Today’s choice
Previous poems
Edward Alport
Too High to Reach
The tree will not let go.
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
It clings to the tree and the tree clings back.
The apple of its eye.
Not a healthy embrace, then.
More a parental obsession.
We’re past the equinox. November looms,
and the tree will not let go
It’s an ugly relationship, ultimately doomed,
But you’ve got to admire the stamina.
Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. Currently a writer and gardener. He has had poetry, articles and stories published various webzines and magazines and performed on BBC Radio and Edinburgh Fringe. His Bluesky handle is @crossmouse.bsky.social.
On the fifth day of Christmas, we bring you Paul McGrane, Kevin Reid and Helen Evans
As regular as Santa Claus, she’d call
around at Christmas, the next-door neighbour
and my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Williams.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we bring you Leusa Lloyd, Lydia Benson and Charlotte Johnson
It is always Christmas in the loft
On the third day of Christmas, we bring you K. S. Moore, Kate Noakes and Rachael Smart
Picture this:
little witch girl
in Alaskan wilderness.
On the second day of Christmas, we bring you Gill McEvoy, Rachel Burns and Cindy Botha
On the way to the registry office it snows, flecks of white like spittle hitting the steamed-up bus windows, I worry the petals from my wedding posy.
On the first day of Christmas, we bring you Hannah Linden, John White and Stephen Keeler
. . . Now the villages is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths . . .
Anna Chorlton
She curled emerald
tights about the core of
an oak
slumbering with thick bare
limbs.
John Greening
On Stage in a home-made model theatre, c.1967 Glued to your block, in paint and ink you wait for Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to stop. Smell of hardboard and hot bakelite. The lino curtain’s ready to go up. At which, the straightened coat hanger is shoved and on you...
Anna Bowles
Nothing bad can happen on a plane.
Engine fires, earache, hijackers; but no new grief.
Kirsty Fox
Winged Kirsty Fox is a writer and artist specialising in ecopoetics. She writes lyric essays and poetry, and has had work published by Apricot Press, Arachne Press, and Streetcake Magazine. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and is currently studying...