Today’s choice
Previous poems
May Grier
That Three-Tusked Beast
I wasn’t to know
that it was a three-tusked
beast; that there was not one,
not two, but three
that grew the seed of me.
Back then, who’d ever heard
of that unlikely jungle lore?
In school there was room
for two, no more: a mum
and a dad. My skin grew hot
when it was time to present
our tree. On both sides
I wrote ma mère in extra-small,
traced their faces faint, idly
added cousins I’d never known
to an ivory branch. I could never
quite get to the nub of truth–
always rubbing the animal
out, never letting it wander in to flick
its tail, wave its trunk around.
My inside-beast was so strong.
It didn’t let intruders in. It didn’t
take kindly to being found out.
May Grier (she/her) was born and lives in London and works a nurse. This is her first published poem.
Robin Vaughan-Williams
I’ve got all this money lying around.
Have you got anything you can do with it?
Rizwan Akhtar
What fell between an abrupt shower
and a sky’s attitude was your memory.
Jeff Gallagher
Colleagues munching bap and burger
thought Ramadan was that juicy winger,
his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City.
Sue Moules
Sings at the top of the bare-branched tree
an aubade to morning
welcomes the light,
early spring, season of nest-making.
Andrew Tucker Leavis
as the tanker tore
its throat against the
shallow spine, as
the village unravelled
Patricia Minson
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.
B. Anne Adriaens
The French term terrain vague enfolds
a plot of land I thought at first was vague,
undefined and malleable.
John Bartlett
mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds
Maya Little
I’m trying to stop thinking about what I want to not // be. Sometimes I have looked into my heart and found that // everything’s packed up.