Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anna Brook
on accident (for Adrienne Rich)
I want to borrow gods
(as Adrienne does,
though she knew better)
their sad logic
their templates
but there’s always a tell, no?
a too close accuracy
not confidently misremembered
studied
would you be disappointed
out of habit
like a god
in quiet wrath
to know better,
but to choose otherwise
and I’m arrested and confused
by the smell of roasting potatoes,
such a fundamental warmth,
damning though
as Persephone 😉
I think that, perhaps I already wrote it
by accident
on accident he says, Americanised, young
not mine
when I wrote something about the ground
about splitting
but you would be disappointed
out of habit
in your quiet wrath
seriously though,
why do I think, in envy, of the shallow underworld
dug up in pots in the garden
by the foxes
soft earth falling away at their snouts
mounds and pointed hollows left
some brightness extracted
Anna Brook (they/she) is a writer, poet, lecturer and mother. They explore difficult-to-articulate experiences, such as the strangeness of early motherhood, grief and trauma. Anna’s full-length poetic-prose work, Motherhood: A Ghost Story, is out with Broken Sleep Books in September 2025.
Nigel King
Turn the mud. Bo Peep’s head tumbles out,
wide-eyed, mouth a little open.
Mohsen Hosseinkhani translated by Tahereh Forsat Safai
Men are the color of soil
Women are sitting on the ashes
Stephen Komarnyckyj
you are the shadow slipping through the mirror
Jo Farrant
We’re stuck on a scene, frozen, like the ice cubes I begged Mum to get with the little flowers in them. Like taking a test in the school gym but your knees are so big they’re banging into the desk.
Douglas K Currier
Afternoon hangs in the air, and the birds leave.
Frogs begin to talk to each other, and the heat congeals.
Stephen Chappell
If you could call that friend,
the special one,
the one you always love and know loves you
Marius Grose
Until the dead, sucked from leaf mould graves
are rising in forest sap, to make connections
inside strange green brains
Andrew Keyman
a day later you’re in l.a. picking out cars with the magic
only money can buy
Chrissy Banks
So many times I walked
head down half asleep
along that ordinary road to school