Today’s choice
Previous poems
Iris Anne Lewis
Blodeuwedd ensorcelled by Gwydion
And so I went into the owl.
Eyes, green as moss,
darken to black. Oak tassels
spell-woven to feathers.
A blossom-soft body
wrath-scorches to brown.
Broom flowers harden to bone,
curve into beak, curl into talons.
Tiny red buds now remnants
of mouse, packed into pellets.
They stick in my craw,
spit out as vomit.
Shunned by sparrows, harried by crows,
doomed to fly lonely at night.
When he rides his spurs
through night-sighing woods
I loom out of trees,
my meadow-sweet face
moon-bright and savage.
Iris Anne Lewis is widely published. Featured in Black Bough Poetry and Poetry Wales she has won or been placed in many competitions. Her first collection Amber is available from Amazon or contact her on @irisannelewis.bskysocial; X and Instagram @irisannelewis.
Steve Komarnyckyj, Anna Bowles and Lynnda Wardle for Holocaust Memorial Day
where I saw you praying through the angle of the door
Now hangs only in my mind I breathe on its glass wipe away fly specks
Annie Wright
Sing silver times, shimmering columns
of light on the wine-dark, temple
to moon-eyed Hecate, the insatiable.
Magnus McDowall
We rolled out on Seven Sisters Road,
two crates of Tyskie empty in my stairwell.
We were talking from the chest, walking backwards
crackling air above our heads like streetlights
Yucheng Tao
But look here, I turned my head
and discovered the Denver Museum
waiting,
nerve, a soft-boned
species hums
Sarah Boyd
He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and
Samantha Carr
You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps
Helen Akers
we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it
Jenny Robb
By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.
Diane Webster
Squirrels dream of a cougar,
a cougar given permission
to crouch like an assassin
awaiting its prey . . .