Today’s choice
Previous poems
Morgan Harlow
Notes after a walk: a tree that had caught its own fallen limb
She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
To hear footsteps running up behind you, and to turn around and no
one there. To see a crow gliding under the trees, a crane fly skittering on
the gravel driveway. Apple trees with fallen-off branches, why oh why.
The pattern of white under the tree, she had not recognized at first. Fall-
en petals.
Morgan Harlow’s work appears or is forthcoming in Elm Leaves Journal, Folio Literary Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Louisiana Literature, North Dakota Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and other journals. She teaches writing in Madison, Wisconsin and is the author of the poetry collection Midwest Ritual Burning.
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...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass