Today’s choice
Previous poems
Natasha Gauthier
Roman curses
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.
Did bawdy odes to Octavia’s backside
(Ah, Maximus, she is plump as an Iberian mare)
flow from the taverns Ostia, Massilia, Aquae Sulis?
The Romans, leaving behind no music,
choked their sacred springs with curses.
Tiny, jagged metal tongues folded over
and over upon themselves, rolled over
and over like olive pits in vinegar mouths.
Oh goddess, may the thief who stole
my best gloves lose his mind and his eyes.
Minerva sighs at these razorblade grievances,
sulfurous prayers etched in bile, she is bored,
would prefer to be getting songs about figs,
olives, emperors, Octavia’s ample bottom,
instead of junkmail grudges piling up,
centuries-deep, at her patient doorstep
Natasha Gauthier is a Canadian poet living in Cardiff. She won First Prize in the 2024-25 Poetry Wales Awards, and won the 2025 Borzello Trust/New Welsh Review Prize for poetry. Her debut collection will be published by Parthian next year.
Steph Ellen Feeney
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach . . .
Anna Fernandes
My stubby maroon glove spent a chill night
on the velvet ridge of Clent Hills
tangled in summer-dried grasses
Jo Eades
It’s Wednesday and / again / I’m laying pages of newspaper on the kitchen table / tipping up the food waste bin /
Sue Butler
We cultivate the knack
of getting down on the floor and
back up three or four times each day.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...