Today’s choice
Previous poems
Viv Fogel
At the End of the Class
- The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me
- For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her
- Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah?
- How did she find out/ realise/ discover that I was Jewish?
- I was shocked/ unprepared/ almost ashamed that she’d asked me
- Would that matter/ affect her?/ impact on our work together?
- Would she still trust/ accept support/ be taught by me?
- I wanted to explain/ dissociate from/ apologise for the genocide.
- I am silent/ confused/ there are no words. We exchange a look.
- Did something like recognition/ warmth/ sisterhood/ flit between us?
Viv Fogel London-based psychotherapist, poet, artist, grandmother, activist daughter of refugees. Her poems are published in many anthologies and journals. Recent collection is Imperfect Beginnings (Fly on the Wall Press, 2023) and she’s currently co-editing the writings of women in Afghanistan, to be published in October.
Piers Haben
When I lost loved ones last year
I thought my childhood fears would return.
Lesley Burt
There’s a house in a suburb of between-the-wars pebble-dash & bay windows, where the soundtrack is sighs, tuts & bellows, the clash of plates & jangle of cutlery.
Gabrielle Meadows
She gets into your bed
like when she was little.
Flowers grow out of the wardrobe,
moss claims the windowsill
Alice Huntley
I had a leaf in my hair when I arrived
the receptionist thought it was a hairclip
Gemma Blakeley
My Dad Complains That The Hedges Are Overgrown
and the word bemuses me, implying as it does
the concept of excess in what can only be good.
Nick Cooke
Molluscous receivers, would that you could
turn your talents inwards, and pick up
all that goes on in the cerebral swamp . . .
Luke Moran
There’s a
flash of colour
from the hedge.
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh
And when you step into the clearing
there will be dancing. The unsteady moon, shaken
to ribbon; shimmering through regalia of clouds.
Adam Cairns
A buzzard mews, turns in the wind,
a faraway engine grumbles.