Today’s choice
Previous poems
Piers Haben
High-Visibility
The precondition for being a ghost is not only death but faith in an afterlife. Kit Fan.
When I lost loved ones last year
I thought my childhood fears would return.
Sleeping in mum’s house waiting
for the seen and felt,
the stupid spoon on the ouija board,
cold coming into a room.
Like when I swept offices, and ran
from the room with dummies in.
But now I find the absence more terrifying.
Oh god, maybe I don’t miss them enough.
Maybe the dead move amongst us
and we hurry through the ghost city,
like commuters, eyes down,
unaware of the cleaners coming home,
the men in high-vis jackets congregating
at the edge of the floodlit road.
Piers Haben is a British poet and recovering economist, currently living on Pico Island, Azores, where his writing explores the intersections of labour and island life, whilst also physically working with stone and soil. Piers was recently shortlisted for the 2025 Wolverhampton WoLF poetry competition.
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
Amirah Al Wassif
Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,
Mark Smith
In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected
Toby Cotton
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
Ansuya Patel
except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.