Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jenny Robb
Strange Brew
Anne dances to the beat of my childish heart,
sings to cobwebbed spiders.
She is nanny number five,
my own Mary Poppins.
By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.
The friend is greedy for what is mine.
My books become hers,
my dolls answer only to her.
She burns me with just-spent matches.
Anne has stolen my birth stone,
dumped a changeling in my nest.
She sings as she stirs broth for my mother.
Jenny Robb has been writing since retiring from a social work and NHS career, mainly in mental health. She’s been published widely and has two collections with Yaffle Press: The Doll’s Hospital, 2022, and Hear the World Explode, 2024. X: @jirobb Instagram: jenny_robb
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence
Tom Nutting
They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.
Emily A. Taylor
I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,
Eryn McDonald
It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green
Gordan Struić
Outside,
the city slides by,
blurred lines
of glass and rain.
Stephen Keeler
The days were huge and kind
and sometimes after school
we’d buy a bag of broken biscuits
for the long walk home
across the heavy heat of afternoon
on lucky days she wouldn’t take
the pennies offered up in supplication