Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anya Reeve
Walnut
Stubborn, we closed our fists
To better ward away the brume
From inner life, our threads of blood.
The cold an outward skin to glove
A sacred, futured inwardness.
Year’s end will scuff and scrape.
Grey ice, slush. Men worry
The postal; fish is wrapped.
Snow keeps the fewterer;
Passage is trapped.
Hidden is the one bright eye—
Lozenged singularly into bark—
The seed or pip of steadfastness,
The kernel kept against the dark.
Anya Reeve was recently shortlisted for the Philip Hoare Prize for Non-Fiction, 2025. Venues include Tears in the Fence (forthcoming), LINSEED Journal (forthcoming), Snow lit rev, The Rumen, Blumenhaus Magazine, the Modernist Review, the Oxonian Review, Gifts Returned by the River (2025) ed. Iain Sinclair. Website: anyareeve.cargo.site
Dave Wynne-Jones
And did she break your heart?
A woman asks, perhaps imagining
A fallen chalice . . .
Simon Maddrell
Four years in Knockaloe was a living
inspiration for inventor Joseph Pilates.
Tom Kelly
At thirteen I am competing with James Joyce,
encouraging pain, at the very least discomfort.
Nick McGaughey
And here you are slid from the rain
under my door, “s” -ing along the cool
checks in the hallway.
Poetry from UEA MA Scholars 2024/2025: Grace Phillips and On Zi Rui
You bought peppermint and bubbles,
monologued in the corner.
You barely looked at me twice.
– Grace Phillips
I looked at the neon lights
Gazing, I asked myself :
“What am I sourcing for now that I am without you ?”
– On Zi Rui
Jade Prince
What is here for us but these walls and the
pearls of sweet yearning behind them
Esha Volvoikar
The earth cracks and we are left
with the same shared moon.
She peers through my lattice window
and hides behind your city’s smoke.
Violeta Zlatareva
The neighbor is a devout woman.
She bakes bread and lights candles
Robin Vaughan-Williams
I’ve got all this money lying around.
Have you got anything you can do with it?