By Tim Edge I lost my mum two years ago, Simply forgot where I put her, Still haven’t found her. A friend told me she had passed but I don’t believe him, I often wait outside the house, Just in case she passes again, But she never does. I’m finding life difficult without her, She kept me on the straight and narrow. “Just be yourself” she used to tell me, “Who the hell is that?” I replied. “Where do I find him”? People talk to me more these days, I don’t like it. “Are you copi

By Ella B. Winters in her nightstand, five years to the day after we arrived on strange soil. Written out in neat Cyrillic letters on the back of an unpaid bill, it was full of words I’d rarely heard spoken like forgive me, and contained instruction for her funeral. She wanted to be buried in the white dress she’d brought home some weeks before. I tried it on whenever she went out, floating down the halls with strips of chiffon trailing behind me. My mother never knew I'd see

By Ellie Scott After you nailed me to the wall I saw my skin: You were covering it in plywood layering fibres, spruce and pine like vanilla milk and coffee, rough coated with cloying resin gathering dust. Layers still thin enough (had I not paused) to peel myself in strips and loosen all the nails so I could rip them out by running. And as I paused, (why did I pause) the crossgrain bound and wrapped, muffled my shouts and kicks to muted taps and tiny splits. So you glued th

By Suzanne Gratwick Hyphens on black tar Dissect perspectives. Going nowhere on a Pitch black highway. Fever induced dreams of Blurred peripheral glimpses. Jet black carrion appear as Oblique strokes that slide by on Swollen grey shapes roadside Asking a macropod question. Rusted farm post boxes Deliver an exclamation Dotting the landscape. Betwixt uncoiled devil’s rope Drawing boundaries Pernicious blackened stumps Backslash derived from wildfire. Rust borne railway lines Da

By Catherine Ronan I bridle the snake moon to find you, belly-crawl in your tracks so that you will not know my trespass. These battlegrounds are sad muds of failure, sober-bald rejection, strewn with half-eaten promise. Our reptile souls stir from sleep, destined to explode in the season of darkness and slow growing fruit. A thousand years peeling skinless time, this is the alchemy of our Long Dance but I still blush, at the apple, of my fall. #DarkPoetsClub #DarkPoetsPrizeV

By Shadow Kat Through rust-hinged, antique basement door, Come drilling eyes. Affixed, they nail me to the floor, Till my heart dies. Latch left, agape, light, gaunt and thin. Diode decloaking: Dust-scope, drift strip, defuse dead skin. Burglarized. A wrench pries jaw; rusted frame, Bone ratcheting. Tache noire sclera through glass pane. Heavy…heaving. Frozen pipes: stiff limbs in rigor. Hammering, squeak. Gurney wheeling a draped figure. Skin peel, paint stripped. A skelet

By T.S. Forest Mother I do not think the day will ever come That you forgive me for killing your daughter With hands so eager You were not there To witness our terminal meeting That gentleness of our embrace made possible Only by its finality You’ll never know How fervently she begged for the knife Or how relieved she was to slough off my bones At last, immaterial You cannot begin To understand that you’ve lost her Least of all that you haven’t; that she’s never been To begin

By Joshua Pagano It’s my own fault — that’s what they say about my disrepair. Soggy and dilapidated. Uncut foliage tangles into the path leading to my door. The steps are cracked like a gaping wound. Unwanted and depreciated. Stepping through the threshold, looking inside, you may feel a chill. Do not gaze too long. Please do not gaze too long. My tattered roof lets the rain in — not every hole gets a patch. Uninsured and moldy with disease. My empty cupboards hunger to be fi

By Deborah Humphrey A history of dust in his fingernails A suitcase of sentences gathered from friends Arteries blocked by a life well lived A nervous system of twisted synapse Wormed veins tattooing wiry legs A cerebellum curdled by time A pulse waiting for death and the solitude of soil #DarkPoetsClub #DarkPoetsPrizeV

By Darren Donohue A late-night quiz – the kind you watch when you’ve given up on thinking. A cat and a mouse stand at podiums. Their job: to guess what each gadget does as it rattles up a conveyor belt. First up: a mousetrap. Applause. The host – a social media snake in his mid-thirties, skin of spray-tan and grin – tells them to have a look, not to be afraid to touch. The cat gives it a paw, the mouse circles, sniffs the air as if something invisible has already happened. “B

By Honni van Rijswijk 2:07 p.m. One girl photographs the other girl crossing the old bridge, and this is the last ordinary thing the world is given of them: February pretending to be April, a snow day with no snow in it, the creek below going about its business. 2:13 Forty-three seconds, which is nothing, which is the length of a held breath, which is how long it takes a hand to decide to become a witness. Later, men in suits will call it evidence. Call it instead the smalles

By Hannah "Hunter" Hull mine is all facade. A trompe l’oeil painted to please a passing king. If the body were a house mine is a nest that everything good has flown. If the body were a house (which it is) mine is abandoned. Good for the occasional squat party, but not much else. Or, so derelict it’s worth nothing but the plot on which it crumbles. Which is nowhere. But you’re welcome to it anyway. I didn’t know how sick I was. When bad is normal you don’t notice that it’s her

By Ruth Cowell If I die at the hands of a man I don’t want a vigil Quiet candlelight Well-behaved tears rolling neatly down cheeks That silent ache in your chest Anger swallowed and suppressed If I die at the hands of a man I want anarchy Screaming in the streets I want revolution Retribution I want you to fight If I die at the hands of a man I want my sisters to reclaim our right to be safe For those of us left behind Still dodging bullets and blows And for those of us yet t

By Pyrène Hear her, hear the grey goat, udders spent and empty, she bleats, she calls for last year’s baby - the one who danced around her when the grass was greener still than this. Lie down, body against the green grass, green yes, but not as green as last year’s, lie down as she does, feel the sun on your back, it used to feel warmer than this. Press it, press your ear to the cool ground, ignore the ants that walk over your hand, this is their dirt too, they know better th

By Laila Amado The coming plague is an unbridled horse. Hoofs beat the ground. Spit bubbles on its lips and flies, sharp acid sting devouring the borders and turning bodies into so much mulch to feed the mushrooms. God plays the trumpet in the sky. Ash falls again. Streets are quiet in the early hours TV lights up Blue and forlorn it broadcasts nothing. Tea is too sweet Sun burns Wind festers with sodden pollen from infected fields. Rum sloshes at the bottom of the barrel. Fa

By Romany Patton They thought they had me facedown on their stone. Hands at my shoulders. Knees in my spine. They spoke of honour and sacrifice, expecting worship when they meant ownership. The blade entered my posture just beneath my breath. I did not scream. Ribs unfurled— unwilling— like doors long rusted. They reached for my lungs to hang them as wings, not understanding— I had already been splitting open, growing my own. Each lie, a crack in the skin. Each scathing spit,

By forgettingsilence they caught the smell at the forest’s edge and turned back. so they never saw it — five petals wider than a spread of arms, thick as cut meat, freckled cream on red, a red you don’t get from prettiness — the red of the body’s own interiors. a bloom like the slow clot of appetite, years in the making. no leaf, no stem, only a dark bud on the vine, holding its tongue through five green summers — and opens like a clasped fist in the morning, risen overnight,

By Heather Le Fay I think I saw a drowning woman yesterday. She was smiling when the waves lashed her. Eyes wide but unreachable. When the sun hit the water it glinted; a waiting scythe. I watched from the boat’s lip as she disappeared. The steely gunwale kissed my calves. That vanishing woman–I think I knew her. Heat washed my shoulders. My grip loosened. Ripples rippled below my feet. There she was again, staring up at me. Her small smile warped in the waves. #DarkPoetsClub

By Ella Leith And it doesn't matter how good I am (no) I try to be I know where I went last night and all the nights before I know the wild coast on which I stood I know all that I did and am. I am the raker on the shore where they herd the children into the sea. And I let them. And I watch them as they tumble in the surge as their bones are rolled clean as their eyes rubies, sapphires, emeralds scoured by the waves rattle like pebbles

By Zivah London salivated over our fresh meat tabloid hacks prostituted for pennies with sketches of our demise making his name making their name off our benighted backs Name us: Polly Nicholls Annie Chapman Elizabeth Stride Kate Eddowes Mary Jane Kelly He shall not be named #DarkPoetsClub #DarkPoetsPrizeV