’ll both leave and stay
men in the window you kissing my jaw by the pints
i didn’t drink by the ashtray asking when
the arrogance of thinking that anything could be mine
a day later you’re in l.a. picking out cars with the magic
only money can buy
blooming in your vision that we’d find would never come
i’m good at what i do
convincing me and you
taking the tube but never really being there
falling in love with the stranger in the fubu
my neighbour in the kitchen fixing
dinner for his children as an old tired clown
in a fresco of a heaven
forgetting how i left you
sighing out my shoes
my housemate missing calls
and hearing porn behind the drywall
Andrew Keyman is a poet and artist from Bracknell, England. he was raised by his mother after his father was imprisoned for paedophilia. His work examines religion, goodness and the British working class. He was featured in Bottled Water Research (2019). Instagram: @andrewkeyman
Rizwan Akhtar
In the evening trees become sad
I climbed on them like a metaphor
Alexandra Corrin
Six weeks after diagnosis
I stayed away out of respect for your daughters.
You followed the hearse with your father and the girls.
He couldn’t stay within the boundaries of himself.
John Barron
Thought Experiment
The clock has lost all its numbers.
I wake inside an Einstein thought experiment,
where my bones defy gravity and get sucked
what some call “up.” I’ve only time to grab
from beside the bed where we’re sleeping
our copy of Rovelli’s ‘Reality Is Not What It Seems’
Mick Corrigan
My List Poem of the All-Important
Trish,
Kindness,
A small family of wildflowers announcing themselves in an abandoned pot,
Morning sun warming barley fields at Castletown House Estate,
A grounded fledgling glaring defiance as I gently inquire of her health,
Mike Jenkins
Not a found poem
But a purchased one –
To find Ewrop on a single cup
Despite the English on top –
Re use
duce
cycle
Birziklatu
Genbruge
Endurvinna
Heidi Beck
Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue bird seed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this...
Catherine Godlewsky
I have not known how to shape
This poem—
I found it, drowsy,
Quarter-to-six in winter
In the cold of an unfinished floor…
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Elizabeth Gibson and Roma Havers
‘Weighing yourself in the dark at Christmas in your parents’ house’
‘A Rink’
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, we bring you Alle Bloom and Mariam Saidan
‘Knots’
‘God Makes Me Promises’