Today’s choice

Previous poems

Annabelle Markwick-Staff

 

 

 

Olympics

I devoured the Olympics, filled my mouth
and scrapbook with sticky ephemera.

I stalked a torch, seized my shining,
perforated prey, and stared into the void

of Wenlock and Mandeville’s eyes.
Sometimes, I am in the Olympics. I crawl

from my bed to my desk, and I sweat for gold.
I clutch my bottle of Lucozade

Sport Fruit Punch – Apple vs Raspberry,
my knuckles stark beneath desiccated skin.

I suckle Isotonic hydration from pink plastic,
electrolytes and athlete images fuel

my endurance, my metaphysical marathon.
Yes, Anthony Joshua, I will Stay Humble

from Gallions Reach to Avalon,
I have many hills to spiral, many petals to burn.
Annabelle Markwick-Staff graduated with an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School/ Newcastle University. Her poems are published in Popshot, Kindred Spirit, London Grip, Sage Cigarettes and Black Bough Poetry Christmas-Winter Anthology Volume 4. She is annabelleocto on Instagram.

Bob King

      The Cosmos of Small Details: When A Young Poet Asked for Advice For Dean Young (1955-2022) Hey Bro, how do we know what’s real? Like what’s really real? Can you actually prove to me dinosaurs existed? Prove evolution? Prove radio waves? Gravity,...

Nina Nazir

Nina Nazir

Star Walks, biro on paper, 2022 (text source from Sum: Tales of the Afterlife, David Eagleman, p.21)   Consistency, gel pen & biro on paper, 2022 (text source from The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg, p.111)   Nina Nazir is a British Pakistani poet,...

Philip Foster

      The Perfect Platonic Prison The canal is the most perfect of mirrors reflecting the purples and blues of the boats and the greens and blacks and blues of the trees. They all reach down in perfect symmetry. There are shabby huts and black cats....

David Callin

      Bunnies? We were delicate creatures once: shy, wide-eyed, exotic incomers. Holes had to be dug for us. Always toothsome, we have descended the scale of what is desirable, losing caste, coarsening, getting bigger, faster, fitter, more inured to...

Ramona Herdman

      She runs a circus now Her will drives them round the world – a cavalcade of needy clowns, prima donna gymnasts, tigers. Even in mufti, you can sense the whip back on its hook by her basking boots. They keep changing the legislation, so she runs...

Jacqueline Haskell

      Convergence   After that first year, they were never the same,  the planners with their Glastonbury smiles, their beatnik topology, though they still carried the henge inside them,  a degree or two of slippage was lost at the roundabout,  the...

Ruth Aylett

      Essential Worker Queen of the sandwich bar she moves no financial indices, wears blue overalls without red braces. She has planned every movement, her rapid questions in optimum order ‘eat in?’ ‘flora on your roll?’ ‘jalapenos?’ ‘salad with...

B. Anne Adriaens

      Beware the silent child (4) The arcade is a belly of echoes, jingles glancing off games and slot machines, repeat repeat repeat, punters’ voices a murmur that dies on the carpet. You enter to spend a penny, then retrace your steps to the exit,...

Olivia Heggarty

  Beside Everything, in Paris The morning was warmer than the one before, with a blue demitasse lighting your hand up in front of Notre Dame, its steam disappearing like its insides. And the gold flush of my shoulder against your cheek. We held our mouths for...