Today’s choice
Previous poems
Tony D’Arpino
The Bee and the Lemon Tree
like a lover
the bee visits the tree
every day
on the window ledge
the little tree
is sky goddess
the breeze speaks
to the bee-wasp
love circles in the air
the hider
in the lemon leaves
a thought
hums a tune
scent dances
over the kitchen
Tony D’Arpino is an American poet based in Bristol. He is the author of four poetry collections and three pamphlets. His most recent collection is Sky Tree Sky (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), a sequence of poems based on the journals of the Scottish botanist David Douglas. His poems can be found in the Evergreen Review, the Winter Anthology, London Grip, Blackbox Manifold, and Elsewhere Literary Review.
Sam Szanto
He had been told the trolley
would be in the corridor at noon.
He could get sandwiches.
It was normally for mothers only
Tess Jolly
When I went round the next day
with a bottle of wine, his wife said
he was bruised down both sides
Jenny Mitchell
There’s no one in the flat when I come home from school,
my dinner in the fridge – poison on a flowered plate,
covered with tin foil, surrounded by full shelves of poison.
Sarah James/Leavesley
The sister I don’t have
has pockets bulging
with silver-foiled chocolate
Andy Humphrey
On screen, Dad was
the radical –
the introverted
pen-and-notepad kind,
Chrissy Banks
Sun comes out, my body opens
all its folding doors, its windows.
mulika ojikutu-harnett
remember when we lived
in the shrubs? stewed in a shared
room. its stench. our own
L.B. Jørgensen
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
Mel Joy
a line of hanging hooks
bent us into the dining hall
where we ate like birds