Today’s choice

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Hilary Thompson

Hot Cross Buns

Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,

I am stopped by two women,
elderly, smiling eyes and mouths,
lip-sticked, offering an open pack

of hot cross buns from the NISA shop
down the road. The shorter of the two
with red hair folded back behind her head

says: would you like a hot cross bun, dear?
I look, smile back at the kind offer and say:
thank you but I’m gluten free.

She looks me straight in the eye, holds me there
for a long moment and says: Jesus still loves you, dear. 
Thank you, I say, still smiling.



Hilary Thompson writes poetry as an everyday occupation.

Philip Rösel Baker

He allows the sound to pour
through invisible canals inside his body,
outpacing dull analysis,
quickening cells, illuminating mind,
like blinds lit from within.