Today’s choice
Previous poems
Viv Fogel
At the End of the Class
- The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me
- For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her
- Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah?
- How did she find out/ realise/ discover that I was Jewish?
- I was shocked/ unprepared/ almost ashamed that she’d asked me
- Would that matter/ affect her?/ impact on our work together?
- Would she still trust/ accept support/ be taught by me?
- I wanted to explain/ dissociate from/ apologise for the genocide.
- I am silent/ confused/ there are no words. We exchange a look.
- Did something like recognition/ warmth/ sisterhood/ flit between us?
Viv Fogel London-based psychotherapist, poet, artist, grandmother, activist daughter of refugees. Her poems are published in many anthologies and journals. Recent collection is Imperfect Beginnings (Fly on the Wall Press, 2023) and she’s currently co-editing the writings of women in Afghanistan, to be published in October.
Kay Feneley
Some days I must immerse myself in the waters
These days are more than others
Monday 09.06 – a sewage overflow has activated
David I. Hughes
He does not shout. He charts.
Where treaty lines once hung like old nets,
he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade.
Anne Stewart
Huddled on the cat’s blanket,
hyenas crying through the night.
Scribbled notes regretting tea,
Mark Czanik
I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers,
and the sacrifices they made following their hearts.
Stephen Chappell
She has a way of tilting your head
as if lining up a thought.
Tristan Moss
I try
not to think
about my daughter’s
condition
when I
hug her
Susan J. Atkinson
I tell you my heart is breaking
but the heart has four chambers
and is not shaped like a heart at all
Peter Daniels
No, no one is who they think they are,
nor what we think they are, either:
the demon inside is thinking it
and you can’t tell him.
Paul Stephenson
Like one of those horses
on the carousel
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole