Today’s choice
Previous poems
Pratibha Castle
Conscience
as taught her by the nuns was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue pony frolic legs
a choke-hold on convolvulus excess
seductive as leaves skittering over moon
scatter grass dandelion pappus weighted
with girlish longings a burr hooked
onto the undercarriage of a rook in flight
that b r e a k i n g f r e e nuzzles into earth’s
amorous embrace wooed by rhapsodies
of amoral worms nurtured by clouds lavish
as a toddler’s sulk blasé gaze of wolf or super moon
till a blackbird at spring’s edge pipes their tarantella
stirs the first tousle-headed dente-de-lion
sun-gold tongues ravishing a winter-drowsy bee
Pratibha Castle – a finalist in FFP Award, shortlisted in Fish, Live Canon and Bridport Prize, published widely including Under the Radar, Lighthouse, Stand, was awarded third prize in Sonnet or Not. Her pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a PBS winter selection 2023.
Natasha Gauthier
The tawny clutch appeared
on high-heeled evenings only,
slept in a nest of white tissue.
Romy Morreo
She only speaks to me these days
through groaning floorboards in the night
and slammed doors.
Emma Simon
No-one has seen a ghost while breast-feeding
despite the unearthly hours, the half-light
mad sing-song routines of rocking a child
back to sleep.
Kushal Poddar
The furniture covered in once
transparent now foggy sheets
craft the room a morgue, and we
identity the bodies
Erich von Hungen
And the yellow moths
like some strange throw-away
tissues used up by nature
circle the lamp hanging above.
Helen Frances
I wasn’t in, so she left me a note.
Each word a tangle of broken ends, some oddly linked
to the next with a ghost trail of ink
from her rose-gold marbled fountain pen,
a rare indulgence she’d bought herself.
Suzanne Scarfone
truth be told
part of me has lived
in this box of disquiet
for years and years
let’s see
Julia Webb
Because a woman woke up
and her head had become a flower.
Freyr Thorvaldsson
A candle eats away at air
At the same rate that we do