Today’s choice
Previous poems
Bill Jones
Three Jackdaws
Three jackdaws walked widdershins
around the birdfeeding station. A fat woodpigeon,
pompous, hieratic,
tried to undo their magic
by walking from four to six. For a moment,
the two birdfeeders, full of seeds and nuts,
were the pillars of the Temple.
I wondered what it spelled for the day ahead
as I watched their spells, this augury-pokery.
Bill Jones is a poet and illustrator who lives in Gloucestershire, UK, with a small dog and an interest in magic. His poems have appeared in anthologies from Yew Tree Press and his cartoons have appeared in Private Eye and Poetry Review.
Luigi Coppola
Out of ten bars, by the fifth, half of us had flickered
out and by this ninth one, it ended up just him
and me. A matchstick balanced on a stool, he sat
Jon Wesick
Loaded with hawks’ cries and horses’ huffs
Ennio Morricone’s score wails
Paula R. Hilton
When the genie appears, I’m in a frivolous
mood. First request? My mom’s apple pie.
Alice Huntley
slack in a bag from the freezer aisle
shaken out like shrunken grey memes
I long for the podding of beans
Rhonda Melanson
The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand.
Clive Donovan
I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
Gary Akroyde
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown