Today’s choice
Previous poems
Alice Huntley
The tenderness of beans
slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans
to run my thumbnail once more
down the dark seam of your housing
over broad lumps and bumps
that split open to fuzzy white lining
where you lie like silent siblings
waiting to be held and counted:
six, seven, and sometimes a baby eighth
I used to wish I could zip up the pod,
put you all back where you began
nestled in darkness – but then
I’d miss the ritual unclothing:
hot blanch of kettle water
sharp squeeze at one end
as each inward green – so bright and tender –
leaps from my fingers with a squirt
leaving odd empty pouches
and a little seal at the end like
two lips pursed in kindness
Alice Huntley is an estuary girl, born by the Humber and living by the Thames. She has an MA in Chinese Studies and writes & reads with local poetry groups in Richmond and Twickenham. Her work deals with memory and the body and has appeared in Mslexia, the Waxed Lemon and Ink Sweat & Tears.
Nigel King
Convolvulus strangles
cow parsley and nightshade.
Its pure white trumpets plead:
Forgive us! Look how lovely we are…
Eve Chancellor
Payday Mid-afternoon and the streets smell of petrichor; people spilling out of pubs, crowding to smoke cigs in the early spring sunshine. I am alone, again. All my friends live thousands of miles away. I am closer to the people who are not near me...
Fiona Heatlie
Planet Nine You talk to me intently of black holes. I slip my hand into yours, unnoticed. You are absorbed in thoughts astronomical. I am stealing time. Swallowed by a constellation of brighter stars and suddenly you are on the cusp of the cusp of a place where...
Hongwei Bao
Night Market When the night curtain falls, the crowd start to assemble as if drawn by magnets, as if answering a scared call. Neon lights go up along the narrow pavements, illuminating the concentrating faces of food-sellers. Under boiling noodle...
Michael Shann
Early March, after weeks of rain:
between a young oak’s leggy roots,
a cushion of dun, desiccated leaves.
Darren Deeks
You have been burgled.
While you were out with the dog,
a burglar made best use of that
yawning kitchen keyhole to spook
through tracelessly
Rachel Lewis
I step through missing bricks.
Green graves cluster
on a rise under a yew…
Kexin Huang
She came growling at me like a wolf,
muttering moonlight out of her throat
Joe Crocker
Hold a rule beside her measured look.
Precisely fix the time it took
to meet and break away.