Today’s choice
Previous poems
Charles G. Lauder
Craftsmanship
beneath night’s skin he unearths raw stones
serrated encrusted enigmatic cold
tumbling them in two-twenty grit wears away the dull
four hundred six hundred highlights the delicate
garnet’s exposed seam agate’s brittle dendrites
whilst softest serpentine disintegrates to dust
in quiet solitude he worries
facets of captured moonlight won’t be enough
in the age of electric light blue light
boutiques and diners that never shut
the glow of irrelevance radiates
Charles G. Lauder, Jr, is an American poet who lives in the UK. He’s the author of the collection The Aesthetics of Breath (V.Press, 2019) and three pamphlets, the most recent being Year of the Rat (Blueprint Poetry Press, 2025).
Ira Lightman
Laid down, his upraised face is
White – offputting – on a plumped pillow.
Dave Wynne-Jones
“The all-consuming passion
is rarely found
more than a recipe
for misery,”
you read
Pat Edwards
He appears like a paper bag blown onto the feeder,
punching his beak time and again into the peanuts.
Kate Noakes
If you follow faerie lights
that wisp where boardwalk
becomes trackway, make sure
you’re stocked with milk,
or bread and salt.
Gopal Lahiri
My father stitched an evening with current ripples
spill over rocks and shadows gather at the corner,
Paul Loney
i was standing
very still
my mind
Mai Ishikawa
Taxi I took shelter under a tree, where you also sheltered. You looked at me awkwardly, as if to say Excuse me before shaking your feathers – a tiny droplet landed on my cheek. Suspended, we held each other responsible for the silence. We listened to the...
Lue Mac
Sad how things expire before you work out
what they mean. Like earlier I was noticing
the rose petals on the path, all damp and slick,
Alice O’Malley-Woods
For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You - indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently, never...