Today’s choice

Previous poems

Marius Grose

 

 

 

Presence of Trees

Until the dead, sucked from leaf mould graves
are rising in forest sap, to make connections
inside strange green brains

nothing will be crossed in, nothing will be crossed out

until the dead poke holes in the sky with their bones
let in the rain to wash our traces, face mask litter
black bladder-wrack crushed into tarmac

messages transmitted will not be received

when the dead reach forest canopies, then
sealed in blue unaddressed envelopes
they’ll post themselves back to the world

until

 

 

Marius Grose worked in broadcast television as a video editor. He has had poems published by Dream Catcher, Allegro Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Dreich and The Storms. In 2023 Marius was shortlisted for The White Review’s annual poetry prize.

Cindy Botha

what shows up at dusk
 
moths of course, pale parings―
filmy, restless
dark swarf of birds homeflitting
to perch-trees
sometimes a hedgehog
nosing leaflitter
an owl wooing from the pines

Vic Pickup

Operation Alphaman

It took a great effort and I had to bite hard on the stick
to push the subcostal muscles aside.
The skin had parted easily under my knife,
though keeping the blood at bay with no one to swab the wound
was difficult. This was remedied with a vacuum cleaner

Julian Brasington

When one has lived a long time alone
and not alone your time become
someone’s history and you have grown
tired of yet another war and the world
has it in for you simply for being

Nick Browne

Woman in the water

I’m no Ophelia, that’s for sure crazy stuff is not my style,
no garland weeds around my head it’s spindrift foam not daisies.