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
Patrick Williamson
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Tim Relf
…walking on one of those sunny January afternoons before the light goes and warm – a warm breeze, can you believe it – and ploughed fields and sun on soil and you press play, the song you first heard and loved a few days before on a boxset, and...
Jim Murdoch
Sad Streets and Side Streets My dad is a sad man— I've said this in another poem only it wasn't me, it was Dad pretending to be me which is a thing he does. (that said I have thought it before, more than thought, I know he's a sad man)— but I...
Tessa Foley
Matters Arising Did you know that if you don’t speak in the first ten minutes, you actually cease to exist? The fat of the universe will eat itself and you will be a breathless speck, rattling a pencil. So speak, repeat the bloodless phrase from...
Christina Lloyd
Nature Morte The funereal bouquet falls away from itself: sepals are the first to sag, then chrysanthemums drop to the floor like pom-poms. Petal tips and leatherleaf shrink, becoming brittle to the touch. Anthers fur into pollen grains speckling...
Mark McDonnell
Michael ‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon When I think of Michael I think of ivory, of the epicene torso of a wounded Christ rising from a loosening loincloth with Pre-Raphaelite lilies; of how he made me stop so Allegri’s Miserere...
David Callin
Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...
John Saunders
The Earl of Charleville’s Forest The grounds of my local ascendancy castle, a favoured haunt for joggers. As I trot along the ancient path lined by centenarian oaks and beeches I imagine himself on his postprandial walk accompanied by his loyal...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Is That Really How To Do It? A seat and shelter commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs was erected in 1934 by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. Transporting half a dozen Dorset men on trumped-up evidence: the gentry’s way of thwarting...