Today’s choice
Previous poems
Oliver Comins
Milk break, lunch break
Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.
An ample fence stood between them and the farm
where their voices entwined with summer air,
sounds of village families, echoes of belonging.
Between the breaks, a country silence rose—
various nestling of feet in grass, a distant thuck
of axe on wood and that sibilance of leaves.
The school is closed now, converted, gone.
There are no breaks to freshen up the days
or disperse the background rumble of transport.
The hills are closing in, their strict rows of pine.
Oliver Comins recently returned to the Midlands after living in the Thames Valley and West London for many years. His poetry is collected by The Mandeville Press and Templar Poetry.
https://templarpoetry.com/
Chika Jones
Beautiful Nubia sings And I remember my father dancing, A 2 step shuffle, Hips swinging, Palms face down, Elbow to waist, Lopsided smile. Seven mountains, Seven streams, And I remember my mother smirking, Face slightly raised, Back resting lightly...
Jen Feroze
Maternal Audiology Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Madrigal, Ekphrastic Review, Chestnut Review and Atrium, among others. Her first collection, The Colour of Hope, was published...
Laurie Eaves
pulling leicester from a plastic tube in a southbank market the marketwoman with tie dye hair flogs musty paper maps. spreads your hometown before us, slightly crinkled. in the crowsfoot creases your fingertips tease the contours, unfurl the...
Hiram Larew on World Poetry Day
Hardly This little what called big These squeaks that think they are rules The drips that imagine themselves storming These less than nothing headlines or empty spotlights This barely hardly that struts so special Are what I call a pile of...
Nina Parmenter
Woman 2.0 Woman 1.0 had bagged half the market but further growth eluded us. Aesthetic upgrades! barked the CEO. We hired a consultant. The fur trim lacks thought, he hissed at the kick-off meeting. It needs moving HERE. THIS area screams for...
Daya Bhat
* first rain- puddling up to gather the sky * midnight parade on my wall, insomniac car lights * still holding her own among the who’s who - crescent moon Daya Bhat from Bangalore, India enjoys writing free verse and short form...
John Davies
Afterthought She knits something pink with curved needles, pauses only to check and recheck the lines of code that define the pattern she nibbles with her fingers. She casts off the raised levels of FHA, her daughter’s ovulation, the tantalising...
Mick Corrigan
From the Blue Life won’t be contained by how far the horizon, we don’t compose the song of each other but revel in the days of making. Love carries the seeds of its own tragedy and you can’t come through it unscathed, but endure the days of...
Matt Gilbert
Afoot Only, when your face slams into solid glass, somewhere outside Dorking – a squared-off edge unmentioned in map or guide – do you realise what’s going on, presence noted by a watchful deer, wary at the edge of woods, the skulk of abandoned...