Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Hill
Pollarding
An ancient art of tree management, in which the top branches of trees are removed
to promote dense new growth, provide light to the understory & fodder for animals.
On her first day home, she took
to plucking the sky with tweezers—
latched on to clouds and waited
for their let-down. She must’ve known
it should please us just to see her
new, blue eyes shine through
the rain. It didn’t, so she spat up
on the earth and summoned vines
of bindweed to wind around our chests.
When she still had no success, she drew
an axe and hacked halfway up our necks
to send our heads toppling
into rabbit warrens. Lopped,
we sent out fragile shoots
and watched the understory
thriving below.
Daniel Hill is a Welsh poet living in Hertfordshire. His debut pamphlet is forthcoming with The Wildheart Press in May 2026. Instagram: hill_daniel_
Gabrielle Meadows
I am tearing the peel from an orange gently and somewhere
Far away a tree falls in a forest and we
don’t hear it but the ground does and the birds do
Hongwei Bao
Every five minutes it does its job,
hoovers every inch of her memory,
declutters all pains and sorrows.
Gary Day
And once the father frowned
As the boy struggled to fasten
The drawbridge on his fort.
‘He’ll never be any good
With his hands’ he declared,
As if the boy wasn’t there.
Royal Rhodes
Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.
Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.
Jeff Skinner
It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after
she says, when finally I get through.
Annabelle Markwick-Staff
I devoured the Olympics, filled my mouth
and scrapbook with sticky ephemera.
Charles G. Lauder
beneath night’s skin he unearths raw stones
serrated encrusted enigmatic cold
Arlo Kean
we are at a cafe just round
the corner from hampstead
heath & sipping berry sunrise