Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Sluman
Ceilings
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
each evening they drop
a little closer
in rooms that carry us
from one year
to the next
we float below water stains
& cracks
lit like reels of stars
my faith
in a better reality frayed
to a single thread
as I scan the cobwebbed beams
in silence
& wait for a sign
that refuses to drop
lidocaine-bright
or yellowed from bowers of smoke
some nights only darkness seems
to keep the roof up
& each evening
the quietness wraps
a little tighter
as we sink into the sheets
eyes dazed shut
our prayers like hands
crawling
over the drips of faux-plaster
how our shirts slip from one colour
to the next
& time is always in deficit
catching up or catching on
to something half-gone
Daniel Sluman is a 39-year-old poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, and he has published three poetry collections with Nine Arches Press. His most recent collection, single window was released in September 2021, and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.
Rachael Davey
That particular, chemical clarity,
sun into blue, ripples on the ceiling.
Rare days when water rests
between the ropes, unbroken . . .
Christopher M James
I suppose
this beautiful bright dawn
is the sky trying to offset
the wild gusts of last night
like a rescue mission…
Chrissy Banks
. . . Yes, I’ve tasted pomegranates
and I know what they do. The sense of vertigo:
happily dizzy at first, as if you’ve downed
a bottle of Shiraz or Merlot. You live by night . . .
Jenny Hockey
I knew the earth rolling by
was red, smelt its tang on the wind,
felt woods weighing green
Karen Luke
My sister’s father wound is the flush cut
on the bark where she lost her foothold
and fell,
the trunk burning red between her thighs
all the way down the tree to the ground…
Suzanna Fitzpatrick
Half five. The sky thickens to darkness
through the grime on the tall windows,
the claw marks of rain. Someone whistles
in the corridor…
Robin Vaughan-Williams
Something is pulling at my T-shirt.
Something is holding my hand.
I can feel it walking beside me…
Chen-ou Liu
snow crystals
on my neighbor’s windows …
Foreclosure askew
& more
Greek Feature Day 5 with Vasiliki Albedo, Tim Taylor, Lisa Kelly and Rebecca Tiger
Club Hydra Vasiliki Albedo's poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Magma, The Rialto, and elsewhere. She won the 2023 Hammond House International Literary Prize and the Poetry Society's...