Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ned Vessey

by | Nov 3, 2026 | ,

 

 

 

Conversations

My father and I
skim the surface of conversations
something like those swallows do
down at the lake
instantaneous precision
of withheld effort
brief furrows
of beak and wing
on water’s brows.

But sometimes we forget
ourselves
the pub sends us
into the drink. Cormorants
beaks that know
surgery of water
peel back gloom and grit
until the innermost things
of the lake choke
writhe on the shoreline
unaccustomed
to the scrutiny of light.

Fearful we let the lake
have them back
and no one says a word.

 

 

Ned Vessey writes poetry and prose about landscape, people and place. His prose has been featured in The Guardian, Slightly Foxed Quarterly and The Clearing. His poetry has appeared in The Dark Mountain. He lives in Bath.

Emma  Farmer

by | Sep 9, 2026 | ,

Your face was on a bus pass,
your hair falling around your face like a curly straw,
pressed in a puddle between the Queen’s old face
and an Aldi receipt for slippers and chicken.

Carson Wolfe

by | Sep 8, 2026 | ,

I owned a g-string like this,
the back connected by a rhinestone butterfly.

Starved myself at school to save
my dinner money, bought it from Poundland.

Sarah Nathan

by | Sep 7, 2026 | ,

The ash that screams into the night,
the lake that dries, the child amongst the rubble,
the heat, the fire, the lack of books,

Philip Athans

by | Sep 4, 2026 | ,

Never shows up late to a single thing he’s invited to
Always brings the most thoughtful and carefully curated and perfect gift
Never shows up early and never once overstays his welcome
Always appears well groomed and clean and appropriately dressed