By Adélaïde Giudicelli Under my red coat grow an alien From a dimension I didn’t ask for Hard science hit me back and forth There is no place for a Frankenstein No state for a mind like yours No scene for a face like yours But I love you baby girl You are the spark, the pearl Let me stab my stomach Tear my skin by myself Can you hear this crack? See the light by yourself Don’t act like a phantom I will make you a home No hard feelings tiny boy You are better than a toy Do

By Carol Ward Baby soft downy-cheeked rosy and supple smooth and pliable clear and healthy velvety lustrous smooth-browed sun-worship glowing sunspot-blotched crow’s feet-furrowed laugh line-trenched parchment paper opaque rice paper translucent spider web wrinkled Varicose-veined purpura-pocked Dust #DarkPoetsClub

By Helen Savage Incels, wankers Wannabe gangsters Get rich quick Suck my dick YouTube TickTok Boob tubes suck cock The art of submission Who needs permission Brag to your mates She’s yours on a plate Won’t show you disgrace She knows her place Be strong act hard Smoke weed in the yard I’ve got your back I’ll keep you on track Buying selling People yelling Shit flying like rockets Peas in your pockets Stash the money and the shank Go upstairs have a wank Watch some porn Get th

By Doug Walters I would assume that, should they exist, spirits don’t weigh anything. You’re so light the couch barely shakes as you sit down next to me, proselytizing with an uncorked bottle in one hand, two empty glasses in the other. Not real, but all I had. Cheap impulse buys from the grocery store. You’re not impressed but “we’ll make do.” Next time…real ones. Bases not chipped…long smooth stems sexy and straight like a cheerleader’s waist…a bowl with a rim that sings li

By Emma Denny There is a part of me A small sick part That loves to be unlovable That has reveled in the eyes of a terrified man Who swore he knew me But cannot recognize Who he sees in front of him Only to the ones who deserve to atone Who mean to change me Into something I’m not That should be just But it isn’t I seek them out To convince them they can love That I can love And then To break them I get them used to my feathered touch To whispered promises To com

By Taliesin Don Your mother’s ghost milked me through the wet cotton of my selfishness. I yelp in the yellow of morning, fingers pressed to my tongue tasting the sour of old rot and something festered, sweet. In the dark, you led me past the pleasure house, past the orchard down to where the barley was soft and bent-backed from August rain. Skin to soil, salt and spit between us, denim tugged halfway down— Beneath us, worm-bloated coffins, a body born of your name, not yet co

By Danny Bennett As crows cry frantic. Disturbed and aggrieved. Above deserted, characterless streets, With daunting shadows and corrupted light. The way ahead is always uncertain. Hulking metal on flowing arteries. The passing roar; monstrously ferocious. Occasionally fading. Is it safe? A death-defying gauntlet to be run. As strangers approach, weary and cautious, Trapped in the confines of the tarmac path, I wonder: Are you friend or are you foe? Like ships in the nigh

By Janelle Standish They taught me early to fold my voice like a napkin, neat, white, easy to ignore. I became an echo that flinched before it sounded. They called it dignity. But it was just a prettier word for disappearance. I swallowed whole oceans to keep the peace. Now all I do is drown beautifully. #DarkPoetsClub

By Laura Rust Conversations replay in my head for hours. often for half of the night. i never truly rest. - Paranoia — i can’t tell if someone is being nice or manipulating me. i assume that i am disliked. The other shoe is constantly teetering on the edge. when is it going to fall? why am i always under it? Some places i can’t go. unless i’m in the mood to be waterboarded with memories. unless i want to feel anxiety tunnelling into my gut like a rat with no other w

By Michael Peyton The sound you hear is merely the smoldering remains of my once grand existence. The smoke rises and drifts aimlessly, as lost as my will for resistance. ~~~~~~ Words that I had so longed to hear spoken, echoed loudly across this desolate plane. It was all mis-taken. The dark flame now rekindled, burns with blinding pain. ~~~~~~ The steam from hot tears against my cheeks leads to a view through impeded vision I allowed my heart to make a decision so again I s

By Jen Billing fae-ring portals creamy bright against dark brown swaying choir of ribwort plantain, asteroid circled heads, their bosky mushroom taste in my mad mouth cave mouth wrecklessly sucking, mouth of a river’s murked live stream of consciousness, mouth of a black tunnel for a runaway train’s screaming steaming vortex or the mouth of a burrow haven of the paper-white rabbit she once saw wild among the mine ruins, page from a book come to life turning leaf now I w

By MH Four walls, blue. Not light blue, more sky blue, On a moody day in March blue. Curtains blue, the same blue. Carpet too, blue, like you. Lampshades blue, Makes light blue too. Cast in glow forever blue. And though I grew To hate the blue, What would I do Without blue. Told you, I’m sick of blue. Blue, blue, BLUE! Then one day, grey. Four walls, grey. Not dark grey, more cement grey, Cloudy November rain grey. I slip away, Stare into grey. Bed grey, carpet grey, Curtains

By Yucheng Tao Today, the museum closes its doors early, waiting; how much of the night’s bleakness seeps into it, enjoying the dark corridors. The Indian tents with pointed frames, like spears of bone, stand pierced in the empty lobby, lonely, waiting; how the winter wind cuts through it. As the cold artifacts of the museum catch the outside glow, the carnivalesque slaughter brings laughter to civilization. Denver’s rain is absent and dry, the natives of the Arapaho meditate

By Ronan Collins Sitting alone at her Five Wounds of Christ where she feeds the pigs of her animal farm. Chippy manifestos of god’s purloin her husband’s soul, & the devil’s [steel ice] infernal son. Shaky heart physically rocking her brittle bones, prayers of Patron Saints: Colmcille, Brigid, & Patrick. I stand in lee of my bedroom window from the praying & saints, they never help. I postulate words Nikola Tesla proclaimed, ‘There are many fallen angels here on Earth,’ god’

By M. S. Marshall There’s a man at the door knocking to come in. He’s all recrimination and teeth dripping with sin. With the pallor of smegma and breath on a rattle, He’s got the walk of a man with an axe for the cattle, and the taste for sweet meats kept under his tongue, a dirty secret rotting in each pull from his lung. He savours the gelding peeling testis like onions docking tails, clipping wings not a man for a bolt-gun, too distant, too removed too lacking in rip. He’

By Daniel Sowa It doesn’t knock. It arrives as the last guest at the feast, wearing my face backward, a silhouette slurping the dregs of my wine. Call it amputated twin— the one I forgot to bury, now gnawing at the edges of daylight, stitching its name to the hem of my shadow. Oh, loyal as a bruise, it licks the walls when I pretend it’s not there, whispers through keyholes in the voice of a mother I never had. We dine together, always. It takes the gristle, the

By Tim Reaper The tracks don’t sleep. They grind their jaw all night, chewing distance, chewing names, chewing the metal taste of might-have-been. I stand by the platform edge and feel the air turn predatory— a cold animal with shining ribs. The rails hum their familiar hunger, electric and patient, like a dog trained on silence. In my pocket, my phone is a dead eye, your messages a museum of almosts. I imagine the train arriving with its mouth open, headlights like saints wi

By Tim Reaper She was small enough to still believe the world was made for touching— hot stove, sharp shell, the bright rule of what happens if. He was smaller, milk-breathed, a soft new noise in the house that stole the room’s attention the way flame steals air. The bathwater waited, perfectly still, a dark mirror with no opinion. It held the ceiling light like a trapped star and she thought: How deep does a star go? No anger. No storybook monster. Just the clean, blank wond

By Tim Reaper Morning arrives like a bandage pulled off too fast. The sky is raw, pink with damage, and the sun hangs there like a cautery tool— bright, clinical, unforgiving. You walk through streets still wet with night, past bins that breathe, past shuttered shops with their metal eyelids down. Somewhere, a siren threads the distance— a thin red stitch trying to hold the world together. You think of the person you used to be— how easily they laughed, how loosely they lived

By Tim Reaper In this country, we inherit metal the way others inherit cheekbones— a birthright you can hold, cold and certain, with your finger resting on the future. They call it freedom and hand it to you in a cardboard coffin, foam cut to fit the shape of a decision you can’t take back. The classrooms rehearse lockdowns like hymns. Small hands learn the grammar of hiding: corner, silence, the holy text of don’t move. On the news, grief is weather— rolling in, expected, me