Today’s choice
Previous poems
Leigh-Anne Hallowby
You used to be shorter
When we first came here two seasons ago
You were barely as high as my hip
Now you can look me right in the eye
It’s almost impossible to believe
You’re not quite as tall as Giannis
But you hope that one day you can
Jump like him
Until then, I’ll chant defence with you
Take you to the park
Return balls in the rain
I’ll watch as you practice your shots
Talk tactics with you every day
And when you get older
We’ll still be in the stands
Foam fingers for hands
Because it’s such a beautiful game.
Leigh-Anne Hallowby is a poet from North East England. She likes striding up hills with a hot flask, and a notebook in her pocket. She’s tried to dunk a basketball, but just doesn’t quite make it.
On the first day of Christmas, we bring you Hannah Linden, John White and Stephen Keeler
. . . Now the villages is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths . . .
Anna Chorlton
She curled emerald
tights about the core of
an oak
slumbering with thick bare
limbs.
John Greening
On Stage in a home-made model theatre, c.1967 Glued to your block, in paint and ink you wait for Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to stop. Smell of hardboard and hot bakelite. The lino curtain’s ready to go up. At which, the straightened coat hanger is shoved and on you...
Anna Bowles
Nothing bad can happen on a plane.
Engine fires, earache, hijackers; but no new grief.
Kirsty Fox
Winged Kirsty Fox is a writer and artist specialising in ecopoetics. She writes lyric essays and poetry, and has had work published by Apricot Press, Arachne Press, and Streetcake Magazine. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and is currently studying...
Jason Ryberg
Sometimes I’d swear that
the ancient box fan I’ve hauled
around with me for
years is a receiver for
the conversations of ghosts
Peter Wallis
Dead in a chest,
are folded matinee jackets, bonnets, bootees and mitts.
Tissue sighs like the sea at Lowestoft,
always Third week in August
Amanda Bell
We clipped a window through the currant, sat on folding chairs with keep-cups,
wrapped in blankets as we yelled through the prescribed two-metre gap.
Then took to mending – darning socks and patching favourite denims
Anna Maughan
Illness had left me
brittle as frost, icicle-thin
swaddled in borrowed warmth