Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Hendry
Burning the Years
Lay down the worst ones –
raze them like swathes
of heather on the moor.
So what if there’s a dead patch.
Remember the havoc
unfettered fire makes –
flames twirl along the ridge,
tumble down the gorge.
Unbreathable heat and ash.
So burn those years
till there’s a dead plot of earth
and disaster’s spurned.
Behind you – safe beds of moss.
Ahead – untouched mounds
of rush like stepping stones.
Spin in the steam and smoke,
jump on the blackened years
sprung like a dance hall floor.
Kate Hendry‘s poems have been widely published in magazines, including PN Review, The Rialto and Poetry Wales. Her first pamphlet, The Lost Original, was published by Happenstance Press. Her second, MX SIMP (Mariscat Press) was shortlisted for the 2023 Michael Marks Awards.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark
Juliet Humphreys
Though I am not a painter
this is to be a portrait
of my parents and my sister.
Julian Dobson
You too I guess
have studied the surviving starlings
as they swoop and whistle
by the snack trailer at Moorfoot