Today’s choice
Previous poems
Nick Cooke
Between the Ears
For Seán Street, in celebration of his 80th birthday
(2nd June 2026)
Molluscous receivers, would that you could
turn your talents inwards, and pick up
all that goes on in the cerebral swamp
that separates you, with its eighty-six
billion neurones, the tiny light-black
entities of which Poirot so often spoke –
along with oodles of (possibly telltale)
fat. ‘I wish you could hear yourself’…
how often have we heard or said this,
forgetting ‘There’s none so deaf’ is the best
of mottoes? – and those myriad neurone-
radars will only work if the lower-sited organ
(on the left-hand side of the thorax)
is disinclined to switch them off,
as it can, dear molluscs, as it does.
Poets applaud the noble ticker ruling
the noggin, but you’ll think otherwise:
the gift of self-audition’s no small feat,
and the heart most times should stick
with its basic bloody business – to beat.
Nick Cooke has had around a hundred poems published or accepted, in a variety of outlets including Acumen, Agenda, The Dark Horse, Ink Sweat & Tears, the High Window Journal and I Am Not A Silent Poet, along with around 40 poetry reviews. In 2016 his poem ‘Tanis’ placed first in a Wax Poetry and Art contest. He was a featured poet on the Flapper Press site in December 2025.
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts
Kate Bailey
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.
Ibrar Sami
Across the barren land
where blood once played its savage Holi,
the fearless migratory birds
have returned again.
Anyonita Green
It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.
I peer at it, nose close enough
to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,
inhaling through slightly parted lips
Soledad Santana
Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern
from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed,
the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence
to the end of the foot-ball pitch.