Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jennie Howitt
wild cows
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands. Will roll
down to feed the roots below. Then the weeds will follow.
Weeds will grow next spring. Weeds will unfold
as bulbous udders without holes
– un-milked –
with hip bones wider than a reach
Jennie Howitt is a writer and performer from Shropshire, working on bog and wetland poetics. She recently judged a competition and gave a workshop on bog poetry with the Poetry Society. Their work has been featured in Pamenar Press, Poets Choice, Ariel Magazine, Bedford Square Review, Writers Block, Beyond Words magazine, and multiple Young Writers anthologies. They have won and been commended in various Poetry Society competitions.
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.
Dechen Shaw
Monks spend days shaping mandalas
with coloured sand in intricate lines
as an offering, then blow them away.
Andrew Cannon
Wait, I’m talking.
It’s my turn.
Be patient.
It takes me a while.
I have to work it out.