Dear Mr. Erickson, Thank you for taking the time and effort to post your listing for Vintage WWII love letters 1945-1946 on eBay. Before I make an offer, I just have a few questions— you described them as family heirlooms, so I hope you might have some answers. First, did the couple stay together in […]
Young Poets Network
dear reCAPTCHA
dear reCAPTCHA respondent is pleased to confirm she is not a robot dear reCAPTCHA and as proof respondent would like to present the fact that she has eaten an orange dear reCAPTCHA and felt her teeth puncture into its muscle dear reCAPTCHA and had the sweet acidic blood run stickily over her chin dear reCAPTCHA […]
Spasticity
After The Dancing Class, a painting by Edgar Degas Dear Mother, I am close to breaking my head upon this wall that separates me fromour blooming spring garden. Mother, I want to be home, safe in fluid sheets, feeling my hair wash over my pillows. Mother, why did you insist on the […]
Life Matures like a Well-Established Fruit Tree
Dear B, All of the apples have been pulled clean from my branches,left to fester with wasps. Every part of me is losing crispness.The rosy welts are cheeks getting shinier and shinier, sweatappearing as sheen. I taste sharp because that’s the truth of fruitwithout organic pupillage. If I’m squeezed, no facilitywill take my juice. All […]
to the boy next door
remember that one time we letsnowflakes tickle our tongues like tchaikovsky’s dancers and the sky was gray delete blue delete do u remember actually, i lied; i know exactly what color the sky was pretty pink sorta euphoric don’t u think and ur hair was […]
A Letter to My Grandmother in the Skies
Dear Grandma, I am shedding my skinover and over againto slip it between the foldsof an envelope and send it to you,linking our cells again,even if they’re all dead. Tonight Mom and I hikedup the hill near our house at sunset.Clouds of dirt rolledover my sneakers as I steppedover pebbles and when we reached the […]
Dear Dementia
Contains strong language Did you enjoy ransacking my dad’s memories? Did you relish in tying his tongue—making him repeat lines making him repeat lines like a trained parrot? Was he nothing but a sideshow for you? Were you bored? You collect brains like they’re a dying breed. No age discrimination here. A fucking free-for-all. Never […]
Message Not Received
Content warning: suicide; contains strong language Hi Mum, I spoke to Miss Fitz today.Said I should send you a ‘letter’just in case it makes me feel better. It won’t. It’s currently 32 degrees outside, but I’m in my room trying to hide. The sun pours into the empty room, which might as well just be […]
Maya Mior
Grace Liu
Anisha Minocha
Anisha was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, and set and judged August Challenge #4: Write to Me – Epistolary Poems, a writing challenge on Young Poets Network in summer 2021.
House Plant
After Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons A slumber clothed by inconvenience, as a window eats and footfalls swallow caverns in spaces of labour and good breathing. To be many legged, many eyes much searching for sunlight, such eating of filthy brain content that dribbles out of and above, in the lungs and the head and the […]
Something to Hold Flowers
I found a vase todayin a flea market downtown.It was brown and heavyand more perfect than nature.It stood like it was madefrom clay scraped fromthe bottoms of my boots,sculpted in the salty surf,battered until it becamesomething breakable.
Finished
Here I liecrumpled and discardedon a bed of green blades.My sticky insides glued together. In the hands of a child,I’d be a water balloon.Darting through a maze of trees,yelping and panting and thrusting towardsshadows they can crouch in, waiting to pounce. No one knows I’m here. No one knows she’s over there. Only him.
Living Room
We knock knees in breathless proximity / blasted carcass-empty / by the room’s heavy inventory / its dumb articulation. / We watch winter blossom close and cruel / against a patch of grime-specked window / pray for intercom takeaway / temporal reprieve / hoisin sauce sticky and brown / like the light crystallized / into […]
The Telescope
Before me what was there. The tight skin of the sky was limp,hanging low to mortal brows. Then me and my crusted eyebecame the nebula’s diplomatsigning the alchemic treatiesand feeding the earth’s brittle bonesto black jawsand black seas. They bowed heads to me!Propped me up on folded Bibles,held me with repenting palms,and I was bigger […]
The Old Wooden Pencil Sharpener
Lurking in the cornerinside the deskI hidemetal teeth gratingGlorious CriminalI spy the victimmy unknowing assistantbrings it to my sidecrunchgrab holdin my sharp deadly mouthI laughchewswallowthe remnants head down southcackleand howlI digest some morePerfect MurdererDevil from Hellno bloodjust shavingsspiky peels of skincluster around meI bask in my sinwhen the body is clearedand the peels removedI’m left […]
Wooden Doors
When the neighbourhood was on fire, we had doors everywhere but nothing to walk through to. A child held on to a beige-coloured small one with an idea of heaven on the other side. An old man a large, brown, shattered door – through the holes, he said, he could look at all that he […]
Jessica Taylor
Jessica is commended in August Challenge #3: Inanimate Objects, Do You Have A Soul? on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Euan Sinclair.
Zinnia Hansen
Zinnia is the second-prize winner in August Challenge #3: Inanimate Objects, Do You Have A Soul? on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Euan Sinclair.
Euan Sinclair
Euan was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, and set and judged August Challenge #2: Inanimate Objects, Do You Have a Soul?, a writing challenge on Young Poets Network in summer 2021.
Takings/Leavings
a sound poem after L’Étranger by Albert Camus We maimed a gourd into a mordant. Established a port hereof which none knows. Received a telegram in July about a silo.Interred therein were the sentiments of the distinguished. It was notrice in a dire state, but wheat, and the vineyards we exiled to Monacolast year. A […]
Triple Sonnet for Discord Statuses
Here is my hand, my heart, my throat, my wrist. 🕯 If only for a moment, if only for tonight,Margaret what I really want to ask is, how many minutes do I need to wring from my hair in orderfor you to love me? How much substance is too much for you to grasp? […]
a python swallows my thoughts and regurgitates them in disorder
print(”’dreaming of the hill, Jillreborn, falling, nevercaught”’) while True: # it means always, though maybe # since truth is subjective, it does not print(”’my mindparody of asylummadness seekingtwisting”’) import random chance = random.randint(1,3) if chance == 1: print(”’language of machines, each iteration meaningless”’) if chance == 2: print(”’moonlight shining the first nightand all […]
dry drowning
after Genshin Impact If a character runs out of stamina in Genshin Impact while swimming, they will drown, no matter how close the shoreline is. is this what it’s like to be forgotten? i try to ask, my eyes clawing skyward in a desperate attempt to find purchase in the clouds, my prostrate palms […]
Hindsight
We’re still holding hands.The ceiling calls our stop.He was in love once too.with silver in his eyes.opposite us that stareddad’s jacket or the manthat might’ve been myalmost smelt of rain butme to my seat, whichand your honey boundcouldn’t, your handsI wanted to move but Iand warm as blood.It was sticky and sourinching down your face.your […]
An Alternate History In Which PepsiCo Establishes a City-state
“In 1989, in one of the more unique business deals in the history of consumerism, Pepsi and the Soviet Union struck a deal for the communist country to provide the soft drink provider with $3 billion worth of warships: 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer.” – Mark Stenberg, Business Insider The Aleutian […]
Nancy Needs Mummy
Content warning: disordered eating today or tomorrow/she gives herself a middling love/lifts her leg from the bedsheets/cold and smooth like a fresh-pulled turnip/is stung by a wasp/gives birth from the knee/to a piece of pus/on her palm she writes the same word twice/oink oink/in case she is fool enough to eat anything/containing sugar or flour/of […]
Buckwheat Noodles
We eat until we areSated; slip into the night like eels,Wriggling hearts pinned on silverMoons. Here I am,Here am I. I wheeze my soul into a tune andBurn it on my flashing eyes,Stringed instruments like spirits that cramNervous against the ceiling.Lift your hands!Lighten your tongues!We slide past each other in alleyways andSteal mundane magic from […]
Written Photographs of Digital Burning City
after Ocean Vuong On 19 August 2021, millions of Afghans stuck in Kabul under the Taliban documented their lives on Snapchat’s world map feature, displaying their humanness. A post: snaking waterway shallower than hasty graves greets clothed congregation that ask a current swallow them to safety.On video, pixelated men in coats that refuse to desaturate […]
Sarah Nachimson
Sarah is commended in August Challenge #2: Write the Absurd on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Mukisa Verrall.
Alice Watkinson
Alice is commended in August Challenge #2: Write the Absurd on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Mukisa Verrall.
Amy Wang
Amy is the second-prize winner in August Challenge #2: Write the Absurd on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Mukisa Verrall.
Mukisa Verrall
Mukisa Verrall was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020, and set and judged August Challenge #2: Write the Absurd, a writing challenge on Young Poets Network in summer 2021. They are commended in August Challenge #3: Inanimate Objects, Do You Have A Soul? on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by […]
Words in a Vacuum
By the reception, I weigh my chin on the desk,so that I’m eye-to-eye with the phone and the pens,whilst my mum talks with a lady wearing blue.They are skimming words across my head,with a sad and casual adult politeness which websin my hair and is so boring I can hardly hearthe deadbeat hope and fear […]
Talking to My Father
Words could be a pebble,a boulder, or a thingthat could be throwninto some body of water which could sometimes bean ocean, whereas everything sinksinto an unrecallable place wheredenial buries the words besidetreasure chests which could sometimes bea swamp, swarms of buzzingflies and mosquitos all overwhen the words are thrown,they too drown in the swamp’ssuffocating mud […]
F—ing Flannery O’Connor
Contains strong language Night scratches his beard, throws morning from his window and through ours in bed with you I say […]
The Unsaid Words
What about the crows that have hung their heads low?Do you miss them?How about the sound of the speeding cars passing you?Can you still hear that?Will you feel the slow burn of the fire?Does it hurt?Maybe you are happier.Does it devoid you of pain?Maybe you are sadder.The pressure of the earth, does it weaken?I selfishly […]
Overheard in The White Cross Pub
My best balls-up would have to be a few weeks before I qualified.I realised all of these old people had false teeth that were never maintainedby nursing homes. I was in Geriatrics, so went around the ward collecting teeth.I spent an hour scrubbing at these teeth, put them all in a large washing-up bowl.So I […]
Somewhere, I Know What It Is Like
to drain summer through sheets of hazefrom wildfires nearly a country over. Swinging,the hammock ropes. My weight forsakingone half of the air for the other. Don’t you hateyourself? I photograph a fawn that looks atme with flicking ears. Pitted eyes. Innocentuntil I shoo it into the brush. I sprint homewith a firework under my tongue. […]
Ozymandias Seeks Solace
Between the crucifix and the fire escapeThe confession box lies in a mirage. “Forgive me, Father for I have sinned.”The clock ticks. The man who hides his face rasps,“I stole.” “From a heart or a hand?” the priest asks,His cigarette tilts up in a grin. His yellow hand reaches outAnd crumbles to sand. “From time.” […]
Eva Thomas
Eva is commended in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly.
Brooke Slater
Brooke is commended in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly; and in August Challenge #3: Inanimate Objects, Do You Have A Soul? on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Euan Sinclair.
Lillie Elsworth
Lillie is the third-prize winner in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly.
ShengYao Liu
ShengYao Liu is the second-prize winner in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly.
Madeleine Oliver
Madeleine is the first-prize winner in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly.
Check-Up
There’s a hole in your tooth. My dentist appears from behind the glare of a lamp,a sterile god.As if he is weighing my heart in his hands. I hear my meek response:How did that get there?I am trying to hold the panic from my voice. Sometimes, he prophesises, food gets stuck where a toothbrush can’t […]
Sinéad O’Reilly
Sinéad O’Reilly was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020 and 2021, and set and judged August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems, a writing challenge on Young Poets Network in summer 2021.
An alternative geometry of the universe
In June, Ba buys cherries, and we run our fingers along the skins,which gleam like piano keys or the moon after fog. We eat the cherries on the back porch,watching the maples turn the last of the sunlight over their leaves. Above, the clouds are gathering again,and the birds are tracing fractals along their edges. […]
A Positively Violent Poem in Five Parts
Contains strong language 1. That day we ruined the swimming pool everyone was a hypocrite and angry we pulled out the tiles with bare hands and nails our knuckles bled quietly into tattoos whenwe couldn’t notice that day we planted eighty-four trees one for everyone present there because later the […]
Mycelium Under the Canopy
Under the canopy we planted trees and mushrooms—the mushrooms sang, nutrients poolingaround them, humus darkening in delight. Under the canopy the trees and mushrooms workedin tandem, pushing water through the dirt,underground transportation. Under the canopy the mushrooms bore fruit,bore our burdens, bore everything. Under the canopy we cut open our houses,found mushrooms, rolled them in […]
The Ocean Makes Creatures of Us
I am watching the ocean drownus in a fit of love. The sand sticks to the alcove of my knees. There is a motherdipping her child into the water, laughing. The child is slipping in the sand,webbed toes shimmering on a long silver fin. The mother is cryingfrom laughing too hard and looks at her […]
Letter to a Loving Husband
Charles, let me tell you what I saw:in the last leg of our journey,rats ate the victuals. I had hopedfor stars and jewels, yet here the shipspat back something hollow and actual.In our hunger, we gnawed on oarsand barrel planks like teething babies. On the seventh day, we saw a blotcreased in the distance. From […]
Walking to the Train Station
One day, you will notice the bluebird asthma pump,Hear the birdsong vapour slice through grey fumesAnd soothe the inflamed tarmac of these wheezing streets. It hides in the tree, modest until it decides to sing.Its plastic sapphire beak harmonises with the white noiseOf your earphones (only one side of which still works).It dispels the grey […]
65 Cybele
In the summerwhen it pours,a lake forms in my backyard,rivulets soakingthe grass— a jungle monsoonthousandsof miles away. My boots heavyin the rain,I share my sorrow with calming dropletsand hear my truth,recall that I was born in Queens,of which I remember littleexcept for smoke unfurling from apartment roofsbefore my family movedto Long Island, which is hardly […]
a united solution
the solution isn’t ‘go green’.rather, it’s quite a marshy brown;all the colours on the spectrum thrust together,pulled into braided harmony. might the sagging glaciers of the himalayas, dribbling into the yangtze and the indus,be nourished with kitschy korean neoprene?those gutsy, ebullient women divers; grasping cold abalone. the waning coral reefscrumbling into chroma before your eyes […]
Incantation (For a Sea Change)
The earth beneath my feet is speaking,Calling to me in a language I no longer remember. The earth that whispers at my feet,Whose wrinkles form roots and concrete cracks andWhose curled-up weeping spills in steady sewers of grief. This earth beneath my garden that squeezes ever newerEver brighter miraclesOut through its pores,That presses cold against […]
Sixteen Haiku
empty chairsthe statues have gone backto the other museum(George Seferis) 1at the end of the garden a pear tree alone 2hair tied –silent sheepeating nettles 3he carves his name into his tree 4the last raysleaves reachingfor light 5summer’s breezeplastic boxdecember 6a plaque on a chair in a fire 7messages daubedin delible ink washed away 8trash […]
On the Road VII
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Charlotte Hughes and Wendy Call The buildings of my town cannot seethey are caught killed and stackedthey don’t notice the sun overheadHas it followed me across the border?It beats over their long hair-shingles,dead and brittle, missing in placesI live under the flat gray roofI am in the lit apartment, 33A […]
Your House
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by SZ Shao and Wendy Call your house,with eyes that holdboth grains of sandand the sun inhis vanishing sky your house,crowned with tilescoloured every shade ofhard and soft – who is emptiness,to make his homein this body?and who is darkness,to squat beneath tilespainted by the sun? your house,whose arteriesfeed the mountainsand […]
On the Dirty Road
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Alor Sahoo and Wendy Call The windows of the village housesscour the beach for sand grains.They reflect on the distant sunthat leaves them in the dark.Their head of roof shingles hidden,dyed a soft black and red.Who’s inside that pink and yellow hair?Who’s inside that dark brick skin? Trekking to the […]
My Sister and I Return to the Imaginary Street of Our Ancestors, Which We Left Long Ago
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Mia Nelson and Wendy Call The houses have eyeslooking for every infinitesimal grain of sandas well as the distant sun,which today is un-brilliant above usand does not slip light on the houses’ scalps,their tiled hair braided softly in black and red. Who dances or breathes or dies under those roofs?Who […]
About the path numbered 7
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Gunisha Aggarwal and Wendy Call
miembro a miembro
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by April Egan and Wendy Call your house and its town eyes saw grain until it saw a beachfar away, a sun that failed to shine through their shaking slats of hairswilling red and black and soft who dares live under yellow and pinkwho lives limb to limb with dark houses? […]
The Wake Of
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Jayant Kashyap and Wendy Call Now the houses, like the sun, have a yellow roof,or pink, their eyes shouting at the beach,but the sun, lost, doesn’t care today;there is no light in their plaited, textured hair;nobody knows who’s there in the houses that are now ruined. The path that leaves […]
Poem From Your Village
by Irma Pineda, co-translated by Priya Abularach and Wendy Call And up here, the houses still crane forsomething like you – back whenthe world spun above their heads,deep gold globe, those buildingswere organ-warm and flushed.Now the sun is shadowed,the whole length of a year away. I hear them ask,who is home? who is home? Once […]
Gunisha Aggarwal
Gunisha is commended in the 2021 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard, on Young Poets Network.
Priya Abularach
Priya is a 2020 commended Foyle Young Poet, and is commended in the 2021 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard, on Young Poets Network.
Alor Sahoo
Alor is the third-prize winner of the 2021 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard.
Gemma Bird
Gemma is commended in the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Filippo Rossi
Filippo is commended in the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Karishma Sangtani
Karishma is commended in the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Charmayne Board
Charmayne is commended in the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Mallika John
Mallika is commended in the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Tara Awate
Tara is the third-prize winner of the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Sarah Cassidy
Sarah is the first-prize winner of the Erasure Poetry Challenge on Young Poets Network.
Homes of Flesh and Blood
a vision
Drowning My Heart in Dementia
She and He
Dear Daughter
Morning
Our Light
erased with a bunch of feathers
Sportn’t
Download Sportn’t Download a text-only version of Sportn’t April Egan reads ‘Dock Leaf Liturgy’ from Sportn’t: Stas Forte reads ‘Obituary For A Body’ from Sportn’t: Mercury Tarantino reads ‘Sad Golden Eyed Boy of Olympus’ from Sportn’t:
Robert Hooke Reimagines London
“[Robert Hooke] achieved fame as Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant of Christopher Wren, helping to rebuild London after the Great Fire. He worked on designing the Monument, Royal Greenwich Observatory, St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke, and Bethlem Royal Hospital.” – The Monument The […]
Avore
When I’m alone I use the lost language, gathering up giltycups for your grave, thinking only of how much you loved yellow, how you’d stretch your hand to the sun in the archet, watching it settle in the grooves and galaxy of your palm. We’ve been having cazelty weather since you went, my love, the […]
Item 293.7 Rural History Museum, 30/04/2221
In two hundred years all archaeologists will find of my life will be plastic bungs. I fall asleep on them. I am the princess who can’t feel her peas. They leave me bullseyed, looking as if a tick has bitten and left redness as its triumph. All they will find are these stoppers which prevent […]
brother and sister climbing dead oak
pretend you’re kicking the heart of the tree. you’re crushing me. you need to swing over that branch. i know how your legs work. we have the same body, remember? i’ve lived in our chest two years longer than you. are you gonna keep your maiden name when you get married? it’s also your maiden name, you idiot. i’m not a […]
An Edict In Destiny (Or: Helena Looking Back)
I’m tracing the pressed flower on the page, dipping fragile sunrise, the place where we could be two angels. See, we wanted that paradise: two girls lying in the woods, safe in the cocoon of friendship, like they’re both fated for each other, not pursued, not men pushing out the lines, just Hermia and Helena. […]
Sharon, Massachusetts
After Gaia Rajan The horizon ruptures in the shape of my name. Dana, Dana, it calls while I sleep on my belly in the woods. I will dream about the sky, how it unfolds like a bruised lid, how deer dung marks constellations in the dirt. Later, I will drive myself across town. I will […]
On Becoming a Changeling
The forsythia, like all stars, is dying its impermanent death. Gold, bronze, gone. I yank my old hair from the brush, leave it in parcels on the doorstep for the birds – magpie, robin, song thrush. The pheasants make their road accident sounds, twisted metal out their mouths. I am still and heavy so long […]
April Egan, Stas Forte and Mercury Tarantino
The writers and artists in this group are the first-prize winners in Young Poets Network‘s 10th anniversary challenge, with their zine Sportn’t.
Dana Blatte
Dana is commended in Young Poets Network‘s 10th anniversary challenge, and in August Challenge #1: Conversation Poems on Young Poets Network in 2021, set and judged by Foyle Young Poet Sinéad O’Reilly.
Creagh Factor
Creagh is commended in Young Poets Network‘s 10th anniversary challenge.
Kristine Ma
Freya Cook
Freya is commended in the Keats challenge on Young Poets Network, part of The Poetry Society’s celebrations of Keats’s bicentenary in 2021.
Jude Leese
Jude is the third-prize winner of the Keats challenge on Young Poets Network, part of The Poetry Society’s celebrations of Keats’s bicentenary in 2021.
Olivia Tuck
Olivia is the first-prize winner of the Keats challenge on Young Poets Network, part of The Poetry Society’s celebrations of Keats’s bicentenary in 2021.
The Darkness Falls at Thy Behest
for Grandad Beyond the window, summer is packing up, the way we used to gather the leftovers, fold the picnic blanket and carry it – and the hamper – back to the car’s open boot. Once, you’d have told me why the air seems to cling. Now, the long shadows stare as you lie, your […]