Today’s choice
Previous poems
Abraham Aondoana
Inheritance of Smoke
We did not inherit land,
only remnants of fields they burned—
black fields scorched before we understood
what it meant to sow.
Fathers left us silence:
not of cruelty, but some shattering fear.
Growing up, we learned
to decipher flames as letters.
In family portraits, smoke curls,
ghosting over faces for whom
no one could name.
Discussing lineage,
we speak in burnt edges and shattered verses,
not gold— our legacy is ash—
a handful of heat passed down
from gnarled palm to trembling wrist.
A torch fashioned to sear
before it illumined the path.
Abraham Aondoana is a poet, novelist and scriptwriter. He holds a degree in law. He was recently longlisted for the Renard Poetry Press 2025. He enjoys reading and writing.
Philip Rush
Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.
Rosie Jackson
Today, I talked with a friend about death
and what it means to have arrived in my life
before I have to leave it . . .
Mariam Saidan
they said sing in private,
Zan shouldn’t sing.
Brian Kirk
The train is the way,
the tracks a scar cut
deep in the land
you can’t help but touch.
Michelle Diaz
Mum was
a raised axe and a party hat.
Alice O’Malley-Woods
i run like a goat
tongue-lolled
Caiti Luckhurst
But first the sun has to break in two
Mara Adamitz Scrupe
on that new broke land I don’t anymore
recall there may have been a tree line or a hedgerow
a grove named & a bird’s sternum
George Sandifer-Smith
Spring 1833 – mists folding their sheets in the fields.
Isaac Roberts feels the turned earth, his father’s
farm an island in the hurtling Milky Way –