Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rose Ramsden
The Last Train Home
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats, wanting to see the dust rise like smoke. Floating to the ceiling, dirtying the lights. The doors hissed open and a stranger emerged. Approached with a stare that unwrapped the skin from my bones, trickled down the neckline of my shirt. He held out a hand to my dad and grinned. Gums like the flesh left on cherry pits. I gazed at the ugly pattern on my seat. The filth beneath, festering.
Rose Ramsden is a UK based poet currently studying for her Creative Writing Masters at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her work has been previously published by bathmagg, The Punch Magazine, and dubble, among others. You can find her on Instagram @RoseRamsden.
Nora Nadjarian
Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and writer who has been published in international anthologies. She has won prizes or been commended in international competitions, among others, the Plough Poetry Prize and the Live Canon International Poetry Competition 2020....
Liv Aldridge
A cross lights up in the distance, a bird skeleton. We roll by faith my inhale dry like the hoarse wind in the lungs of a chainsmoker. Bruised night skies and a flatpack cross over factories. Where does it come from? Does it cascade down on...
Rakyah Assam
THE SEA IS RISING The radio spits “The world is ending” and I sulk down the stairs half shame faced, mostly hungry. There is a lobster man in the stairwell that scares me -- the door propped ajar like a constantly crooked finger beckoning an unknown hither....
K. S. Moore
Field Trip Abercregan 1991 Even the river is dark . . . sun only gains entry through trees makes copper faces that turn as I wade. My net brushes tendrils from transparent cheekbones water framing each elegant pose: I want to put these girls on...
Zoe Piponides
This Oh So Bearable Lightness If you should lose this oh so bearable lightness be warned, I shall overturn your day, tear it apart, ensure it ends in the dark. I’ll mould your skin in sodium yellow, load you with enzymes till your gut swells...
Jane Ayres
monstering our splintered selves always on the cusp of something terrible waiting for us to enter waiting to enter us inside/outside/inside did you feed them? suddenly we are washed meat and the dress is clean Jane Ayres...
Kate Harper
The Youth Pastor We are in the church, the space where we swayed, arms high, singing and crying and feeling the power of the spirit pulse through us and around us. He has been circling for weeks, his eyes resting on her when he preaches chastity...
James Nixon
James Nixon teaches at Arden University and is completing doctoral research into the legacy of Arthur Rimbaud and hauntological poetics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a former Royal Holloway Emerging Writer Fellow, a...
Anthony Lusardi
no more chemo . . . lying in the snow to make a new angel * ambiguity among white clouds and black birds * last of dusk illuminating a sludge's slime trail * lanternfly crawling up a maple in a movie poster * sunday evening contemplating past...