Today’s choice
Previous poems
Paula R. Hilton
Eating Apple Pie with Louisa May Alcott
When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.
Genie, exceeding expectations, delivers it
hot. As steam rises from slits in its cinnamon
dusted crust, I cut two slices. One for me.
One for Louisa, my hero. My second wish.
Yes, I tell her. Those are golden delicious
apples. We used to pick them from the orchard
behind our house. The whole forest’s a subdivision
now, but Genie tells me nothing’s impossible
when he’s around. Louisa eats while I ramble.
Would you sign my copy of Little Women?
She marvels at the ballpoint pen I hand her.
I always wanted to be Jo, you know? A writer,
nonconformist— Louisa, clicking the Bic
in her hand, laughs, dismisses: As you wasted
wishes on trivialities—dessert and necromancy,
I’d say you are more of an Amy. I gasp as if
she’s slapped me. Use my last wish to tell
Genie: Take Louisa May Alcott away.
Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has appeared in The Sunlight Press, ONE ART, Feminine Collective, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from the University of New Orleans. Website: https://paularhilton.com/
Dragana Lazici
the days are long but the years are short.
seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back.
i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot.
Abigail Ottley
Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice-
cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to
look away
Maggie Mackay
The teacher is an old spindly man. Grim, out of a Grimm’s tale. Scarecrow hair, thinning. Unsmiling.
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.