Today’s choice
Previous poems
Scott Lilley
Doppelgänger
I’ve seen dozens of you about the Fylde,
face all vape, fatigue, some wild sense of
beard, black hair to border it all. Oiled
up Kieran, out cold in the ring; pensive
Kieran, pacing the promenade; I’ll have
spent my own self in this loop of turning
and returning to Asda checkout checking
out what must be your eyelids on the cashier.
It’s tiresome— keeping up with it, learning
your new names. The nights that crack open
like a Strongbow come cloying back; here,
you point, Orion’s belt, your face all teeth,
me not knowing for certain where your finger
points, you, buckled up, almost onto something.
Scott Lilley lives on the Fylde and is studying for a PhD at Lancaster University, his previous work can be found in Wet Grain, 3:AM, and Butcher’s Dog among other publications. Instagram: @poetrytalkingguy
Tom Blake
We were the housing and the housed,
meaning nothing except that
we were always occupied,
or to put it simply never out.
Kate Bonfield
Coming home to days of heat
trapped beyond the door, to time skewed
by time away, the house bigger and
smaller than before.
Precious Ejim
I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow never stays.
Jackson
I want to tell my mother,
I made a successful loaf
in the bread machine you didn’t know
you were leaving me
Kath Mckay
How to become two-dimensional
Die. You’re soon reduced to a photograph.
Lugubrious Co-op undertakers will zip you in a bag
and keep you cold . . .
Cindy Botha
atlas bear
black-footed ferret
cape lion
Jasmine Gibbs
This morning – Blackstar,
Bowie, those jazz swan songs
sputtering from the CD player,
wild trumpets that convulse
through negative space
Jane Pearn
the pool holds my face
my breath
ripples the water
Robin Lindsay Wilson
The single crimson rose
she wears in her lapel,
to test his imperfections,
draws him into detail