Today’s choice
Previous poems
Yucheng Tao
Blood and Ash
But look here, I turned my head
and discovered the Denver Museum
waiting,
a ghost that stood out in my sight,
telling me that their land was spring—
grass above flowers.
Today, they lay in an Indian exhibition,
silent；
Their faces were a sentence:
to strip them of survival
was as simple as pulling out corn.
The natives of the Arapaho
like me, watched how blood spread,
crossing
from the past into the present,
toward some corner of the world
where an unjust war burned,
buried under black moonlight
by fire.
Their bones could not be read,
as their remains were covered
under the ash of death,
silent,
floating like a ghost.
Denver’s rain is absent,
but rocks are red, like their blood.
The people of the city forget
as quickly as fish,
and sleep as deeply as rocks.
Yucheng Tao is a Chinese poet whose work has appeared in White Wall Review (Canada), Wild Court (King’s College London), Strange Horizons, NonBinary Review, Recours au Poème, and he is forthcoming in I-70 Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poésie Première, and Arpa Poésie (2026). He received an honorary award from the Dark Poet Club, and his chapbook is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
David Keyworth
Aldgate had its usual smell of dirty metal and coffee. I jumped from platform to carriage. I squeezed beside a Tate Britain poster, clutched the grab-handle. When I chanced a glance, I saw I was the only one standing. Everyone else was wearing spacesuits.
Winifred Mok, Sandra Noel, Özge Lena and Alannah Taylor for Earth Day
we groan as the mercury hikes
climbing with the ball of fire
the Hot Weather Warning surrenders its flag
feels like 40 and it’s only May Day
-Winifred Mok
where geese balance on one leg
sleeping inside themselves
until they wake for hours of sun
and swimming
-Sandra Noel
You are walking in a half empty street. Carrying a rifle, you are hunting for canned food. Sultry evening falls like an electrified blanket, leaving you breathless. The world you know is long gone. The world has already surrendered to the heat waves followed by water wars, hunger wars. And hunger is a crazy carnivore in your belly. You turn a corner to see two rifles. Pointed at you. You shoot the air calmly.
-Özge Lena
I might eat more slowly, breathe more deeply the fragrance of nettle steep, be more mindful of
the miracle of vegetables of promising colour glinting in the oil of a pan, I might grind my molars
with the thought close that their substance, too, is borrowed from the minerals of the ground
-Alannah Taylor
Cal O’Reilly
I feel the sun, its love and anger,
a baked red brick rubbed
on the back of my calves.
Hiking in a binder was a shit idea,
My lungs reach to surface, come short.
Lucy Dixcart
It Starts Before Birth
Your tadpole-self, displayed to strangers for a thumbs-up.
Then childhood illnesses, faithfully documented.
Anna Mindel Crawford
We have our eyes on the chairs, ready
for when the music stops. Nobody wants
to be in the space where a seat had been
Sue Proffitt
Sue Proffitt lives by the coast in South Devon, UK. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and competitions. She has two poetry collections published: Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and The Lock-Picker...
Daniel Rye
When did the slowness
of this afternoon
merge with the chugging
boat engine in the harbour?
Anna Ruddock
Let it be okay that it took me a while to get here
If not better then equally fine to be
the goldfinch . . .
Laura Fyfe
How do we pull ourselves back
when we’ve nothing to hold on to?
Find a way clear
or stay? Wait.