Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Lukens
Samaras
Having earned their wings through evolution
it is almost as though they are loth to use them
preferring familiar earth, the old tree’s broad shadow.
Everywhere you look these whips of sycamore, living
where they fell, rooting out some well of nourishment
in a wall, a bed, a yoghurt pot of rotting leaves.
And so many of them! Impossible to count their bristling ranks
like massed souls grumbling on the banks of Lethe
jostling to be noticed as the fates allot each life.
Was there a single moment — when the air darkened,
and down they span like fallen angels, a forest
carried within their collective spinning wings?
I do my bit, kneeling to uproot individual stems
while the tits turn cartwheels in the old tree’s limbs.
I know this is no more or less than they expect.
Underground, a widening web of roots
is slowly moulding faith from darkness
settling itself for the rise and fall of years.
David Lukens lives in Wiltshire. His work has been published in magazines such as Acumen, Butcher’s Dog and Under the Radar. His pamphlet One Brief Wave won the Cheltenham Poetry Festival’s first pamphlet competition and was published in 2021
Sarah Nathan
The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,
Anna Bowles
Akademichna Street
is bombed-out flats, is
the hot-pink Sweet Bakery Café, is
straggly new-planted trees, is
Philip Athans
Never shows up late to a single thing he’s invited to
Always brings the most thoughtful and carefully curated and perfect gift
Never shows up early and never once overstays his welcome
Always appears well groomed and clean and appropriately dressed
Michelle Diaz
This is just a woman,
sticking her life back together
after years spent recovering.
Autumn Richardson
What you are –
bodied light, a store of oil
a hive of warm blood
Rebecca Parfitt
In the back of the taxi on my way to the hospital,
thighs clenched together,
the driver asked me,
Samarth Agarwal
Here — in the absolute zero of space — fireworks!
Look how the crucibles of creation,
those million coloured fingers that stretch light years —
Jenny Scoones
We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
Matt Bryden
Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones,
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.