Today’s choice
Previous poems
Chrissy Banks
The pink and the brown
So many times I walked
head down half asleep
along that ordinary road to school
until the day I saw the cherry trees
sick of standing around bored and invisible
all at once dressed up
sinewy brown limbs
embellished with ruffles and frills
profligate pom poms
as if those trees were calling to passers-by
wanting to share the glee
at their flowering
with everyone
The petals that soon fell under my feet
were turning from pink to brown
I carried them inside me
the pink and the brown
I held them inside with the grey and blue
deep indigo of the Irish Sea
that lapped
and stormed
all around the borders
of my island home
Anna Milan
Early-stage menopausal psychosis, Nyhavn hotel room, 5 October 2019 There’s a red eye / in the corner of the ceiling / yesterday it was a smoke detector / today it’s pretending to look elsewhere / seeking out fire The stilettos by the bed listen /...
Rojbîn Arjen Yiğit
Neşûştî / Unwashed unbutton my spine towards the shitty full sounds of istanbul throw my discs at the drunkard as the imam punctures our howls into the mosque lucid green walls may he hang us let us be examples is there anyone who loves like us?...
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
Question Mark I live in Question Mark. It’s at the end of the sentence. The road to get here has a sharp bend. It’s not easy to guess what folk who live here think. There’s always a slight doubt. The town itself has a querulous nature; people are...
James Cochran
Dry January I. to be like the box turtle, constantly contained in rigid carapace, opened and closed at will, always at home. to be like the lawnmower run till empty at end of season, no fuel gelling in brittle lines, awaiting fresh gas in spring....
Julian Dobson
Superpower You’d imagine they’d make more of it, that feathered superpower of theirs, leaping across this planet ripe with air. Take the wren: there she hops, perpetually earthed in topsoil and grubs, happiest hidden behind a rock. The sex-crazed...
Solomon Elliott
An Elegy for a Stinking Pigeon I jump at a thud against my window, but nobody’s there. I look into the courtyard and glare, see nothing, until My sight falls upon the pigeon, dead as a dead pigeon, The corpse nestled into the leaves to hide from the wind....
Genevieve Carver
Hysteria say you’re on stage or in Tesco buying tinned fish for the dog or it’s a dream in which you’re arguing with your mother and your womb starts moving about your body like it’s got a mind of its own the Ancient Greeks called it wandering but a better word might...
David Clarke & Julian Stannard on Holocaust Memorial Day
The day the soldiers come they’ll give you twenty minutes to pack. Think now what you’ll need without this place you call home. And remember the woman too stunned by those uniformed men, who smoked and laughed in her kitchen, to use that precious time. She sat...
Trelawney
Chalice You are invited to the special dinner where I’m turning turning the blood on the costume a birthmark shaped like a question on your lips there is a wasp an asp in my milk you would have me fail. Trelawney has been shortlisted and commended in the...