Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jade Wright
Glimmers
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
and we silhouette peacefully
under the evening beams
kicking the dust as
The branches wave on
wands in the skyscape
I wonder how I’ve cried so much
When I could have been
stroking leaves between my fingers
and learning about different kinds of tree.
We watch the water twinkle
as the geese form a queue
taking off one by one
for an evening swoon
leaving only ripples
unphased by it all
as the sun sparkles off
we tell the cows
we’ll bring them more treats next time
and the ruffle gratefully on.
Incomprehensible then
that I’d thought, in my hopeless hours
that I didn’t want to be
here, couldn’t bring myself to stay
sick of scalding my palms on shooting stars
that I thought I could tame.
The bridge back is unsteady,
A metal glow in the dusk
warn from foot and paw prints,
bull-heavy with memories
solid with plans.
We crunch stones
over the other side
and I think of my bathroom pebble collection.
When I get home
I hold one in each hand
smoothing them until they shine
like I once did,
and might again
Jade Wright is a dog-loving bibliophile from Norwich. She has a BA Honours Degree in English and Creative Writing, and mostly writes poetry. She has previously had her work published in several literary magazines, including The Stand, Beyond Words, and After the Pause.
Ilhem Issaoui
My unromantic poem for this unromantic time as the world is asleep like a spiral shell or like the maddening stairs It takes time and effort to unfurl It happens naturally though, for most, Through nature's imperative Once we are old, though, we...
Thomas Day
Last Act It felt like the finale: the magic cloak skit bunglingly executed, given the ultimate twist, the audience killing themselves laughing – the master of mistiming surpasses himself. But it lingered on a shade too long: the gurn, the...
Daniel Richardson
Clocking on at the Sawmill After a successful breakfast of flapjacks and black coffee the Buddhist clocking on at the sawmill 250,000 board feet to cut and trim the moon still bright in the sky the sun rising wearing his big red shirt and his...
Z. D. Dicks
Distress call A red tractor hovers over its white rims scalping around small splinted trees and I suppress a sneeze at the green over rust fence as the beast grumbles Under amber pulse flashes in glass skull neon skinned a...
Deborah Harvey reviews ‘Two Girls and a Beehive : Poems about the art and lives of Stanley Spencer and Hilda Carline Spencer’ Rosie Jackson and Graham Burchell
I confess to having a personal interest in the art and the life of Stanley Spencer that is entirely fanciful, born of the fact that he and my grandmother, Hilda, both worked in war hospitals in Bristol during the first world war. ‘They could have met,’ I...
Erika Kamlert
Your other name The river, fat and glistening green, slithers through the city through the church yard, covered in windflowers Their petal confetti tore up winter so that spring arrived empty and unwritten with a naked, confessing light Only oval...
Jenny Edkins
Starlings Dusk, on a winter’s evening, overcast, cold, a stiff offshore wind blowing in from the Irish sea as people emerge from town streets, in twos or threes or solitary, to see this miracle. Small figures muffled to the ears all eyes as the...
Alan Cohen
Of Change and Collaboration Here in the Valley The sun each day Rises over the mountains At a different time in a different place In the East, some say But others see each day is unique And, flexible, cobble a self to suit And so they grow and...
Miles Salter
Crisps with Robin Hood I almost missed him, with those camouflage trousers on. He was, naturally, in the woods. I had shorts. ‘Are you Robin Hood?’ I asked. He stared for a spell, then nodded. ‘Where’s Merlin?’ I said. ‘And Little Elton?’ He...
