Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anyonita Green
Examining clots
It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.
I peer at it, nose close enough
to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,
inhaling through slightly parted lips
I imagine I can taste it, how
everything tasted metallic, like monkey
bar poles in those sweaty days of childhood,
of playgrounds, skimming stones
on the river in the gulley, our shoes caked
with Carolina red clay. There is a whole world
inside this clot — corridors and alleys
veins and cells and the unfertilised would-be
baby. My ovaries contract/release violently,
pumping out eggs, my uterus doing the work
(languidly) of nest-building, this empty red room
forced out. No baby. No walls. My panties
fill with blood. In bed, period dreams cause night
sweats, cramps demand the soothing balm
of a hot water bottle and I vacillate between
being in awe at the beautiful ruby waste
my body creates and angry that I must feel
this monthly until, without warning, my body
decides she is done making the nest, done
holding out hope for a small-faced baby, for
a man to lay and create life with.
Anyonita Green is an American immigrant living in Manchester, England. She has an MA in Poetry from MMU and enjoys writing confessional poetry and essays. Her work has appeared in Rainy City Stories and Propel. She can be found on Instagram @anyonita
Angela Howarth Martinot
What seems to be the problem ? He asks
in that slightly condescending tone.
Seems, I think, Seems.
It seems, I say,
that I have a problem with my inner fish,
Bianca Pina
My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite,
which I took to be an induction to the truth.
Lately though, I think the things I love in you
I love because they’re grossly inconsistent.
Ian Badcoe
We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her
to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on
Sim Pereira-Madder
Tom Giles once asked me if I had tools and at that
time I didn’t because I was fifteen maybe sixteen
Molly Knox
I count:
four cows in the meadows. Made
friends with them this Spring.
Pascal Vine and – – – ajae – – – for our Invisible and Visible Disabilities Feature
Chronic fuck slug
Chronic floor sleeping
Chronic fist seething
Chronic food swallowing
Chronic feuding skin
Chronic foreseen surrender
Chronic failure synonym
Chronic sel(f)-inlictednes(s)
Chronic found inner-piece(s)
Chronic forcibly sending love (&) (kisse(s))
Chronic we (f)ucking mi(s)s you
– Pascal Vine
breaking through the battering lashings of exhaustion and overwhelm,
a quiet, passionate voice buds within you.
it exasperatingly sprouts and presses and pouts, saying:
“we’re forever dogged!
it’s forever dusk!
our soul’s been over-tillaged!
you’re becoming but a husk!
we need a rest
we need a break please!
our brittle bones are steeped in ache.”
– – – ajae – – –
Ellie Spirrett and Erin Coppin for our invisible and visible disabilities feature
This is the first time you have been out in three weeks.
Today sits like a joker between diamonds. Your punctured
skin sags over your bones, and you have dragged it
dangerously down the tarmac to mine this charity
shop for new parts.
– Ellie Spirrett
the riding of bikes
the rhythm of legs
the wind-driven tears
the wobbling turns
the handlebarred bags
the motion, the motion
-Erin Coppin
Will Snelling
The garden shudders, brushed with ice,
its edges slightly blurred away
by cloud unfolding over the grass.
Jonathan Croose
The gravel drive seems longer now,
the knock feels like a split of skin
and out on the fen road, by now there are chalk marks,
diagrams and calculations, cones and contraflows,
plastic zips and silent spinning lights.
No more need for sirens there,
but here, here on the doorstep, every alarm must ring.