Today’s choice
Previous poems
Thea Smiley
The Only Time I See My Father Swim
There’s a hiss as he eases himself in
to the green pool, steam in his smoky hair.
Fish flicker around his feet, his legs lift,
quiver like flames in the mountain river.
Water spills over the plank dam to trickle
across the rocks below, while a hot wind
funnels through the gorge, pushes ripples
against his skin as he rests in the shallows.
Sun glances off his chest and shoulders,
his eyes alight to find himself immersed,
weightless, the fiery core of endless bursts
that radiate like fireworks, shimmer
as he moves, the river a hissing fuse
lit by the sight of him swimming.
Thea Smiley won second prize in the 2025 Yaffle’s Nest competition, and was highly commended in the Ver Poets and Write Out Loud competitions. Her work has been published in magazines, and in anthologies from Renard Press and Arachne Press.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.