Today’s choice
Previous poems
Cindy Botha
a grief of ghosts
atlas bear
black-footed ferret
cape lion
dire wolf
eastern lowland gorilla
foothill frog
galápagos penguin
heath hen
irish elk
japanese otter
kākāpo
laughing owl
maui dolphin
north atlantic right whale
one-stripe opossum
painted vulture
quagga
red-fronted macaw
sumatran elephant
tasmanian devil
upland moa
vaquita
western black rhino
xerces blue butterfly
yangtze porpoise
and no longer
padding the drum
of the earth
zanzibar leopard
Cindy Botha was born and raised in Africa and now lives in New Zealand. Her poems appear in magazines and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and USA.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.