Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rhonda Melanson
Holy Ground
I imagine my mother pulling apart my praying hands. Don’t be such a holy roller, she’d taunt. Get over here, quit committing to the ethereal, get down on those knees and help your family pick strawberries. The bending made me sulky. The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand. Items to be plucked, washed, diced, plopped into pies and loaves, scooped into freezer bags. No one ever pointed out to me the rootedness of a carrot, pointy and orange, how within the soil, it etched out its own positive space. No one ever demonstrated to me how peas slept soundly in their own alien habitat, spaceship pods, rudely awakened by earthly poachers like me. I would have worshipped them. Extracted their baby knowledge, considered their plucked sacrifice as I consumed them, each little pearl lolling on my tongue. With this knowledge and other pursuits of gardenly delights, I might very well have wrenched back my hands, held within me a berry of fertile prayer:
red as strawberries
exploding seed and colour
spillage most holy
James McDermott
Virus six dark the idiot’s lantern shows me rainbows you branded sick which made me wear masks wash hands as if Lady Macbeth breathless gagging until I spit it out blue eyes turn to pansies fag butts syringes before a ten year talk...
Elizabeth McGeown
The Ultimate Painting - Study for Portrait VII (Francis Bacon) A found poem using the text describing Study for Portrait VII on moma.org Seated on a throne-like gilded chair He endeavoured The image of open mouthed terror is a recurring...
Sarah Radice
Being Autistic I am handed a racket and ushered onto court. An avid tennis fan, I am awed by being in the place champions are made. But I realise that, although I’ve grasped most of the rules by watching tournaments on tv - in the safety of my...
Sarah J Bryson
Knitting It’s Grandma Gibson who starts me off gently correcting me, praising the stitches pointing out how it’s written on the pattern. Shows me how to cast on. Then Mum’s Mum, Grandma Gasson tries to improve my grip, gets me to wrap the wool...
Gareth Writer-Davies
Kenwood Chef I blow dust (an epidermis of powdered sugar) from the plastic body and think of what Mother conjured from spatula whip and grinder (each task with its own attachment) never tiring helping hands that saved time for the hundred and one...
D. Parker
D. Parker spends most of her days surrounded by books both at work and at home. In her free time she reads and occasionally lets words form on paper.
Lydia Harris
weather forecast for the funeral there is a chance of deer grazing of mica rising in stone of knee deep sphagnum of two blank pages there is a chance of roses of lips being sealed of starling clouds yielding of a gurgle in the ditch of snipe...
Anna Maria Mickiewicz
The state of war For Ukraine Storm. Broken spruces like matches In the Estonian forest. Spruces or pines? Broken our souls, Those, who did pass across, will not understand… Those, who did not pass across, will not understand As well ...
Sam J Grudgings
The birds are spies, they report to the trees The birds don’t grant the day without sacrifice. We feed them gold bullion in place of corn. We are starving. We gift them an audience to our momentary. Tomorrow has gone, so we offer air burials as...