Today’s choice
Previous poems
Denise Bundred
Starry Night Over the Rhône
Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas, Arles 1888.
A quay on the riverbank.
Lovers dissolve in a sheen
of violet and mauve — enveloped
by a forget-me-not cold glow.
The man’s harsh words are crests and troughs
of Prussian blue across the Rhône.
Hers are shrill — brazen lamplight descends
to russet-bronze, burns on troubled water.
Shadowed boats bereft of sail
absorb the surge and slap
constrained by a blue-grey chink
of mooring chains.
Above the brutal gold of gas-flame —
an ultramarine arc of sky flaunts
a swing of constellations —
emerald, ruby, sapphire
opal and polished lapis lazuli.
This night ‘more richly coloured than the day’
holds some remote hope
in the dazzle of a field of stars.
Denise Bundred has an MA in Writing and won the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2016. She has poems in various anthologies & magazines. Litany of a Cardiologist was published in 2020.
wordpress.com/denise-bundred
Liv Aldridge
A cross lights up in the distance, a bird skeleton. We roll by faith my inhale dry like the hoarse wind in the lungs of a chainsmoker. Bruised night skies and a flatpack cross over factories. Where does it come from? Does it cascade down on...
Rakyah Assam
THE SEA IS RISING The radio spits “The world is ending” and I sulk down the stairs half shame faced, mostly hungry. There is a lobster man in the stairwell that scares me -- the door propped ajar like a constantly crooked finger beckoning an unknown hither....
K. S. Moore
Field Trip Abercregan 1991 Even the river is dark . . . sun only gains entry through trees makes copper faces that turn as I wade. My net brushes tendrils from transparent cheekbones water framing each elegant pose: I want to put these girls on...
Zoe Piponides
This Oh So Bearable Lightness If you should lose this oh so bearable lightness be warned, I shall overturn your day, tear it apart, ensure it ends in the dark. I’ll mould your skin in sodium yellow, load you with enzymes till your gut swells...
Jane Ayres
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Kate Harper
The Youth Pastor We are in the church, the space where we swayed, arms high, singing and crying and feeling the power of the spirit pulse through us and around us. He has been circling for weeks, his eyes resting on her when he preaches chastity...
James Nixon
James Nixon teaches at Arden University and is completing doctoral research into the legacy of Arthur Rimbaud and hauntological poetics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a former Royal Holloway Emerging Writer Fellow, a...
Anthony Lusardi
no more chemo . . . lying in the snow to make a new angel * ambiguity among white clouds and black birds * last of dusk illuminating a sludge's slime trail * lanternfly crawling up a maple in a movie poster * sunday evening contemplating past...
benjamin cusden
benjamin cusden’s first pamphlet Cut the Black Rabbit is published by Against the Grain Poetry Press. His poetry has been published in the UK ; Canada ; the USA ; Brazil and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize & Live Canon’s...