Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Leah Hewett
Web
Sorry, but I’ve stopped
cleaning the windows.
Or I guess I’m not cleaning
that one pane of the window
that looks in over the living room.
I’m leaving it for the spider
with the round body like a
peanut and the striped legs
who has made her web there
and who I can sit and watch
spinning thread for constant
little repairs that never stop.
Our year started with a slow worm
gleaming up at us from the wet grass.
What’s that an omen for?
Now it’s later and things have
changed again and well anyway
I’m leaving the web in peace.
It helps to feel there’s a part to play
and that I am playing it.
Kate Leah Hewett (she/her) is a poet, writer, cultural worker, gardener and occasional DJ. She lives on the edge of the Peak District with her wife and daughter. Her work has been published in One Hand Clapping, Sinister Wisdom, Yes, Poetry and elsewhere. She has performed in Yorkshire, New York and on Basilica SoundScape’s Poet Trolley, and has collaborated with musicians including Harkin and Tim Mislock. Hire her to DJ your gay wedding at https://www.handmirror.
Nick Cooke
If when you go to the barber today
He asks if you’d like him to ‘tidy up your ears’,
Think of all the wildest sprawling vegetation
That will never be tidied, or trimmed, by clippers or shears,
Edward Alport
High up, out of reach,
on a branch, no, more a twig,
a little wizened, shrunken face leers down.
Colin Pink
not the kind you eat with
but useful to turn the soil
root out potatoes or carrots
Linda Ford
My Father Bought a Signal Box
dismantled it piece by piece
then sold the wood, as a job lot.
Ryan O’Neill
we hug and i act cool
as the american fridge ice
shattering on kitchen tiles
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.