Today’s choice
Previous poems
Patricia Minson
Wood Anemone
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.
The soil smells of damp books.
I see them — paper-thin,
spreading on the dark floor of the wood.
Still as a shut door.
Nothing moves —
not the nettles,
not even a rumour
of someone once there.
A nudge of wind tips
each flower cup.
They twitch, then settle …
like sleeves lined with lullabies.
White flicker. Then nothing.
No miracle. No change.
Just wind.
Just petals.
Just the usual business of vanishing —
a dry kind of wanting.
Patricia Minson is a writer and poet based in West Cornwall. Her work explores themes of inheritance, grief, and class, blending domestic detail with lyrical intensity. She was placed third in the 2025 Crysse Morrision Poetry Prize (Frome Festival), Highly Commended in the 2025 Wirral Poetry Festival Open Competition, and had two poems Commended in the 2025 South Downs Poetry Competiton.
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...
Alison Lock
Melting Iceberg It’s no good looking at a shooting star with a fly trapped in your eye. You hear the yawn above the skin tide mewling and popping like a calved whale while you spell out the words: mastodon, sabre-toothed tiger, giant bear. But...
Sarah Doyle
Sunstroke I knew a man with suns for eyes, he blazed with sex and golden lies, a burning shitstorm in disguise. How slowly do the seasons turn. The solar flares of hot desire cannot cleanse a cheating liar. The glaring fact: you play with fire,...
Abigail Ardelle Zammit
House, Coyo Atacama Desert Two men talking about sex, drunk, splattering words like spells – they'll bring in the culandero, the woman with fangs – Somebody has given herself prematurely. Somebody has fallen off a swing. Somebody knows the timing’s...
Kenneth Pobo
TIME OF PAUSE I’m what’s left in the toothpaste tube when squeezing won’t get any more out. I’ve often felt this way before. I need to pause, to be the quiet on the underside of an oak leaf. Let the wind come. I’m going to pause. I don’t know when...
Kate Ennals
Note To the Pathologist. Take a scalpel, cut along the white bone of breast fold back the flesh, there behind the ribs, you’ll see ribald laughter caged, gasping for breath. Between the red thread of capillaries you will discover a black patch...
Lynn Valentine
What was it like in the War, Granda? I became desert, death, murderer, a kind of killing machine. I washed my clothes in oil. I bartered my knife for water. I used my gun. I saw friends die over an officer’s stupidity. I was made to polish boots while the winds...
Ernesto Sarezale
A LONGER KISS (to John, 1963-2018) On a mound of ancient rubble opposite the Shish Gumbad, in New Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens, a sign announces in English “This Is Grave Not Allowed” and a brown dog howls. The dog struggles in circles to poke its muzzle through the...