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
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.
Pratibha Castle
Conscience
as taught her by the nuns was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue
K. S. Moore
Teenage years
everything begins
it never ends
Jim Murdoch
I didn’t know what to do with all my dad’s love
so, I minded it for him fully intending to give it back one day.
Finola Scott
Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage
had whetted the blade to feather lean. Anniversaries marked in metal.
Sarah James/Leavesley
My mother’s knife made the first cuts –
she removed my fertile light bulbs,
then stuffed my womb with shredded tissues.
Max Wallis
god grant us the serenity / to accept the things we cannot change / the courage to change the / things we can / and the wisdom to know el differencio /
Play, National Poetry Day: Heather Hughes, Laura Webb, Jude Brigley
We searched so long for that clover.
Every time the sun shone we scoured
the fields and woods, running past
the children playing with skipping ropes
Play, For National Poetry Day: Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Charlotte Dormandy, Lee Fraser
10 Children dart in the dark, screamers
streaming sweets and neon, their parents