Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sarah James/Leavesley
A mouthful of stones
The sister I don’t have
has pockets bulging
with silver-foiled chocolate
and popping candy, rustling-
wrapped strawberry surprises
and infinite packets
of unopened love hearts.
She leaves me the pocket
full of stones, ones my mum
won’t be able to smooth
to marble or polish like sea glass.
Ones my dad will throw
to the waves in hope,
only for them to sink
instead of skim.
My parents will weigh me down
with rocks to stop
my flying off too.
I’ll learn to weigh myself
against her
and kiss the cold water.
Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Latest collections include Darling Blue (Indigo Dreams), an ekphrastic book-length poetry narrative which won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024, and Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press). Website: http://www.sarah-james.co.uk.
Samarth Agarwal
Here — in the absolute zero of space — fireworks!
Look how the crucibles of creation,
those million coloured fingers that stretch light years —
Jenny Scoones
We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
Matt Bryden
Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones,
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.
Kit Duke
I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.
Janet Hatherley
In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal This is summer and Mum can’t put out her trot line with its hooks because of swimmers so I buy three mackerel from the fishmonger. I cycle to the school bus stop one arm on the handlebar,...
Jane Ayres
& my sub-tropical heart
will punctuate the idea of treacling hope
puncturing the sense of a book
Annette Iles
across the street
I am washed off my feet
my heart
splashes up into pieces
Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig
Dusk is dancing & all the visual technologies at hand feel
overwhelmed: mobile eye, pit pastels, graphic card.
It’s down to language, then, imagine.
Antony Owen
Twenty- something sex are bodies.
thrown down like sophomore prose.