Today’s choice
Previous poems
Morgan Harlow
Notes after a walk: a tree that had caught its own fallen limb
She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
To hear footsteps running up behind you, and to turn around and no
one there. To see a crow gliding under the trees, a crane fly skittering on
the gravel driveway. Apple trees with fallen-off branches, why oh why.
The pattern of white under the tree, she had not recognized at first. Fall-
en petals.
Morgan Harlow’s work appears or is forthcoming in Elm Leaves Journal, Folio Literary Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Louisiana Literature, North Dakota Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and other journals. She teaches writing in Madison, Wisconsin and is the author of the poetry collection Midwest Ritual Burning.
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
Alan McGuire
Going downtown was pre-drinking, save money, buy confidence.
Going downtown was queuing outside Walkabout, a drunken reality show.
Going downtown wasn’t a release, but a rite of passage.
Ryan O’Neill
Where can we go on holidays this year,and when will we get a house if you’re away for two years,and now you’re crying,and it’s £4 to park for the day . . .
Anna Vercambre
Shall we build you out of cardboard? Shall we build you out of tin cans?
Sue Johns
To keep an engine thrumming,
to perform the perfect cleft
how much strength, how many attempts?