Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Here, dirt makes no distinction
between trench beds and the twirling earth.
Onion shavings conspire to life
by bringing fresh tears to our eyes.
The whole rotting heap hushes
over the tunnelling of pink worms
and it is a war kept close to the weeds;
potato skins kissing dried dandelion leaves
as if to clothe a skeleton key.
It’s best we shush. Pigeons
have occupied the neighbour’s clothesline,
and the evening’s keen to keep a lid on it
Ash Bowden is a Halifax based poet whose work has previously appeared in The Cherita and Confluence, and he is seeking more publications to work his way towards publishing a pamphlet. He can be found on Instagram @ashbowpoet, on bluesky @ashbowpoet.bsky.social and on Facebook at Ash Bowden Poet.
George Sandifer-Smith
Spring 1833 – mists folding their sheets in the fields.
Isaac Roberts feels the turned earth, his father’s
farm an island in the hurtling Milky Way –
Sharon Phillips
Wet tarmac blinks red and gold,
names shine outside the Gaumont.
‘Stop dreaming, you’ll get lost.’
Bill Greenwell
Before the first turn of the key, before
adjusting the mirror, before releasing the handbrake even,
Dad said: there are two things you need to know.
Matt Gilbert
Alive, but not exactly,
as it fills the frame, flicker-lit
by lightning. . .
Rebecca Gethin
This morning
the room is bright with snowlight
and everything seems illuminated differently.
Lorraine Carey
Every Sunday he insists on beef
from Boggs’s butchers, a forty minute drive
away.
Gabriel Moreno
It’s hard to say what he did, my father.
His shoulders portaged crates,
he captained boats in the night,
chocolate eggs would appear
which smelt of ChefChaouen.
Henry Wilkinson
I rolled an orange across daybreak;
I waited for the moon to ripen.
On the twelfth day of Christmas, we bring you KB Ballentine, J.S. Watts and Terry Dyson
as wind whispers your name.
Summer’s breaking down and a starker calling comes –
leaves saturated with sunset before surrendering.