Today’s choice
Previous poems
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh
And when you step into the clearing
there will be dancing. The unsteady moon, shaken
to ribbon; shimmering through regalia of clouds. Shawls,
as if ermine, still scurrying (wee winter-whitened weasels).
& the one elm sways too. Lit, like a many-armed Durga.
You think a tree can be stilled by soil? That roots would
drown a soul in ground? Stay your sights, even as body
sends you circling. Look, un-giddied. Remain: forward
& centre. Pasts done & undone. You, the rhythm of quake.
Waken. Clear forest from your feet. Listen. It will be your
name calling & you hearing it spoken, for the first time.
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh‘s debut collection The Bone Folder was shortlisted for The Saltires, in 2025; the year she won the McLellan Prize. Living with cancer, at home in the Highlands, she is writing her next collection (TBP 2027). See @kittyjomac and www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org
Amlanjyoti Goswami
Those night boats are back.
Fishermen string their nets
Counting fresh catch.
Brian Kirk
That was the time you caught
the mumps and I was half
afraid I’d catch it too.
Dawn Sands
Walking home from the lecture on Frankenstein
through the November mizzle, small breaths of exhaust
sighing in the twilight headlights, particles of wet air commingling.
Ken Evans
Octopus I am one Like short of being beautiful. Five hundred more Followers, I’m away to fight culture wars. I Block two for lies Quora does not verify. Counter-factuals are ok, there’s simmering wastelands to make out of vague, but someone sent a shroom...
Mary Mulholland
It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself
in my head where no one can reach it,
laugh, tear it to shreds, or
call it a waste of space, a disgrace.
Afolabi Ezra
It was a quiet day—
no bad news,
no sudden loss,
no reason to hold my breath.
Karina Jutzi
I think today of the boy in choir class
who closed his eyes when we sang
about Jesus. Who swayed, as if the Lord
Isabelle Thompson
We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle
of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping
her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby,
Roger Robinson
We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet