Today’s choice
Previous poems
Abraham Aondoana
Inheritance of Smoke
We did not inherit land,
only remnants of fields they burned—
black fields scorched before we understood
what it meant to sow.
Fathers left us silence:
not of cruelty, but some shattering fear.
Growing up, we learned
to decipher flames as letters.
In family portraits, smoke curls,
ghosting over faces for whom
no one could name.
Discussing lineage,
we speak in burnt edges and shattered verses,
not gold— our legacy is ash—
a handful of heat passed down
from gnarled palm to trembling wrist.
A torch fashioned to sear
before it illumined the path.
Abraham Aondoana is a poet, novelist and scriptwriter. He holds a degree in law. He was recently longlisted for the Renard Poetry Press 2025. He enjoys reading and writing.
Mark Wyatt
Daedalus
Plato loved his incessant questioning
of the natural world’s engineering
Sue Wallace-Shaddad
I tempt you with morsels
of soft-skinned peach, a pear sliced
in quarters, pipless and skinless.
Lesley Burt
Red-hot-pokers blazon her two world wars in flowerbeds, and in her hearth. The coalman drops odd nuggets under gaslight for neighbours to fetch in a bucket.
From the Archives: Dipo Baruwa-Etti
Seats
Before a table of white
People, I stand with ballet
Slippers strapped/soft soles
Head pointed towards the angels…
Ian Harker
The first night you lay down your head in London
there is hawthorne between your sheets.
Julian Bishop
He emerges at nightfall, lights a solitary votive candle//
prostrates himself at her scuffed toes.
Jon Miller
Haul down the ladder and you’re in
under a skylight casting a blue dream.
Philip Gross
This is the song of the cells’
soft throb, the quivering coherences,
their shuffling the profit and loss
of life, to have and to hold.
Jenny Hope
No man can hold me.
See –
I blur the line between days . . .