Today’s choice
Previous poems
Clara Howell
The Basement
The way a halved peach breathes, then rots
from the inside out.
Her tongue, a swollen garden of secrets.
The corners of her eyes
reach toward her burning shoulders.
Clara Howell is a poet born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Clara finds poetry as an opportunity to connect the ordinary with the extraordinary by putting her most honest and raw experiences on the page. Clara’s work has been previously published in Shot Glass Journal (Muse Pie Press), Anti-Heroin Chic, Cathexis Northwest Press, Route 7 Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Paul Stephenson, Jem Henderson
How two men can become
four men can become
eight men
Play, for National Poetry Day: Elena Brake, Karen Downs-Barton, John Mole, Eleanor Holmes
Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.
Jade Wright
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
Ruth Lexton
The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.
Claire Booker
Never has there been so much interest
in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth
like the little man in a weather clock.
Jacob Mckibbin
my brother saw his attacker
at a petrol station
Janet Hatherley
He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him
twenty-eight years older, not eighteen.
Syed Anas S
We are the ones
who see big crackers
burst every day—