Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anna Bowles
Akademichna Street
is bombed-out flats, is
the hot-pink Sweet Bakery Café, is
straggly new-planted trees, is
infantry quaffing cappuccino, is
the community hub spilling ragged donations, is
fuchsia velvet armchairs, is
the balcony with the twitching flag, is
another glide bomb on course for the city, is
partly still standing so fuck you russia, is
the medic checking her eyeliner over cheesecake, is
the café owner smoking on the steps, her
eyes averted from her bombed-out flat
Anna Bowles is a freelance editor and activist who divides her time between London and East Ukraine. Her work is deeply rooted in personal experience. Her first pamphlet, Landscape With Mines, was published by Mica Press in 2025.
She is currently near the front working with groups of local volunteer evacuators and IDP support hubs, trying to draw as much attention as possible to their cause. More here: https://annabowles.substack.com/
For updates from Anna follow her on
@annabowles.bsky.social
Facebook: anna.bowles.90
Instagram: annabowleswriter
You can supportive the work of Anna and those working with her by donating to Aid Ukraine UK which is UK registered but all the money they receive goes to Druzi Space, a Ukrainian team conducting evacuations and refugee support on the ground in Donetsk Oblast.
James Mason
In Italian I have no inner life.
With no past or future tense
My needs are immediate.
Claire Miller
rose is thirsty
rose senses water
rose root rummages in the earth
rose root punctures lung and frontal lobe
rose stem is a green straw sucking
Sylvia Banham
Pigeons have invaded the garden, two then four, then a flock.
They roost in the apple tree to nest, reconnoitre or mate
ignore my sorties to deter them and shit without stint
on patio and herb bed, foul lovely hyssop and thyme.
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
What matters now is the feast of this survival.
The glory of our own light, black light.
Look at us: the deeper the root, the sweeter the juice.
Glory of the blacker berry, split wide open to the sun.
Robert Billinski
the sky met the water where the birds met the fish
the sky met the water where the fish met the birds
the sky met the birds where the water met the fish
Gordon Vells
Impotent in family life and ineffectual at work,
sometimes he would spend a full quarter-hour
just circulating the mini-roundabout on his moped,
dizzy from the power of blocking everyone else.
Patrick Wright
i protest say how when i’m gone i’d like to rest before the choice to return & go through
all this again you sigh as though that’s absurd & endings are just endings we’re mulch
& nothing but endless fucking
L. Haiman
My baby is hungry. Grabs
me with both hands. I am
an apple, apparently no will.
Francis de Lima
Oh London. U useless city. Map to
nowhere land. Tight stretch
open eye. The underground metal.
The night tube. The railway. Smog
Over coaltrip. The presence
Of machine upon machine. U