Today’s choice
Previous poems
Viv Fogel
At the End of the Class
- The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me
- For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her
- Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah?
- How did she find out/ realise/ discover that I was Jewish?
- I was shocked/ unprepared/ almost ashamed that she’d asked me
- Would that matter/ affect her?/ impact on our work together?
- Would she still trust/ accept support/ be taught by me?
- I wanted to explain/ dissociate from/ apologise for the genocide.
- I am silent/ confused/ there are no words. We exchange a look.
- Did something like recognition/ warmth/ sisterhood/ flit between us?
Viv Fogel London-based psychotherapist, poet, artist, grandmother, activist daughter of refugees. Her poems are published in many anthologies and journals. Recent collection is Imperfect Beginnings (Fly on the Wall Press, 2023) and she’s currently co-editing the writings of women in Afghanistan, to be published in October.
Toby Cotton
A blustery day –
the wind too strong for kites
or for lifts to the sky.
“To a thoughtful spot,” it cites
and pins me to the earth.
Ansuya Patel
except this burnt red vase.
Hand shaped in the muffled roar,
devouring flame in the furnace’s mouth.
Hannah Ward
Look, Drew, the
plums are in
pieces beneath
us. I dreamt:
Andrea Small
a flower is not a heron
does not stand on one leg
spear-billed over golden carp
Usha Kishore
At dawn and dusk, my father
becomes a chant, that flies above
the courtyard of the old house
Jane Frank
The leaves are a colour you’ve never seen
but that I will learn to expect
and there’s a fracas-induced full moon
Clara Howell
The way a halved peach breathes, then rots
from the inside out.
Luigi Coppola
Out of ten bars, by the fifth, half of us had flickered
out and by this ninth one, it ended up just him
and me. A matchstick balanced on a stool, he sat
Jon Wesick
Loaded with hawks’ cries and horses’ huffs
Ennio Morricone’s score wails