Today’s choice
Previous poems
Matt Bryden
Killing Time
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys – and sprint
towards the orchard, only realising
in the 5:23 dusk that
this is winter, the boughs fruitless,
donkeys stabled – that
beside ourselves and a motorhome
this car-park belongs to that
scrap of feathers
and scramble into air
as, in two lines of three, six ducks take flight.
Matt Bryden is a teacher and father living in Devon. His most recent publication is The Glassblower’s House (2023, Live Canon). He is Royal Literary Fellow at the University of Exeter www.mattbrydenpoetry.
Yucheng Tao
But look here, I turned my head
and discovered the Denver Museum
waiting,
nerve, a soft-boned
species hums
Sarah Boyd
He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid
held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and
wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and
shirt with three buttons missing in action and
Samantha Carr
You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an
aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps
Helen Akers
we’re trying to construct a frame for this
‘highly reactive impulsive emotion’
the nurse is looking into it
Jenny Robb
By the light of a wolf moon,
my father turns mad.
Anne whispers to a girl in the wind,
and a friend blows into my life.
Diane Webster
Squirrels dream of a cougar,
a cougar given permission
to crouch like an assassin
awaiting its prey . . .
Bill Jones
Three jackdaws walked widdershins
around the birdfeeding station.
Zumwalt
I see
how you see
us in meetings:
merchandise
to slip
off
the shelf.
Anya Reeve
Stubborn, we closed our fists
To better ward away the brume