Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jean O’Brien
Spring is in the Air
Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted,
birds peck with blunted beaks,
pushing up are the blind green pods
of what will soon be yellow daffodils,
given light and air.
I wait to hear news about you,
hear that you resurfaced,
struggled up throught the ether,
your broken ribs tied tight
with titanium wire
holding your heart in place.
Your spread chest stapled together
skin taut like delicate tissue
and pocked with steel.
I am afraid with spring unfolding
you will ripen and split apart
your heart bursting with daffodils.
Jean O’Brien is an award winning poet whose latest collection Stars Burn Regardless was published by Salmon Poetry (Irl) in 2022. She was most recently shortlisted in this year’s Bridport Prize. She currently tutors in poetry/creative writing. www.jeanobrienpoet.ie
Suzanne Scarfone
truth be told
part of me has lived
in this box of disquiet
for years and years
let’s see
Julia Webb
Because a woman woke up
and her head had become a flower.
Freyr Thorvaldsson
A candle eats away at air
At the same rate that we do
Konstandinos (Dino) Mahoney
A teacher guides his pupils past headless marble torsos,
dusty cabinets of tiny Attic coins, pockmarked stylobates,
to a large clay pithos . . .
Maggie Brookes-Butt
For you, with your toddler bendiness,
the squat is a natural, easy position
while I hurt-strain, thinking of miners
crouched outside their front doors
Sally Michaelson
Heads under bonnets
mechanics catch a wiff
of a girl passing
Carmen Marcus
extract from The Keen Is ar scath a Chéile a mhaireann na daoine: It is in the shadow of each other we live. Watching with the dying. Travelling with the dead. Phyllida Anam-Áire; The Celtic Book of Dying, Findhorn Press, Vermont, 2022 Àite...
Nina Parmenter
When The Threat of Hell Failed
God created the lanyard,
Bel Wallace
Month by month I felt my muscles harden
these hefty horns grew from my long skull