Today’s choice
Previous poems
Maxine Sibihwana
Barbecue
here, water does not run. instead it
sits obediently in old plastic containers
here, where monkey steals avocado
when window is open, here where
white jesus hangs from the cross and
weeps into the food, where father is a tree
and mother is an oil spill,
and aunties spawn to season each dish
with gossip and the Lord’s Prayer,
and minutes are two weeks long
and the clock betrays
and the cockerel plays with the children
before its descent into charcoal and oil
fire and brimstone
Maxine Sibihwana is a London-based poet and writer from Uganda. Her work explores themes of love, shame, and questioning religious rituals, and has been published in Notebook by MUBI, Die Quieter Please, AFREADA, Lolwe and the James Currey Anthology of African Literature. Maxine was a member of the 2024 Born:Free Writers’ Collective and is on the current cohort of the Emerging Writers Programme with the London Library.
Greek Feature Day 2 with Patrick Williamson, Jena Woodhouse and Kate Hendry
The temple at nightfall Patrick Williamson's recent poetry collections include Presenza (Samuele Editore). Here and Now and Take a deep look (Cyberwit.net). Editor/translator of Turn your back on the night (The Antonym) and The Parley Tree, Poets from French-speaking...
Greek Feature Day 1 with Leanne Moden, Elliott Waloschek and Z D Dicks
Herpetology Often, my worries are frog-shaped, flexed flippers flashing through vanishing ripple reflections. Poisonous green thoughts. The amphibious twisting of double-state catastrophising. I have perfected the art of doing nothing, looking busy and helping no one....
Judith Wilkinson
If I can shape-change myself if I can
reassemble the rubble of my vision
so I can re-see
dragonflies, apocalypses, trivia
Juliet Humphreys
Look at me, look —
night eyes find their way
without light.
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.
Shasta Hatter
Empty Basket
Driving down the boulevard, I see large trees decorated with pink and white blossoms, evergreens tower over houses, trees flourish with spring greenery.
Tim Dwyer
The kitchen window has been
my hermit cell
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