Today’s choice
Previous poems
Julian Dobson
The city asleep
Street after street, ears bright to bass and tune
of two thudding feet, gradients of breathing. But rain
is brooding. Sparse headlights, ambient drone
of cars kissing tarmac, merging — but rain
twists senses, fractures distance, unzips
fences, chimneys, scaffolding. Everything but rain
rippled, colours drained: silhouetted pines,
apple trees in a park, a glowing cigarette butt. Rain
creeps in, up, around, so it never feels like drowning,
it’s sleepier. You hardly flinch from its cling. But rain’s
a key to endless life, infinities of drenching.
The first thrush knifes the dawn, its song
nothing but rain.
Julian Dobson has poems in a wide range of journals, including The Rialto, Stand, Acumen and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Julian lives in Sheffield and can be found on Bluesky at @juliandobson.bsky.social
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
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
Jason Conway
I heard a rumour that Pandora moonlights
She wears sunglasses in the lounge
knives flexed and ready for battle