Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Hill
Pollarding
An ancient art of tree management, in which the top branches of trees are removed
to promote dense new growth, provide light to the understory & fodder for animals.
On her first day home, she took
to plucking the sky with tweezers—
latched on to clouds and waited
for their let-down. She must’ve known
it should please us just to see her
new, blue eyes shine through
the rain. It didn’t, so she spat up
on the earth and summoned vines
of bindweed to wind around our chests.
When she still had no success, she drew
an axe and hacked halfway up our necks
to send our heads toppling
into rabbit warrens. Lopped,
we sent out fragile shoots
and watched the understory
thriving below.
Daniel Hill is a Welsh poet living in Hertfordshire. His debut pamphlet is forthcoming with The Wildheart Press in May 2026. Instagram: hill_daniel_
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.
Graham Clifford
The Still Face Experiment
You must have seen that Youtube clip
where a mother lets her face go dead.
Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her.
Susan Jane Sims
After you died,
someone asked:
What was it like
in those final sixteen days
waiting for your son to die?
Jane Frank
I imagine returning to the house.
Furniture is piled up in the rain—
the ideas that won’t fit.
Ilias Tsagas
I used to dial your number to hear your voice. I would hold the receiver for a long time as if your voice was trapped inside . . .
Jim Paterson
Shove it, that farewell
and the sky shimmering with frost
and the waves wrecking on the shore
Philip Rush
Tom’s advice, mind you,
was to drink hot chocolate
last thing at night
on a garden bench
beneath the moon.
Rosie Jackson
Today, I talked with a friend about death
and what it means to have arrived in my life
before I have to leave it . . .