For the first time this year, The White Review Poet’s Prize was open to poets based anywhere in the world. Last month we announced a shortlist of eight poets. ...
The tree has fallen
in the middle of the yard,
cracked to quarters
during last night’s storm
which played its elegy
then left in a rush
The angry lover flips
land on its back,
leaves the earth a stripped
and stained mattress
Rain has reduced a crab
nestled by broken bark
to a small shell
rotting in the midday heat
Children gawp
at its glistening armour,
imagine its claws break
men like molluscs,
then piece its home together,
splint by splint
A gardener finally
announces its condition
to stop them photographing
the battered form
anyone could have
mistaken to be sleeping
after Mahmoud Darwish Why is a boy an exclamation, and why are his dead a period?, why do...
shed coral scales
& sunrise In England, the inside
is ashen She touches tangerine flowers,
when a woman
exiting her home in Camberwell cries,
go back to where you come from, as if
she carries still the scent
of dragon-fruit I swallow
cherry stones I flower
your abandoned garden
in my belly, to carry in me the whispers
of all your lost colours I dream
in shades of lilac Sometimes
my tummy hurts
