Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jason Lovell
Roberto – Market Bird
While children kneel at your cage in awe
edge offerings of cashew nuts, chopped fruit,
curse words into your magnificent beak,
mums settle carrier bags at tired wet feet
delay for flashes of Hulk Hogan yellow beneath
that fancy marine tuxedo.
I’d say you’re more Mexican wrestler than U S of A
more El Santo than Bret The Hitman Hart –
flexing that zebra-print mask bought off a man
who knows a man who was seeing a man about a dog
when they fell off the back of a van or a lorry.
I bet your feathers run smooth as one-way traffic
on Federal Highway 45D between Mexico City & Querétaro.
Bet your poison dart frog eye spied me the day
I dared my arm deep into a cool sack of sunflower hearts
for the sheer closed-in-ness of it.
So, what, Roberto, is your finishing move?
The Claw Hammer! The Flying Bottle Opener!
perhaps… the Jalapeno Lock Pick!
& nowww… innn the red corner!… Weighing in
at 1.5 kilograms!… Hailing from the rainforest of Brazil!
O Pequeno Mágico Roberto!
Yes, if you could shapeshift into anything,
it would be the greatest magician in the pet shop,
vanish the ache of reappearing.
In 2025 Jason Lovell received both the Freedom to Write Award from the John Hewitt Society/Irish PEN and the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. A Forward Prize 2026 nominee, he is supported by the Arts Council NI. His work has appeared in Abridged, Ragaire and Fortnight.
Note: Āra : large, brightly coloured neotropical parrots specifically the Ara macaw / derived from the Latin for ‘altar’
On the Tenth Day of Christmas we bring you Rupert Loydell, Ruth Aylett, Eithne Cullen
The village is made of darkness and wood smoke
and the hunting owls sounding from the garrigue.
On the Ninth Day of Christmas we bring you Mark Connors, Michelle Diaz, Sue Finch
Today I am in church again. I have come for silent reflection in one of my favourite seats, but it feels a little closer to the edge than usual.
On the First Day of Christmas we bring you Sarah Mnatzaganian, Rebecca Gethin, Jenni Thorne
Towards the Solstice
owls fly closer in December twilight,
call to each other across the garden.
Martin Fisher
Inside, in the half-light, the iron rot took hold.
Forgotten service–obsolete.
Salt-coin neglect.
The money flowed inland,
Moored on an hourglass choke.
No one told the sea.
Craig Dobson
Out of morning
a misted light,
glowing fire
in the air.
Steven Taylor
A very long time ago
Stephen Fry’s godfather, the
Justice, Sir Oliver Popplewell
Who chaired the inquiry
Into the Bradford City
Amirah Al Wassif
Beneath my armpit lives a Sinbad the size of a thumb.
His imagination feeds through an umbilical cord tied to my womb.
Now and then, people hear him speaking through a giant microphone—
Singing,
Cracking jokes,
Mark Smith
In the portacabin that morning, men smoked
and looked at last week’s paper again.
There was no water to fill the urn.
The first job – to get connected
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.