Today’s choice
Previous poems
Neil Elder
High Hopes
There are blackbirds singing beautifully at dawn,
Mozart and Shakespeare existed and that’s fine,
but each morning, I pray a new miracle
will find its way into existence;
elephant birds discovered deep in Madagascar,
a cure for six awful diseases, or perhaps
some world leader gets assassinated –
any of these are fine.
This morning I found a clean shirt,
the milk at breakfast hadn’t gone off,
I got out of the house on time,
there was just a light drizzle,
my train arrived; I found a seat.
The day was full of miracles.
Neil Elder has several publications to his name, and is hoping to add another if and when his luck changes. He lives in London looking for sparkle among chaos.
H.J. Thomas
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
Stephen Keeler
Among the joys of love was when we got
our first apartment on a boulevard
above the trams and tree-tops and the wires
that cut the street like tangram puzzles and
Khairina Anindya, Genevieve Beech
‘Khair’
At the feet
of al-Ka‘ba
you asked for a daughter.
‘BIRTHLIGHT’
You are ordinary
to the teenager on the bus,
the doctor at our six-week check.
Linda McKenna
We set about him with rifle butts and spades,
waiting our turn alongside our enemies,
the same sunburnt flesh, the same blistered
feet. Met where our camps, the same
Abigail Ottley
She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...
Frank Phelan
I am most visceral
when being disarmed
by a song, a lyric
written and sung…
in the broad New Yawk vowels
Katherine Duffy
The ferry pushes the sea,
forces a long, white reply
that speaks of where we’ve been
Audrey Cotterell
In a corner chapel of the abbey
I lit a small candle, and sent the flame
as a message only half composed
Dylan Foster
there’s not much you can do
when the planets
are telling you to stop