Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Hill
Pollarding
An ancient art of tree management, in which the top branches of trees are removed
to promote dense new growth, provide light to the understory & fodder for animals.
On her first day home, she took
to plucking the sky with tweezers—
latched on to clouds and waited
for their let-down. She must’ve known
it should please us just to see her
new, blue eyes shine through
the rain. It didn’t, so she spat up
on the earth and summoned vines
of bindweed to wind around our chests.
When she still had no success, she drew
an axe and hacked halfway up our necks
to send our heads toppling
into rabbit warrens. Lopped,
we sent out fragile shoots
and watched the understory
thriving below.
Daniel Hill is a Welsh poet living in Hertfordshire. His debut pamphlet is forthcoming with The Wildheart Press in May 2026. Instagram: hill_daniel_
John Grey
there are some lives
lived poolside
and others that
mostly consist of
a bent back in a field –
Adam Flint
All summer automatic exits remain
open, and no one leaves or boards.
David Van-Cauter
You are pleased to see me
in my gothic T-shirt –
those bats, you say, have been your friends.
Mark Wyatt
yes of course/ it was idyllic, reclining (pint of/ cider in hand) poolside in the harvesting/ sunlight
Catherine Shonack
when confronted with vast, endlessness of the ocean
who wouldn’t go mad?
Ansuya Patel
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
Pippa Little
a woman’s rage cannot raise the dead
but it may split stone like lightning
Abiodun Salako
a boy grows tired
of dying again and again.
i am building him a morgue
for Thanksgiving.
Patrick Wright
It’s as if the dream
is telling me we are still joined
somehow, despite waking
and me trudging on, even though
your voicemail is off, your locks
changed.