Today’s choice
Previous poems
George Turner
Patience
Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured. Cooking seems too great a price to pay
for eating. Instead, you sit and you look at a book without reading it.
The shower feels like too much. Your pajamas feel like too much.
You tell yourself (falling asleep in your jeans) that tomorrow will be better.
You’ll do things tomorrow. You’re good at waiting for good things.
Wait for the morning birdsong, the greasy tastiness of bacon,
the day’s first robin, the gentle thrum of traffic, the crunch of fallen leaves.
Wait for the smell of paper, the coolness of river water,
the low clouds daubed with stripes of sunset pink and orange,
the peaceful early moon hanging resolute in a pale evening sky.
George Turner is a writer currently completing his BA in Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. His poetry has been read aloud in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s Student Showcase 2024.
Mymona Bibi for Day One of our Archive Feature
corners folded
edges worn.
where girls in
the night’s meski
giggle in secret
hair in tangles.
Catherine O’Brien
When all is quiet save for the silky rustling of an autumn breeze
let that love show.
When your patience is darkness-dappled and as weary as an exhausted scholar
let that love show.
Marianne Habeshaw
session in the woods. Someone took a feather
to the hairdressers. Gum cross-sectioned
my cheek; he forgot about removal to kiss.
Had to avoid tree roots, placed us on green.
He mentioned his bullied niece kept reaching
for her blanket; Mr. Smith is quaking regression,
Fergal O’Dwyer
but sunlight streaming in
through impractically curtainless windows;
my skin, made-up in golden light,
looking taught from affluence
and vitamins.
Like they do in films,
Hattie Graham
wait for the witch who comes to pick wild garlic.
Together we can be brave and
pull the green bits from her teeth.
Wandering the glen with
nothing in our pockets, we can search
for the place where fairies still live.
No one will find us there,
not even the old grey bell they ring at tea time.
George Parker
I make broth, feel odd wiping it off your face
moments after swiping through bodies, preferences,
dates. Sunset-orange forget-me-nots mar the napkin cloth
Nicolas Spicer
Paysage Moralisé
There’s more to this three-foot square:
lilac vetch & vermilion
field-poppies, some sort of crucifer . . .
Luke Bateman
Brown limpets with tonsured heads
creeping over the fish-stink isle,
spongy underfoot, seaweed for grass.
Adam Horovitz
Such stillness in the air. The attic window
is a cupped ear set to alert the house to subtle
shifts in atmosphere: auguries; signs; any tiny
notice of cataclysmic change. . .