Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ian Hickey

 

 

 

Stop

When the half-light drops below the horizon
the birth of darkness comes and I can see
myself in the mirror of the moon
madness shining in the moonlight
The birdsong gone The hedges
silent The world edges
to a place of no
return and I’m
trying to
tell it
stop
.

 

 

Ian Hickey lives in County Clare, Ireland. He was winner of the Waterford Poetry Prize in 2022. His poetry has appeared in The Waxed Lemon, The Belfast Review and The Stony Thursday Book.

Chrissie Gittins

      Surge The day approaches from round the corner, narcissus insinuate themselves into the soil, a jay rises high, too pink and beautiful to be contained. Beginning of buds sing at the top of the flame bush zinging like lemon zest on a tired tongue....

Martin Potter

      Allotment Service Metal in the sky: ash-cold afternoon The big fork: foot on its shoulder Heavy handed: spearing the heap Slip through tangle: the prongs ring And layers gape: yellowing stalk-work Developing compost: the heat rises Vapours...

Terry Griffiths

    Change The general acceptance of the bicycle came suddenly. People that have helped me on numerous occasions who I’ll never meet: a counsellor, an academic mentor who is also the former. What does it mean to take charge of your mental health? And why for...

Clare Best

      A14 shifting left to right     slow lane middle lane back to slow lane     indicator tick-tick-tick indicator off     rearview articulated truck coming up fast on inside     grey van moves right     moves left again     silver sun glaring off wet...

Dan Hughes

      Spaghetti in the road I saw a piece of spaghetti in the road, not a fork. That stringy pasta piece didn’t have two choices: a ‘this way or that’, nor an ‘L and R’. It went all ways to show me that time is tangled, tangled as a pocket headphone...

Connor Sansby

      Mer de Ballade I’ve been keeping a jar of seawater on my desk. There’s a tragedy in keeping a wild thing captive. In the morning, I see the salt-rim footsteps Of a retreating tide, frozen like a mausoleum. Our bodies are two thirds water. The...

Kate Noakes

      That’s best to try In the magic mirror of competition, you’ll never win, best not to try. You have that loose neck, goosey-goosey, and those crow’s feet around your eyes. With their ebony-haired youth and rosy-lipped beauty, step-daughters are the...

Marcelle Olivier

      halfmens namaqualand the halfmens feeds off rare fog that travels inland from the coast, and struggles to seed. she is my sentry to the afterlife: the hills here look dead but they burn with grievances and blooms; they paint their poisons daily....

Jon Alex Miller

      Aum Desire shudders like a yawn to my surface, a deep song rising for air – a sound at the centre of myself. Sometimes I can feel it in my fingertips. Other times a colony of nights confounds me and my heart stammers. Without sound my body is just...