Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jane Spray
I’m just an ordinary dryad
After Anna Saunders
not like fancy Eurydice with her sun god father
keep things simple I say I don’t have her dilemmas
full moon in new
dark rising to light
skin and bark together
woodbine up hazel shoots
in loving arms under the boughs
I lie all night in this secluded wood
ok I do a bit of foraging now and then wild garlic mostly
but I’m rooted here will never leave these woods
Jane Spray lives in the Forest of Dean. She attempts to live harmlessly, if not in complete harmony with her surroundings, including her family. Her recent cave and nature themed collection is Cave Whale (Alba Publishing). www.janespray.net/writing
Claire Harnett-Mann
Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls.
Fox kill scores the morning,
ripped by prints in muck.
Hedy Hume
Stepping into the opposing seat
I smile, and the look I receive
Makes me feel the antisocial one.
Matthew F. Amati
Hands said to Head
look what you’ve made me do
it’s not me, Head said, talk to
Heart, that guy’s sick
Mariam Saidan
‘Female singing constitutes a ‘forbidden act’ (ḥarām),
punishable under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code.’
Meg Pokrass
This is what happens when she sits alone in her dining room, eating smoked trout and canned sardines.
Chen-ou Liu
this fresh morning
so much like the others …
yet starlings shape-shift
Jim Paterson
A Tuesday morning in November
out on the street taking in the bins.
As a flight of crows flashed past
the street lights went out.
Andy Humphrey
Noises are louder now: the kesh
of tyres on tarmac slicked
with leaves. Rain’s drumming thunder.
Chrissie Gittins
When you’ve used one handle to open the door,
use the other handle to close it.