Today’s choice
Previous poems
Claire Harnett-Mann
Common Ground
Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls.
Fox kill scores the morning,
ripped by prints in muck.
There’s a form for this, a number to call,
an action plan, a statement
on how the city manages its wild,
what to do when it breaches the scheme.
Rain fingers the concrete.
Walls sweat. Moss thickens on the sills
where pigeons nest.
Doors swell in their frames.
The lift’s out again.
Kids chalk round the mould,
name them death zones.
Someone’s planted potatoes
in a washing-up bowl.
Roots force through the split base,
muscle for the ground below.
This place won’t stay as it’s built.
It shifts, it breaks, gets dragged
to the scrub, to the night calls,
to the unmanaged wild.
Claire Harnett-Mann is a Birmingham-based poet whose work appears in Tears in the Fence and elsewhere. A Nine Arches Press Primers 8 Highly Commended poet, her novella How to Bring Him Back (Fly on the Wall, 2021) was nominated for a Saboteur Award. She can be found on Instagram and Bluesky @clairehmwriter
Chris Kinsey
Hey cat, you’re doing really well,
three fields stalked and only one to go.
Holly Magill
. . .you’re swallowed whole
into this cocoon: pine-scent, antibac and the dry
whoosh of his heater – lean your careworn bones into
synthetic leather snug, . . .
Dave Simmons
My sky is a hole from which the bucket drops.
Like all heretics, I am put to work processing stones.
Paul Fenn
To impress you, I became
a seven-year-old son of Sparta.
A little hard man, crayon
marching down the page.
Ruth Aylett
God had been playing computer games
for a chunk of eternity when he became aware
he’d left creation in the oven for a long time
Chris Campbell
The View From This Hospital Window
I admire an empty bench for hours –
then a glum couple sit to share strawberries.
Patrick Deeley
He sees a stainless-steel spoon
burned off at the base,
a bunch of wild flowers dropped,
Eliot North
Explaining to my little man
about proportion,
he responds with feeling:
a picture of daddy
with thousands of fingers.
Jeanette Burton
What is this, a family outing?
Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him
as I open the car door, climb into the front seat,
remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe.