Today’s choice
Previous poems
L.B. Jørgensen
Flintinge
When my dad was a boy,
his parents brought him into the fields.
As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.
I think of the tug he was taught,
the sound of roots wrested
from the earth
cold in a child’s palms, smeared with dirt.
I’ve felt the swing he learned
to place one gently in the bed
of the tractor.
I imagine the scent of loam,
the sap of sugar sweet on his skin.
L.B. Jørgensen lives in Denmark but writes creatively in English. She has poems published in various magazines such as Magma, The North and Under the Radar. Her pamphlet A Woman Travelling is published by Paekakariki Press.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark
Juliet Humphreys
Though I am not a painter
this is to be a portrait
of my parents and my sister.
Julian Dobson
You too I guess
have studied the surviving starlings
as they swoop and whistle
by the snack trailer at Moorfoot
Mark Czanik
I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers,
and the sacrifices they made following their hearts.
Philip K Dick eating dog food. Bukowski’s candy bars.