Today’s choice
Previous poems
Janet Hatherley
The night before their wedding, Dad tells Mum two things
I.
He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him
twenty-eight years older, not eighteen.
It’s a bad blow. What’s done can’t be undone. Mum’s only choice
is a hostel for unmarried mothers.
She puts on a brave face—
better than finding out at the registry office.
II.
He’s a Russian Jew, came to England when he was seven,
his family fleeing through the night in a horse-drawn carriage.
Mum’s intrigued, doesn’t know much about Jewish people
or Russia, imagines a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Years later, I discover escaping a pogrom in the Ukraine
is his father’s story.
Dad was born in Nottingham.
Janet Hatherley’s pamphlet, What Rita Tells Me, and collection, On the road to Cadianda, were published by Vole in 2022 and April 2024. She has poems in several magazines, including Under the Radar, Culture Matters, Ink Sweat & Tears. She won 2nd prize in Enfield competition, 2023 and was placed first in Vole anthology, 2024.
Jim Murdoch
and I said,
“I understand,”
and I did, ishly . . .
Sue Spiers
Thirsty Shadow
the kind of being
that won’t post
an image
Julian Dobson
Street after street, ears bright to bass and tune
of two thudding feet, gradients of breathing. But rain
is brooding. Sparse headlights, ambient drone
of cars kissing tarmac, merging
Oliver Comins
Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.
George Turner
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured.
Craig Dobson
Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens,
lowering the past into the dark,
covering it.
Clive Donovan
If I were a ghost
I think I would shrink
and perch on wooden poles
and deco shades – get a good view
of what I am supposed to be haunting
Rose Ramsden
We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats
Seán Street
There was a time when I took my radio
into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha
needle along the dial through noise jungles
to silent darkness at the waveband’s end.