Today’s choice

Previous poems

Pratibha Castle

by | Oct 15, 2025 | ,

 

 

Conscience

as taught her by the nuns   was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue   pony frolic legs
a choke-hold   on convolvulus excess
seductive as leaves skittering over moon
scatter grass   dandelion pappus   weighted
with girlish longings   a burr   hooked
onto the undercarriage of a rook in flight
that   b r e a k i n g f r e e   nuzzles into earth’s
amorous embrace   wooed by rhapsodies
of amoral worms   nurtured by clouds   lavish
as a toddler’s sulk     blasé gaze of wolf   or super moon
till a blackbird at spring’s edge pipes their tarantella

stirs the first tousle-headed dente-de-lion
sun-gold tongues ravishing a winter-drowsy bee

 

 

Pratibha Castle – a finalist in FFP Award, shortlisted in Fish, Live Canon and Bridport Prize, published widely including Under the Radar, Lighthouse, Stand, was awarded third prize in Sonnet or Not. Her pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a PBS winter selection 2023.

Jeanette Burton

by | Sep 10, 2024 | ,

What is this, a family outing?

Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him
as I open the car door, climb into the front seat,
remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe.

CS Crowe

by | Sep 9, 2024 |

      Lines He lived next to the funeral home with his three daughters. A cherry picker beeps in the distance. I cannot see it, but I know the light is red. Who brings roses to a funeral? Rain rolls down window glass, but not here, only somewhere in the...

Carole Bromley

by | Sep 8, 2024 | ,

I don’t know why I went,
I’d already heard about the time
a colleague’s husband turned up
at the staff barbecue and punched him.