Today’s choice

Previous poems

Lesley Curwen

 

 

 

Ringed

Her feet snagged in a cleverly-placed net
my sister waits for him to untangle her,
to hold her head still between thick fingers,
feather ruff ticking in each rapid breath,
her eyes black and bright, body eclipsed
by the size of him, nothing she can do
to escape. He takes the measure of her,
splays wings with ruler, pliers a metal ring
shut on her thin limb, blows chest feathers
apart, testing tender fluff for fat reserves,
slots her headfirst in a film can, trembling
tail upended, to pop her on the scales.

He smooths her down for a photo, knowing
if he lets her go, she will be trapped again.

 

 

Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor from Plymouth. Her pamphlet Rescue Lines is published by Hedgehog and an eco-chapbook, Sticky with Miles by Dreich. Her poems have been published by Dust, Bad Lilies, Broken Sleep, Atrium, Spelt, Black Bough and East Ridge Review.

Damon Hubbs

How a Plastic Bag in an Elm Tree on Winter St. Learned to Mimic the Moon

It’s growing in what was once the tree
with the great green room.
It’s singing in yogurt
and fluttering like an amorphous pearl
of necrosis.

Cindy Botha

what shows up at dusk
 
moths of course, pale parings―
filmy, restless
dark swarf of birds homeflitting
to perch-trees
sometimes a hedgehog
nosing leaflitter
an owl wooing from the pines

Vic Pickup

Operation Alphaman

It took a great effort and I had to bite hard on the stick
to push the subcostal muscles aside.
The skin had parted easily under my knife,
though keeping the blood at bay with no one to swab the wound
was difficult. This was remedied with a vacuum cleaner

Julian Brasington

When one has lived a long time alone
and not alone your time become
someone’s history and you have grown
tired of yet another war and the world
has it in for you simply for being