Today’s choice
Previous poems
Kate Vanhinsbergh
We Should Probably Get Up Now
but, outside, the world has paused:
the wind has put down its loneliness,
its fear of never being seen, or known,
and next door’s kids have stopped screaming
through the wall. The cats are curled up
around our ankles, and you say you like me
like this, with the sun falling in slabs
through the window, onto my hair,
my curls glowing orange on the pillow.
You touch my cheek
with the backs of your fingers.
In this room, we have nothing but time –
glasses of water; a vase of white roses;
miles of cotton drawn up and spun
from the earth. I could have believed
that all chances, all paths crossed
were love’s quiet design,
the architecture of its concussive maze.
Kate Vanhinsbergh is a poet from Manchester, UK, and can be found on Instagram @kate.vanhinsbergh or X @katevanbergh
Callan Waldron-Hall
long weekend ← or ← perhaps ↑ summer holiday →
from the back of someone’s car boot ↑ the strange →
sweated plastic all pink and blue and folded →
Amy King
We’re drinking wine in your kitchen, months before
the hot oil of my concern begins to spit.
Jenny Robb
You notice the crepe of your neck and belly first.
This skin you bake in the sun.
Pat Edwards
Watching the ‘Strictly’ Results Show on a Sunday night
Knowing what we know about the pain of the world,
who wins and who loses might feel like a betrayal.
Rebecca Gethin
Oh walk with me up the slippery lane
when the frost has turned to ice.
Jean Atkin
Wear a coat, you’ll pass through light rain at the wood-edge
under Helmeth. Sing loudly, so the snakes can hear you.
Caleb Parkin
Nature Is Healing
It constructs membranes
between its most powerful organs,
filters pathogens hidden in boats.
Sue Butler
When I read my poem about stretch marks
you said it was a funny thing
to write about. I felt a flare,
low down, an orange hazed ember
you’d have to blow into life.
Susan Darlington
. . . On the edge
of sleep it comes snuffling
through leaf litter and we forget
bed; the cold prickling
our bones.