Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rhonda Melanson
Holy Ground
I imagine my mother pulling apart my praying hands. Don’t be such a holy roller, she’d taunt. Get over here, quit committing to the ethereal, get down on those knees and help your family pick strawberries. The bending made me sulky. The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand. Items to be plucked, washed, diced, plopped into pies and loaves, scooped into freezer bags. No one ever pointed out to me the rootedness of a carrot, pointy and orange, how within the soil, it etched out its own positive space. No one ever demonstrated to me how peas slept soundly in their own alien habitat, spaceship pods, rudely awakened by earthly poachers like me. I would have worshipped them. Extracted their baby knowledge, considered their plucked sacrifice as I consumed them, each little pearl lolling on my tongue. With this knowledge and other pursuits of gardenly delights, I might very well have wrenched back my hands, held within me a berry of fertile prayer:
red as strawberries
exploding seed and colour
spillage most holy
R.G. Jodah
The View From the Ambulance is limited, by design. Strapped securely the dislocation, the shabby franchise- ification of high street, signage blinking by, the discomfort: this wasn't here before – is dulled. Everything looks old already, except...
Rachel J Fenton
Gannets I drive from your apartment to pick up a friend of a friend from the train station, take them to Muriwai to see the gannets. It is a warm day but there’s a bite in the air. My passenger is dressed for winter. She removes her seatbelt on...
Patrick Deeley
Homing Pigeon From the high window ledge of the house next door, he looks down into our kitchen. Two days since he landed, and whether we dance to the radio or open a newspaper, whether we chatter about nothing or argue over whose turn to cook,...
Anna Govier
Next To You A cold, violet light at end of day; this season is ragged with wonders. A fine, black net of starless sky, the flight of geese, the song of the lapsing fire. The way you move, when I am next to you, you stranger in my loved- one’s...
Diane Mulholland
The Meeting A sprawling arena of hard clay, cut through on one side by the creek and spread with thistles. And I, alone at the centre of it. Then he’s there. Six feet of polished earth-brown, flat venom head swaying like a grass stem. We freeze,...
A C Clarke
A Reckoning Coming at the end of a year, a decade, ten years of trading prevarication, all prospects closing off as reality closes in, with half the globe on fire, the rest in floods, how can we reckon up accounts? We're overdrawn, our home...
Sarah J Bryson
A tour of Dachau concentration camp Our tour guide knows all this – it is embedded in him it seems. I watch his face, when he’s asked a question. I see his pause, as if he is checking himself for accuracy before speaking. I notice how he wears the...
Ian Green
Consequences of proper litter disposal You barely notice the ubiquitous white and black of a gull passing overhead. You stumble on. One pint too many, tonight; four’s fine, but after five you feel it. You burp, delicately. On a bin ahead another...
Sarah James/Leavesley
International Swimming Pool Rules 1. No ducking, bombing or diving, unless on command from the Pentagon. 2. Lifeguards are there to guard. Please obey their orders respectfully and promptly. The guns are (mostly) only there for show. 3. Maximum...