Today’s choice
Previous poems
Morgan Harlow
Notes after a walk: a tree that had caught its own fallen limb
She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
To hear footsteps running up behind you, and to turn around and no
one there. To see a crow gliding under the trees, a crane fly skittering on
the gravel driveway. Apple trees with fallen-off branches, why oh why.
The pattern of white under the tree, she had not recognized at first. Fall-
en petals.
Morgan Harlow’s work appears or is forthcoming in Elm Leaves Journal, Folio Literary Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Louisiana Literature, North Dakota Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and other journals. She teaches writing in Madison, Wisconsin and is the author of the poetry collection Midwest Ritual Burning.
Edmund Prestwich
Winter Weathers Rain, persistent rain, and the last leaves falling. Voices twittered feebly. What anxious shadows blue tits seemed then, fluttering through the bare trees’ foodbanks of branches. How I wished a luminous green bee-eater,...
Isabelle Thompson
The Romance Languages My mother is learning French in stumbling little phrases. Bonjour, Julien. Bonsoir. Who is Julien? Merci, Julien. Salut, Julien. Bonne nuit. I imagine a man dressed all in blue, drinking a glass of Badoit. ~Bonjour~, Julien,...
Ken Evans
The Passenger Via hand to hand and hand to mouth, they pass a line invisible. Via blast of air, puff of smoke, handshake, warm embrace, the tourist shares a secret, without telling us. Via soft-soled tread in airport lounge,...
Isabelle Kenyon
Yeah that place is a dump Tastes like poverty: wide roads, no one with fuel to ride them. Casinos and bingo- coins like wishbones, dream of swimming in them. Even here, shiny leaflets and theatre lights, the floor cries dust balls, DIY people for...
Morag Smith
River Teviot, Borders, 2020 The Bridge Guest House is peeled open, emulsioned walls still hung with summer landscapes, boys fishing, bedroom doors politely closed against the swell that excavates my sleep, unearths the time our neighbourhood was...
Lesley Burt
Capital ‘A’ Arches to begin: a gate, open to possibilities: a tree, sea, person, storm, war, religion, a nameless rose, as yet, unclaimed by labels. Are not divided by ‘The’. Lesley Burt has been writing poetry for about twenty...
Jacques Groen
WHEN an attic becomes garret SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 and we move away the furthest we can from street life coughs and kisses handshakes, smiles of love, in love and fear makes us shrink...
Kathryn Alderman reviews ‘Hex’ by Jennie Farley
As with her previous collection, My Grandmother Skating (Indigo Dreams), Hex explores ‘the extraordinary with the everyday […] myth, magic and fairy tale’, but goes darker. It quotes Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) ‘She was feeling...
John Doyle
Besançon : October 1991 Motorways in France stripped to their flesh of cars, of trucks with names of families who run small to medium fruit and veg companies near the Swiss border. France is mine, though - I'm almost sleeping, I know - France is...