Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gabrielle Meadows
On sunday morning you lay together laughing
She gets into your bed
like when she was little.
Flowers grow out of the wardrobe,
moss claims the windowsill
and a vine
snakes its way to the bed post,
climbing.
You are laughing.
Imagine she is bounding
from the garden,
skin laced with sweat.
Smells of pollen and soil.
Imagine you need to get up but don’t yet.
Five more minutes.
This is all there is
and all there ever is.
The moss claims the windowsill
and every inch of earth.
Gabrielle Meadows lives in Norfolk and works in arts education. She runs workshops in drama and improvisation. Previous publications in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Atrium Poetry and The Lake. @gabrielle_meadows
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe
Tadhg Carey
When our plaything ricochets
falling
who knows where
everything hinging
on the line
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
I hear the roar of
the ocean. I hear
a series of shrieks
and long screams.
Natasha Gauthier
Nobody knows what Cicero’s gardener whistled
to his figs and olives, what the consul’s young wife
hummed to herself while slaves combed beeswax
and perfumed oils from Carthage into her hair.
Jean Atkin
She creeps under the opening, then stands.
Her guide passes her the stub of a candle,
holds up his own to show the ceiling rock.
Iris Anne Lewis
The track leads through thickets, threaded with eyes.
Elusive scraps of dreams, they gleam, flicker out.
Antonia Kearton
On my son’s desk lies
the periodic table of the elements.
I look. Amongst the arcane names
I recognise, easy as breathing,
carbon, oxygen, gold, beloved of kings.
Elizabeth Loudon
The first three days of war
have a surprising holiday feel.
No deadlines, just the giddy gasp of shock.
Ordinary life continues.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
A lacquer table, gloss under fingertips. A raised stage with dark linen. A young woman smiles with her hand-held harp, its nine strings glistening. The room swells with the cadence of her pearly notes. Beneath the pendant lights—a vision of serenity.