Today’s choice
Previous poems
Pratibha Castle
Conscience
as taught her by the nuns was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue pony frolic legs
a choke-hold on convolvulus excess
seductive as leaves skittering over moon
scatter grass dandelion pappus weighted
with girlish longings a burr hooked
onto the undercarriage of a rook in flight
that b r e a k i n g f r e e nuzzles into earth’s
amorous embrace wooed by rhapsodies
of amoral worms nurtured by clouds lavish
as a toddler’s sulk blasé gaze of wolf or super moon
till a blackbird at spring’s edge pipes their tarantella
stirs the first tousle-headed dente-de-lion
sun-gold tongues ravishing a winter-drowsy bee
Pratibha Castle – a finalist in FFP Award, shortlisted in Fish, Live Canon and Bridport Prize, published widely including Under the Radar, Lighthouse, Stand, was awarded third prize in Sonnet or Not. Her pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a PBS winter selection 2023.
Charlie Baylis
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Kevin Higgins
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Natascha Graham
Summer in the 1990s Sunset. Mid-July with a cloudless blue sky electric pink and flared with gold The window frame of the caravan digs into my elbows I lean out further My best friend squashed against me Side by side Watching our dads sitting in...
Paul McDonald
Mother and Daughter (after the 2013 photograph by Gregory Crewdson) When your mother walks barefoot to your house, you welcome her, the February morning, pine-scented freeze that follows like a phantom through the door. A single set of tracks print snow into...
Sharon Larkin
Post-operative It would be a while before he touched alcohol or felt in any way frisky, he said. The stitches were too new. She understood. He asked her to look under the dressing. There was a little oozing from his new zip. It was bloodless....
Rizwan Akhtar
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Melanie Branton
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Tom Kelly
Singing With Elvis The Rediffusion is playing Elvis. I am sitting in our dining-room, not sure if we ever called it that. There is a yearning in the young Elvis hitting me like a wet clout. We bond, he is a long-lost brother, singing, ‘Are You...
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we bring you Helen Boden, Sarah L Dixon and Penny Ayers
Empties First of Jan, affluent suburb. Stockbridge, but it could be anywhere across the island, in Ely, Richmond, Beauly. In place of regretting they put their empties out, arranged by colour, size, acoustic property. Scores of bottles, neatened...