Today’s choice
Previous poems
Clara Howell
The Basement
The way a halved peach breathes, then rots
from the inside out.
Her tongue, a swollen garden of secrets.
The corners of her eyes
reach toward her burning shoulders.
Clara Howell is a poet born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Clara finds poetry as an opportunity to connect the ordinary with the extraordinary by putting her most honest and raw experiences on the page. Clara’s work has been previously published in Shot Glass Journal (Muse Pie Press), Anti-Heroin Chic, Cathexis Northwest Press, Route 7 Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal.
Sean Howard
beltane (may day poems, glastonbury 2019) pale- moon sun: slow, heavy drops on the site of arthur’s tomb (his queen in small print!) – a quarter of a millennium, the...
Zannah Kearns
The Farmer’s Prayer He lies across the cow’s prone side and prays for healing. Smooths her flank, half-expecting some bright heat, a glowing surge to match his prayer, a vision of angels, a chorus of song. Beside them lies her calf, warm and...
Anna Kisby
Faceless extinctions A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit – why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little...
Shelley Tracey
Under Fire The job I needed. The job that contempted me. The job on a Loyalist housing estate in a blank end-terrace house, a crime scene smeared clean. The house impossible to hearten or heat. The job that started each day with lighting a fire...
Sharon Larkin
Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...
Hélène Demetriades
Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...
Srinjay Chakravarti
* the tattered scarecrow: a raven perches on its shoulder * fireflies . . . sparks from a hammer on the anvil * spring dust sparrows squabble in the forenoon * a dry leaf on the ground . . . a death’s head moth * a silent gong inside the pagoda . . ....
Setareh Ebrahimi reviews ‘The Shape of a Tulip Bird’ by Christopher Hopkins
This book has an unusual premise in that it’s about something you wouldn’t want to read about. It’s about one of the most difficult subjects – child loss – and yet Hopkins’ writing allows the subject the sensitivity and accessibility that it needs. The...
Sam Hickford
John Clare on the Tube Frit by the crankling train that storms the brigs of Harrow clock-a-clays & woven twigs are soodling passengers - theyre sleeping tight clothéd in rawky natures faded light & younkers maul & lease their mothers...