Today’s choice
Previous poems
Hannah Linden
Humanoid
I was cutlery left out in the rain, rusty
by morning, a side-slipping fiddlestick
desperate for music, starved for company.
You were a knockoff BOGOF version
of a briny punk with a commitment phobia
permanently out of your habitat and time zone.
We were observable repairs, reorganised
schedules looking for a fix, butchered
invoices and recriminations.
They were observing aliens, measuring
intonation and feedback loops. And we
let them cut into us because we felt
we owed them for letting us play ‘being
human’. And we were wild and free
as they loaded us into the future machines.
Hannah Linden won Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021 & 2nd prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), shortlisted for Saboteur Award 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social
Bel Wallace
Interior My dear, I washed you out of my sheets. And now I sleep softly in them. My dreams are sweet and free. I opened the windows to air out your smoke. I liked it for a while, how it held the past in its wispy fingers. I emptied your cigarette...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Rachel Burns, Lauren Middleton, Hedy Hume
I start the day early with a cup of tea.
A new diary asks I make an affirmation,
while cleaning my teeth.
I have nothing to offer –
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas we bring you Mary Mulholland, Edward Heathman, Edward Alport
No Nordmann firs in Bethlehem.
No holly or ivy. But pomegranate,
almond, fig and olive trees to anoint
with signs of blessing and peace.
And houses don’t smell of Balsam
On the Tenth Day of Christmas we bring you Rupert Loydell, Ruth Aylett, Eithne Cullen
The village is made of darkness and wood smoke
and the hunting owls sounding from the garrigue.
On the Ninth Day of Christmas we bring you Mark Connors, Michelle Diaz, Sue Finch
Today I am in church again. I have come for silent reflection in one of my favourite seats, but it feels a little closer to the edge than usual.
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Mnatzaganian, Rebecca Gethin, Jenni Thorne
Towards the Solstice
owls fly closer in December twilight,
call to each other across the garden.
Martin Fisher
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Craig Dobson
Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.
Steven Taylor
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City