Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ansuya Patel
I Cast Out Everything
except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.
Sand becomes skin of light.
Its glass body trembles like a sea
animal remembering its salt.
I hold the lagoon’s sigh,
gondolas murmur, emerald waters
flowing along Venetian blue
like mistresses of fire. Its
slender nape of earth
burned to water,
air captured in crystal.
Everything dissolves —
paper, promise, footprint.
But this vase remembers how
light once learned to stand
still.
Ansuya was a joint winner of Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize in 2024. Her debut collection is out with Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her poems have been shortlisted for Bridport, Alpine, Aurora, highly commended at Erbacce. Appeared in Allegro, Artemesia, BlackinWhite, Crowstep, Drawn to the Light, Gypsophila, Ink Sweat and Tears, Rattle and Renard. She can be found on Instagram @ansuya_a_ and online at https://
On the Third Day of Christmas, we bring you Carole Bromley, Janet Dean, Pat Edwards
Silver Lining after Billy Collins What a relief it is not to be boarding that Qantas plane, the hours of boredom, the cramp, the endless movies and then that sudden view of Sydney Opera House. How much better to be pounding the streets wearing a...
On the Second Day of Christmas, we bring you Sean Smith, Rose Anderson and David Van-Cauter
Christmas Tree The chainsaw, a hive of angry wasps, chewed the bark and something tall and graceful collapsed with a low groan as its needles pricked the earth. Below, the city lights were plugged into the socket of the bay as we loaded the tree...
On the First Day of Christmas, we bring you Eithar Almosibeah, Numan Awan and Casey Brennan
Christmas gatherings I've lost my manners this quarantine. My ability to keep the curtains of my mouth stretched open for a smile suffered. My social skills, a turned off faucet in those months of longing for connection. Words refused to stream...
Janet Harper
bee I am all hum and thrum whirr sibilate vibrate zip zoom and swoop purr murmur hover manoeuvre bombilate and susurrate pulse race oscillate escalate and dive reverberate I am all bee Janet Harper’s...
JLM Morton
More Facts About Blue If I were to ask you to guess the world’s most wanted colour Not a chest of it reached England without the stain of human Darkened as if by bruising. In the womb of the vat there is life Gnosis at temporal frequency in...
Rose Lennard
Entwined Like honeysuckle tendrils she leans in to him and he to her young pliant bodies long smooth fingers interlaced heads together, murmuring like a small stream over rounded pebbles. She touches lips to his forehead and when they shift...
Julian Bishop
The Last Days Of The Giraffe She stared down from her beige towerblock onto an alien plain: zig-zag of roofs, wingless cranes, zebra crossings and a sea of litter - the new neighbours behaved like bushpigs. Once she used to hoof it down the Thames...
Tom Kelly
When they go they will still text you give an unexpected call keeping it brief, before a meeting but the phone is dead and it is the first time I have used that word. You will still shout up the stairs ring the bell there is no-one there key...
Hiba Heba
Cloudage I see you. Like me, you’re misshapen; a swamp in a dwelling. We merge; a suture quivers through us, the way nightmares take long strides on still waters. We’re camping under the mellow lilts of our alibi; the breath checks out. ...