Today’s choice
Previous poems
Clare Morris
Singing Lessons for Beginners
Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean,
So that she no longer spoke, just looked –
Her world reduced to a search for special offers,
Fluorescent beacons that steered her far from
Shelves profligate in their packaging.
Products cheapened by mismarking
Beat the solemn bounds of her fiefdom:
Broken baguettes, economy tubs of cooking margarine,
And a squabble of small change.
At night she dreamed of soft bread,
Burdened to the brim with baptismal butter,
Dripping with sybaritic saltiness,
Of moist fingers to be licked and sucked.
Her silent tongue tingled
With the marvel of the moment
As she strode across the heavens
And sang in sisterhood with the stars.
And she awoke and was singing still,
Her heart warmed with rebel fire,
As all marvelled at the great change in her.
Clare Morris is a performance poet, writer and reviewer, based in Devon, UK. Her most recent collection is Devon Maid Walking (Jawbone Collective, 2023 https://www.wessex.media/
Lucy Dixcart
Mushroom Picker Mushrooms grow well in chicken manure, but there’s a rumour the farm is experimenting with faeces from the local zoo. We traipse into the shed: a corrugated half-cylinder. I wrangle a ladder that’s taller than me, stuff blue...
Lynn Woollacott reviews ‘FOREST moor or less’ by Dawn Bauling and Ronnie Goodyer
A joint collection from two widely published poets opens with, ‘Crescent Moon Over Cookworthy Forest’ which introduces their personal love story – hidden for most of their lives – like the forest and the flora and fauna that inhabits the woodland. The...
Anne Symons
Off colour 1946: a green rabbit and a grey giraffe, crafted by her uncle in hospital in Palestine, where making leather toys was therapy. Good solid toys, and wipeable, sturdy in a toddler’s hand. She wobbled round clutching the giraffe by its...
Zoe Broome
Flashback One afternoon (in your next reincarnation) you’ll remember all this and laugh. Zoe Broome is a Yorkshire poet whose first collection, Back To Yesterday was published by Three Drops Press. When not writing, Broome can be...
Lewis Buxton
Boy Goes Swimming Boy dives so deep his parents can’t see him, holds his breath pulling rucksacks of air into his lungs. Under the water, his belly scraping the bottom of the pool, Boy opens his eyes and just before the chlorine-sting he sees...
Andrea Small
The generosity of the dead cannot be reckoned in coin or note is peculiar to the moment is subject to whim for the dead are not beyond fancy varies with the season (you might think it greatest at Samhain Dia de Muertos All Hallows’ Eve no: then...
Mathew Lyons
The Kiso Road For WSW I Kiso: clear as a bell among the mountains. Write me, the river says. Witness the road beside me. II The clouds are still tonight. The sky is smoke-blackened but the fires are cold. Time claims the haiku. The children grow...
Stella Wulf
M. Dubois’ Dreams Day is a blown clock, its last wisps ceding to horizon. Heron’s doppelgänger floats belly up on the lake; night, laid like a thousand year egg, breaks over her. The stir of wings whispers a prayer for earthly things; the quench...
Miki Byrne
Malt I was a sickly child and for my health Ma fed me Malt from a big brown jar. Glass, big bellied with a silvery lid that we used afterwards to hold a candle to light the cellar. Malt was thick. More gloopy than syrup or treacle and folded back...