Today’s choice
Previous poems
Tadhg Carey
Pivotal
When our plaything ricochets
falling
who knows where
everything hinging
on the line
there is a precise moment
when nothing is certain
a glorious terrifying uncontrollable
wait
the receptacle of our hopes
poised mid-
air with infinite trajectories
across the open field of possibility
time is slowed to an inhalation
and as I write this I am helpless
as an onlooker watching
from the sidelines
open-
mouthed
on the threshold of expression
not knowing where this will all end
nor what will follow the breaking
of the line
Tadhg Carey is a writer from Ireland. He is a Shared Island Freedom to Write Project awardee, was selected for the Cúirt International Festival New Writing Showcase, and was highly commended in the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook competition.
Celestine Stilwell
Little boy dream My brother used to burn ants with a magnifying glass. I blamed the sun for tempting his half-talking, grazed knees to kneel on hot tarmac. He’d run his pink-licked fingers through the slab’s trenches, collecting worm eggs beneath...
Jenny Robb
Shap Fell In the murk of evening and car-heater fug, a thud. My five-year-old head hits the roof. The sheep is not quite dead. Bloodied on the top of Shap Fell her breath disappears into mist. No cars pass. I pray to see the sheep haul up onto matchstick...
Ben Hartridge
Spring Song I remember spring and everything a freshly washed clean smell of green. A newborn kind of rain left the parked cars shining like a passed shower. I remember cycling, the tarmac deep black and streaming, past the shoppers queueing the high...
Molly Beale
Wanting Joy Glory be to the changeable wretch I am condemned to dance within. Spirits thumb a ride surging synapse and hurling ourselves in directionless tangles. Joy is hard. Joy must. I seek sepulchred secret caves inside guts where sin...
Prerana Kumar
LAZY ABECEDARIAN FOR SUMMER MORNING PRESERVE ROUTINE A pile of kitchen-stove kindling twists Braids with achamma’s kuttichattan hair ribbon Creasing her fingers when she crushes a twig Dew-dropping her brew for new mothers in Early morning rose-light we...
Maddy Kinkead
spiralling during Planet Earth Attenborough’s voice echoes in my head (like God) He says that we need to act now (draws us all in with baby orangutans and birds that look like aliens.) Because otherwise, no one cares. Does he know that? Current levels of...
Fred Melnyczuk
Mountain in Winter White ground, and white sky / / / And white trees, and white light. Hiking along the path of a mountain’s ridge. . . Twisted branches hang like misshapen cages; bird-prisoners sing their little laments inside / / / And it is so cold....
C.P. Nield
Intruder A rattle spikes through my ear. Tin, tin, tin. Tintinnabulation. Fingers seeking their way in – sneaking, screaking fingers, scratching at the metal, scrambling for the bolt. Ding dong. What a racket! Tin, tin, tin. I’m on the sofa blinking at...
Kitty Donnelly
High An arctic tern will fly 10,000 miles to flourish in two summers worth of light; so I was high after he died, chasing sun on the wing, though directionless. I swallowed three green capsules every night, peristalsis pulsing them through my scorched...