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.
Patricia Minson
Between the trees dust shifts,
light fractures like a prism.
A cathedral silence greens the air.
B. Anne Adriaens
The French term terrain vague enfolds
a plot of land I thought at first was vague,
undefined and malleable.
John Bartlett
mornings
I wake wary
of abundance
wondering why I’m still here
and then I recall
all the green leaves
with their hiding birds
Maya Little
I’m trying to stop thinking about what I want to not // be. Sometimes I have looked into my heart and found that // everything’s packed up.
Liz Byrne
I want to be two-tongued again
To go back to the time when I slipped
from one language to another with ease,
Matthew Thorpe-Coles
You retreat back to your bedroom,
your headset cooler than any
sunlight . . .
S Reeson
only now is it apparent how
dishonouring a body is a crime
Paul Connolly
At Aber Falls
he felt nothing
water sheeted
past grottoes
snakes of tributary
lazed along
Cindy Botha
I notice her because she doesn’t have a dog
in an afternoon of dog-walkers