Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jason Ryberg
Still Life of Fish and Bird
One day a fish swam
away and the river ran
dry, and the lone bird,
sitting in a tree, flew off
and took the whole sky with it.
Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
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.
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.