Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Here, dirt makes no distinction
between trench beds and the twirling earth.
Onion shavings conspire to life
by bringing fresh tears to our eyes.
The whole rotting heap hushes
over the tunnelling of pink worms
and it is a war kept close to the weeds;
potato skins kissing dried dandelion leaves
as if to clothe a skeleton key.
It’s best we shush. Pigeons
have occupied the neighbour’s clothesline,
and the evening’s keen to keep a lid on it
Ash Bowden is a Halifax based poet whose work has previously appeared in The Cherita and Confluence, and he is seeking more publications to work his way towards publishing a pamphlet. He can be found on Instagram @ashbowpoet, on bluesky @ashbowpoet.bsky.social and on Facebook at Ash Bowden Poet.
Sreeja Naskar
glass-tooth morning.
salt mouth.
i left the stove on just to feel wanted.
Gordan Struić
Still —
I kept
writing.
Sometimes
just:
“Hi.”
Margaret Poynor-Clark
Inside my bedroom I take a fresh blade
pull off my jumper, examine the ladder
in front of the mirror cut through my laces
rung by rung
Jenny Hockey
That’s when she went to ground,
after she disobeyed, painted her plastic tea set
red, hidden away in the playhouse they built
down where bindweed draped
Sue Proffitt
You and I have had many talks since you died.
Nick Cooke
If when you go to the barber today
He asks if you’d like him to ‘tidy up your ears’,
Think of all the wildest sprawling vegetation
That will never be tidied, or trimmed, by clippers or shears,
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots
Linda Ford
My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.