Today’s choice
Previous poems
Clive Donovan
Three Winds
I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
—and three winds mingle, whispering,
all merging in a jostle.
They use my body frame to make sound
and, listening, I hear, as they tell
where they’ve been and where they go:
You, man, with a gravestone in your heart,
let us shake your woes away
and they do, they really do,
they rattle my teeth with generosity.
I retreat,
my cold hands in empty pockets,
full of the wisdom of the great silence.
Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Crannog, Ink Sweat & Tears, Prole and Stand.
Bob King
The first wristwatch was first worn
in 1810, despite what old turn-it-up
Flintstones episodes might have you
believe.
Brandon Arnold
Alone, I drive along the midnight, winter road. My left hand at the 12 o’clock position of the steering wheel. And I coast. I let out the day’s long breath, which started out today as a sigh.
Steph Ellen Feeney
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach . . .
Anna Fernandes
My stubby maroon glove spent a chill night
on the velvet ridge of Clent Hills
tangled in summer-dried grasses
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