Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ben Verinder
Nostalgia as Yogi Bear
Ruminates through you for something tasty,
prizes of the Jellystone mind.
Lifts a memory from the pic-a-nic basket
of your past and sniffs it excitedly.
He lies about the freshness
of the morsel. Exaggerates its taste.
Hey hey hey, he geysers,
eyes ballooned, pork pie hat
tipped back. Down the hatch!
But the bite is ordinary as air.
Ben Verinder holds an MA in Writing Poetry from The Poetry School and Newcastle University. His debut pamphlet, Botanicals, won the Frosted Fire Firsts competition in 2021. His second, We Lost The Birds, was published by Nine Pens in 2023. His third, How to Save a River, won the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2024/5 prize.
Jade Prince
What is here for us but these walls and the
pearls of sweet yearning behind them
Esha Volvoikar
The earth cracks and we are left
with the same shared moon.
She peers through my lattice window
and hides behind your city’s smoke.
Violeta Zlatareva
The neighbor is a devout woman.
She bakes bread and lights candles
Robin Vaughan-Williams
I’ve got all this money lying around.
Have you got anything you can do with it?
Rizwan Akhtar
What fell between an abrupt shower
and a sky’s attitude was your memory.
Jeff Gallagher
Colleagues munching bap and burger
thought Ramadan was that juicy winger,
his scorching pace soon snaffled up by City.
Sue Moules
Sings at the top of the bare-branched tree
an aubade to morning
welcomes the light,
early spring, season of nest-making.
Andrew Tucker Leavis
as the tanker tore
its throat against the
shallow spine, as
the village unravelled
Patricia Minson
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.