Today’s choice
Previous poems
Pratibha Castle
Conscience
as taught her by the nuns was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue pony frolic legs
a choke-hold on convolvulus excess
seductive as leaves skittering over moon
scatter grass dandelion pappus weighted
with girlish longings a burr hooked
onto the undercarriage of a rook in flight
that b r e a k i n g f r e e nuzzles into earth’s
amorous embrace wooed by rhapsodies
of amoral worms nurtured by clouds lavish
as a toddler’s sulk blasé gaze of wolf or super moon
till a blackbird at spring’s edge pipes their tarantella
stirs the first tousle-headed dente-de-lion
sun-gold tongues ravishing a winter-drowsy bee
Pratibha Castle – a finalist in FFP Award, shortlisted in Fish, Live Canon and Bridport Prize, published widely including Under the Radar, Lighthouse, Stand, was awarded third prize in Sonnet or Not. Her pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a PBS winter selection 2023.
Cindy Botha
That way a river crimps eddies in its skin
is this matter of my unreliable breath.
Colin McGuire
You’d come in the front door
and whistle, I’d be upstairs
and whistle back
Gerry Stewart
In My Last Phone Call Did I say it looks like rain? I meant the sky is black with a thirst only crying can quench, clouds smothering the hills. Did I say this was my home? It was a mistake. The walls are collapsing even as I paint myself into a...
S Reeson
There is no evidence anywhere that Albert Einstein ever said the definition of insanity is ‘is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ except there he is, all over the Internet, being attributed with having done exactly that.
Annie Kissack
No place to put a man
and hope he’ll stay together.
The sensible nouns are already exiting the side door.
Rachel Curzon
There is as much darkness
as she wished for. As much moon.
Abu Ibrahim
When young boys go missing,
the neighbourhood rallies a search party.
We panic like a bomb’s ticking
Debs Buchan
Tish was always coming home
home with its broken bricks and scrap fires
always the smell of something burning
Rebecca Brown
She’s grateful to be alive with these tumours crackling in her bones