Today’s choice
Previous poems
Dharmavadana
Tinkerbell on Queensway
She barely glances at you when you chink
your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still
spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls,
making her patch by the station a land
you try not to invade. Not that you never
see men squat in front of her and wonder
what sort of bargain they’re trying to make –
only to have her stare a silent hex
of fury. Some, though, place a curled sandwich
or tea at her feet, merely for the chance
to hear the music of her gratitude
escape through the rush-hour traffic noise.
If only her wings could outfly the wind
or all the not-so-innocent Lost Boys.
Dharmavadana lives in Norwich, Norfolk, UK. His poems have appeared in The North, Poetry Salzburg Review, Under the Radar, Ambit, The Interpreter’s House, Prole and other publications. He was poetry editor of the Buddhist arts magazine Urthona from 2013-2023.
Padraig Rooney
Making is finding, troubadours know Making is finding, troubadours know, and all that comes to hand is an oarlock socket worn by salt, its oar somewhere freely parting water and a pilgrim soul finding rhythm. Have him push the boat ashore at...
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Workshop exercise For Kate Foley The river twinkles on my right. I’m walking briskly past a pair of disused shipyards whose noisy histories have been condensed to fit on plaques as neat as boiler-plates. The river’s banks are fidgety with ripples...
Philip Rush
The Last Carthusian The large metal bell with which I call myself to prayer is wanted by a museum. I sing in an affected accent the responses to the psalms but the jackdaws which laugh at me from the roof are not fooled. In a refectory which is...
Julia Stothard
Heartland I am growing grass inside my ribs; fluted blades twisting their leading edge in meadows of flesh. There are fields of this. Where the lark has left, the wind gusts through – I have become its hollow short-cut and you are corridors...
Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana
Realisation about a friend slowly and deliberately you draw information out of me the way my son eats a strawberry holding firmly onto the green stem sucking it down to the pulp Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana lived in Japan for 10...
Liz Lefroy
Egg Inside, it’s containment: a smooth shell curving away into itself, taut around a thin membrane which closes on its viscous, one-celled strength; and it’s a silent circling of mass, unused to air, unexposed to the risk of strange heats, to the...
Mary Wight
Feasting She brought thoughts, words rather than grapes, slipped out among laundered clothes. Little offerings best but today he wanted more and she couldn’t deny him. Her tongue spilled stories he devoured, egged her on until the cough again,...
Dave Stacey
Morning has broken Please bear with me one tiny moment while I try to explain: listen: a speck of a half-fledged sparrow doesn’t sit at the top thin twig of a late winter tree and throat his half-formed song for all he is worth, which isn’t that...
David Belcher
I’m worn out by talk of devastation I walk out the door, turning back to twist the key in the sticky lock. On the street my first impulse is to look around, tilt my ear to the faintest sounds, summon a semblance of optimism; but looking for the...