Today’s choice
Previous poems
B. Anne Adriaens
Fancy etymology for a vacant lot
The French term terrain vague enfolds
a plot of land I thought at first was vague,
undefined and malleable. As a noun,
this vague echoes on the edge of its meaning:
perhaps a patch of earth evoking a wave,
capable of conjuring the sea.
I’d picture the nettles, brambles,
dandelions and daisies swaying in the breeze
that precedes the first tide,
that would inch its way in from nowhere
to gently wet the grit and salt the rubble—
until the smell of brittle paper,
old ink and dust, rises from a dictionary:
this is an empty space, a new start. For rubbish
and weeds are matter too, however dismal and
dismissed. We can build a dream on rubble.
B. Anne Adriaens’ work has appeared in various publications, including Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, Poetry Scotland, Stand Magazine and A New Ulster. Her pamphlet Haunt was highly commended in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2024.
Konstandinos Mahoney
Peace Pipe Now! she goes. He sucks hard, the bowl seethes, smoke shoots up the stem, down his throat, fills his lungs. He tries hard to hold it in, coughs, chokes it out in racking spasms. She laughs. What’s he like? He hopes this will bring them...
Stephen Kingsnorth
Release This prisoner, isolation wing, wounded, clipped, in stutter nest, unfettered need, communicate, beyond the clamp, a grind of teeth, stumped, just left, ignored, but there. Light all night, the clock reset, sidereal, side-tracked from norm,...
Jakob Angerer
Places Other People Live Orange hilltops in nice winters glimpsed through wet windows on quiet mornings with safe people tiny lights glint at night, illuminate a friendly darkness where people come home in nice cars. Rainy days spent indoors or...
Marta Wolny
Can’t Name Trees Either Plastic spoons, no bellies to show for, scooping the cream left unswallowed, strew the pavement like bird food. Who’s to say it’s unnatural? Street parties are well straddled heaving from recycling bins, We were thrown, we...
Julie Stevens
Zip Wire to Freedom (after Simon Armitage) I write in praise of air. It was just me clothed in a translucent glide, dressed as a thunderbolt, blurry-eyed holding the sky in my hair. To the top in shocking daylight, then helped to lie face down. I...
Sarah L Dixon
To Frank, on going to High School Be bold and push open doors. Embrace the subjects that thrill you. Maths. Drama. Art. Endure those you hate and do them well. History. Literacy. Dance. Life is about balance. Find your tribe. The weird ones. The...
Louisa Campbell
Life Skills Module 3 1.1. Often misunderstood: Stem cell research Children Trigonometry Joy Choose two. Compare and contrast. 1.2. In autumn, trees weep their leaves, ready to bud again in spring. Does this make you sad, or happy? 1.3. Your...
Rebecca Gethin
Dead-spit My father kept what little he had of my mother in a drawer. It branded his next wife as second. She tipped the contents onto a fire she’d lit in the garden – photos with deckled edges, wedding pictures in card sleeves, snaps of my...
Philip Dunkerley
Medlar Jelly This is going to be a pre-Raphaelite poem about the fruit of the medlar tree that grows in parterres by the West Wing. They leave the fruit long on the tree so that it can blet (good word) to its heart’s content. Then the gardeners...