Today’s choice
Previous poems
H.J. Thomas
Black Cherry Ice Cream
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
faster than we could catch it.
And you laughed,
mouth red,
sunlight flaring in your lashes.
I watched the boats move below us –
slow beasts with canvas wings –
and thought:
this is joy.
Not fireworks,
not promises,
not certainty.
Just you,
offering me a bite
from your side
of the cone.
And the sweetness –
sharp and floral,
ripe as August before it turns.
H.J. Thomas is a poet based in Durham, UK. His work explores grief, queerness, and hope. He is working on his first collection, still here, and a second, Songs of Vancouver Island. Previously unpublished.
Jade Prince
What is here for us but these walls and the
pearls of sweet yearning behind them
Esha Volvoikar
The earth cracks and we are left
with the same shared moon.
She peers through my lattice window
and hides behind your city’s smoke.
Violeta Zlatareva
The neighbor is a devout woman.
She bakes bread and lights candles
Robin Vaughan-Williams
I’ve got all this money lying around.
Have you got anything you can do with it?
Rizwan Akhtar
What fell between an abrupt shower
and a sky’s attitude was your memory.
Jeff Gallagher
Colleagues munching bap and burger
thought Ramadan was that juicy winger,
his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City.
Sue Moules
Sings at the top of the bare-branched tree
an aubade to morning
welcomes the light,
early spring, season of nest-making.
Andrew Tucker Leavis
as the tanker tore
its throat against the
shallow spine, as
the village unravelled
Patricia Minson
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.