Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rebecca Cohen
Why don’t you eat pork?
If you don’t believe in God, my friend says,
why don’t you eat pork?
I have no answer for her. I have only
the blue-tacked mezuzah stuck to the doorway of my bedroom,
the dried wax still wedged in stubborn clots
on each branch of a bronze menorah,
the framed parsha, hooked onto a bent nail
crowding the far wall of my living room.
I have only the memory of a six-year-old
who sat on the floor at Ohel Leah
and hummed along to the davening,
cradling a wooden cat in her lap.
Her braided hair was longer than mine, her eyes wider.
But my mother always says, if she squints,
we share the same smile.
Rebecca Cohen is a poet based in London. Her work has appeared in West Branch, Across the Margin, and The Lincoln Review and she received her MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Matt Bryden
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys –
Colin Pink
to embrace you is like clasping
a fist full of briars
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.