Today’s choice
Previous poems
Diane Webster
Revenge
Squirrels dream of a cougar,
a cougar given permission
to crouch like an assassin
awaiting its prey, its target;
a cougar concealed
in the squirrel tree.
Squirrels scowl, chitter
at the woman who once fed
them corn and bread
until she met him,
him who paces beside her,
his arm around her shoulder,
her arm around his waist.
A couple made to sicken squirrels
until midnight revenge twitches
dreams as the cougar leaps…
Today the woman walks alone
noticing squirrels spiralling the tree
as if rejoicing in the sun’s rising,
wondering if she has an ear of corn.
Diane Webster‘s work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com
On the seventh day of Christmas, we bring you Sue Burge, Erica Hesketh and Max Wallis
Once there was nothing sweeter than snow
On the sixth day of Christmas, we bring you Amy Rafferty, Tim Kiely and D.A.Prince
We pick up where you left off, searching still,
choosing random cards from a dealer’s deck:
twenty-one crows in a night-time tree,
deep within the dark, with all that chatter
On the fifth day of Christmas, we bring you Paul McGrane, Kevin Reid and Helen Evans
As regular as Santa Claus, she’d call
around at Christmas, the next-door neighbour
and my Sunday school teacher, Mrs Williams.
On the fourth day of Christmas, we bring you Leusa Lloyd, Lydia Benson and Charlotte Johnson
It is always Christmas in the loft
On the third day of Christmas, we bring you K. S. Moore, Kate Noakes and Rachael Smart
Picture this:
little witch girl
in Alaskan wilderness.
On the second day of Christmas, we bring you Gill McEvoy, Rachel Burns and Cindy Botha
On the way to the registry office it snows, flecks of white like spittle hitting the steamed-up bus windows, I worry the petals from my wedding posy.
On the first day of Christmas, we bring you Hannah Linden, John White and Stephen Keeler
. . . Now the villages is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths . . .
Anna Chorlton
She curled emerald
tights about the core of
an oak
slumbering with thick bare
limbs.
John Greening
On Stage in a home-made model theatre, c.1967 Glued to your block, in paint and ink you wait for Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to stop. Smell of hardboard and hot bakelite. The lino curtain’s ready to go up. At which, the straightened coat hanger is shoved and on you...