Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jennie Howitt
wild cows
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands. Will roll
down to feed the roots below. Then the weeds will follow.
Weeds will grow next spring. Weeds will unfold
as bulbous udders without holes
– un-milked –
with hip bones wider than a reach
Jennie Howitt is a writer and performer from Shropshire, working on bog and wetland poetics. She recently judged a competition and gave a workshop on bog poetry with the Poetry Society. Their work has been featured in Pamenar Press, Poets Choice, Ariel Magazine, Bedford Square Review, Writers Block, Beyond Words magazine, and multiple Young Writers anthologies. They have won and been commended in various Poetry Society competitions.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Paul Stephenson, Jem Henderson
How two men can become
four men can become
eight men
Play, for National Poetry Day: Elena Brake, Karen Downs-Barton, John Mole, Eleanor Holmes
Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.
Jade Wright
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
Ruth Lexton
The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.
Claire Booker
Never has there been so much interest
in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth
like the little man in a weather clock.
Jacob Mckibbin
my brother saw his attacker
at a petrol station
Janet Hatherley
He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him
twenty-eight years older, not eighteen.
Syed Anas S
We are the ones
who see big crackers
burst every day—