Today’s choice
Previous poems
Steph Morris
Summers in black
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts. There was I
and my clique, ourselves fearfully
fresh, seeking out lived-in things, clothing
with more history than us.
This although a year or two back
we’d so hated hand-me-downs.
So he started offering me his old clothes first,
trying to help his son – to understand.
And as my favourite colour became the colour
he wore for work, he gave me his old shirts,
all black of course, washed-out and worn-in,
collarless, just a circular band around the neck,
with a slit either side at the front
where the stiff white strip slipped in.
Obviously I wouldn’t be wearing that bit,
ever. But the shirts I lived in
all summer, loose, but still black,
a couple of buttons open, neck free,
something most Jesus and Mary Chain fans
didn’t have – something he could do.
Steph Morris’ poems appear in his chapbook Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow!, in the anthologies Joy//Us, Poetry Prescription: Becoming, Up//Roar, and in various magazines and gardens.
Ashia Mirza
Someone is taking a photo
at a wedding
of their baby
at a celebration.
Phil Vernon
These hills that look towards both weald and waves
hold – in their homesteads, fenced and open land,
trackways and contours – all that’s happened here
Sandra Noel
I’m sorry for the screeching and swearing we winter swimmers do.
Mike Duggan
A decapitated road sign
Spears the yellow verge,
Meaningless as a symbol
Of progress. A vain strut.
Sue Spiers
I wrote a metaphor using eel
for blue-light reflections in water
on a flooded motorway
Oenone Thomas
Because I don’t know any other way
I replace my left hand
with a hook, my feet
with jackhammers, both
my eyes with spangled
mirror balls.
Adele Evershed
Some Things My Mother Forgot to Teach Me (Before She Died)
A while ago I saw this prompt on Instagram
though I added ‘before she died’
because mine did—long before
anyway, I made a list
Sally Jenkins
Funny how Year 8 is doing bones
now, of all the weeks. In the prep room
we strip flesh off chicken wings
Chris Hardy
Memento Vivere We lived here once. The rain we heard fell everywhere. Silence except the wind across the ground. It’s best to keep quiet. Words are like dead seeds, they vanish when they’re said. * New Year’s Eve without stars or...