Today’s choice
Previous poems
Cindy Botha
a grief of ghosts
atlas bear
black-footed ferret
cape lion
dire wolf
eastern lowland gorilla
foothill frog
galápagos penguin
heath hen
irish elk
japanese otter
kākāpo
laughing owl
maui dolphin
north atlantic right whale
one-stripe opossum
painted vulture
quagga
red-fronted macaw
sumatran elephant
tasmanian devil
upland moa
vaquita
western black rhino
xerces blue butterfly
yangtze porpoise
and no longer
padding the drum
of the earth
zanzibar leopard
Cindy Botha was born and raised in Africa and now lives in New Zealand. Her poems appear in magazines and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and USA.
On the first day of Christmas, we bring you Hannah Linden, John White and Stephen Keeler
. . . Now the villages is
en fête: dressed for a party in the dark,
across the fields, along uneven paths . . .
Anna Chorlton
She curled emerald
tights about the core of
an oak
slumbering with thick bare
limbs.
John Greening
On Stage in a home-made model theatre, c.1967 Glued to your block, in paint and ink you wait for Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life to stop. Smell of hardboard and hot bakelite. The lino curtain’s ready to go up. At which, the straightened coat hanger is shoved and on you...
Anna Bowles
Nothing bad can happen on a plane.
Engine fires, earache, hijackers; but no new grief.
Kirsty Fox
Winged Kirsty Fox is a writer and artist specialising in ecopoetics. She writes lyric essays and poetry, and has had work published by Apricot Press, Arachne Press, and Streetcake Magazine. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and is currently studying...
Jason Ryberg
Sometimes I’d swear that
the ancient box fan I’ve hauled
around with me for
years is a receiver for
the conversations of ghosts
Peter Wallis
Dead in a chest,
are folded matinee jackets, bonnets, bootees and mitts.
Tissue sighs like the sea at Lowestoft,
always Third week in August
Amanda Bell
We clipped a window through the currant, sat on folding chairs with keep-cups,
wrapped in blankets as we yelled through the prescribed two-metre gap.
Then took to mending – darning socks and patching favourite denims
Anna Maughan
Illness had left me
brittle as frost, icicle-thin
swaddled in borrowed warmth