Today’s choice
Previous poems
Adam Flint
To the Litten Tree
Morning sees droplets
of spittle flicked over foraging insects.
Down hind legs,
hidden among the leaves,
the sated dump fresh honeydew and
trees weep sugar.
Sweet hurt.
Little graces matter.
The bus drivers know us, let us
smoke by the door.
All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.
No cause to,
nor place to go.
In an absence of floral cues
we took unconventional routes,
buzzed lightly to the warm perch
of our terminal branches.
All summer, paralysed bodies
of drunken bees laid glitter paths
for you and I to follow, gasping,
under the silver limes.
Adam Flint was born in North London and currently lives in Berlin. Previous poems have appeared in Shearsman magazine, Black Box Manifold and Poetry Salzburg Review, among others. In 2022 an album, Seen Through Cirrus, in collaboration with The Cube of Unknowing, was released on the Irish label Fort Evil Fruit.
Lucy Wilson
Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me.
In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight;
like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea.
Amirah Al Wassif
The God I know works as a baker in a local shop.
From time to time, I see him feeding the kittens bread crumbs soaked in milk.
Cliff McNish
Heaven For starters, the standard works everyone gets: three trumpets blown in unison; your name acclaimed to the galactic hegemony of stars; plus assorted angels with ceramically smooth hands (the nail-work!) casting wholesale quantities of petals (flowers of the...
Paul Stephenson
Rhubarb after Norman MacCaig And another thing: stop looking like embarrassed celery. It doesn’t suit. How can you stand there, glittery in pink, some of you rigid, some all over the shop? Deep down you’re marooned, a sour forest spilling out beneath a harmful canopy....
Holly Winter-Hughes
You stand behind me / catch my eye / take the snatch of silver
Laura McKee
after the accident the plaster
held her still
Melanie Branton
At boarding school, I had no idea what to do
with myself. Most of the time,
I hid myself in a paper bag . . .
Lucy Calder
I arrange my books in order of height,
on a bank of cow parsley,
amid the random oscillations
of a cool breeze
Tanya Joseph
I know others blossom
but I vomit ectoplasm,
and squaring the corners of my bed,
the nurse reminds me I’m not dying.