Today’s choice
Previous poems
Claire Lynn
Out of Place
I lie back, arch my throat,
pretend to relax. Contemplate
ceiling tiles, and women
who do this weekly
for pleasure. A basin
strangles me. The palm
of a hand realigns my head: this
is how the ironing board feels
when you dance with it.
I agree to a full fringe
because I can’t identify
the part of the question
I don’t understand. Christmas
seems to come round faster
each year. My small talk
shrinks. I spray
DON’T SPEAK TO ME
across my reflection.
I’d like to foreclose, cut
the blow dry, but am helpless
as a mermaid; surrender
to hot brush and serum.
Release lifts my hair
like the tail of a kite. I run
all the way home.
Claire Lynn was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2025. She won the Tyne and Wear Metro Poetry Prize in 2023, and has been published in magazines such as Butcher’s Dog, Pennine Platform and Alchemy Spoon.
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...
Siobhan Logan
There’s something wrong with the sky
it’s the colour of a bruise and smells
of burnt toast. Do you hear that noise?
Someone’s shredding the blue
Alex Searle
Something started you to wake,
Leaving sockprints in the parquet
H.J. Thomas
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
Stephen Keeler
Among the joys of love was when we got
our first apartment on a boulevard
above the trams and tree-tops and the wires
that cut the street like tangram puzzles and
Khairina Anindya, Genevieve Beech
‘Khair’
At the feet
of al-Ka‘ba
you asked for a daughter.
‘BIRTHLIGHT’
You are ordinary
to the teenager on the bus,
the doctor at our six-week check.
Linda McKenna
We set about him with rifle butts and spades,
waiting our turn alongside our enemies,
the same sunburnt flesh, the same blistered
feet. Met where our camps, the same
Abigail Ottley
She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...
Frank Phelan
I am most visceral
when being disarmed
by a song, a lyric
written and sung…
in the broad New Yawk vowels