Grey fank loch
Jane Routh reviews Okapi by Fiona Moore (Blue Diode Press, 2024)
The Friday Poem archive
Other people’s parties
by Martyn Crucefix — I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked out of / them, not even making my excuses. That we’re apart / from all other things, he says, the mythos ...
Not my children, not my rats
by Natalie Shaw — I have revised my views on the thought police: / actually, they are perfectly lovable guys, // perfectly lovable guys just trying / to do their best ...
While driving to Ikea for a laundry basket
by Heidi Beck — we debate the universe. You offer a theory / of infinite multitudes, of other earths / almost like ours...
Lessons in The Method, #23
by Martin Jago — The day you stop me on campus, Benjamin, / Bible in hand, asking if I believe and I respond, // pointing to the building I’m walking towards ...
“Party” as Both Verb and Moral Imperative
by Katherine Meehan — This is a peace my lovelies, you are a goddess / and you are a goddess and YOU are a goddess— / I love you ...
The Sound of the Struggle
by Charles Rammelkamp — I always saw our name / as a wave coming in to shore, / the curl of the 'r', the undulant 'm's, / the finality of the 'p' lapping the beach ...
Pears Soap
by Damaris West — It’s the shape of a red blood cell. / Rolled between palms, / like a stick to make fire // it thins to a slippery / cuttlebone sliver of new moon ...
Lights Out
by Christian Wethered — When you close your eyes after lights out /
see how long it takes – // when the dormitory door swings shut / and you rub thighs against the sheets ...
Bookcase
by Derek Coggrave — Gravity strengthens where poetry collects on shelves: / the plastic track holding the glass doors has sagged / leaving the doors ...
Beige
by Mark Fiddes — Some cities are beige in unexpected ways. / Hotel showers spit grit and lizards. / In tailored ecru and fawn, the policemen / vogue under flyovers ...