Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jane Spray
I’m just an ordinary dryad
After Anna Saunders
not like fancy Eurydice with her sun god father
keep things simple I say I don’t have her dilemmas
full moon in new
dark rising to light
skin and bark together
woodbine up hazel shoots
in loving arms under the boughs
I lie all night in this secluded wood
ok I do a bit of foraging now and then wild garlic mostly
but I’m rooted here will never leave these woods
Jane Spray lives in the Forest of Dean. She attempts to live harmlessly, if not in complete harmony with her surroundings, including her family. Her recent cave and nature themed collection is Cave Whale (Alba Publishing). www.janespray.net/writing
Oenone Thomas
Because I don’t know any other way
I replace my left hand
with a hook, my feet
with jackhammers, both
my eyes with spangled
mirror balls.
Adele Evershed
Some Things My Mother Forgot to Teach Me (Before She Died)
A while ago I saw this prompt on Instagram
though I added ‘before she died’
because mine did—long before
anyway, I made a list
Sally Jenkins
Funny how Year 8 is doing bones
now, of all the weeks. In the prep room
we strip flesh off chicken wings
Chris Hardy
Memento Vivere We lived here once. The rain we heard fell everywhere. Silence except the wind across the ground. It’s best to keep quiet. Words are like dead seeds, they vanish when they’re said. * New Year’s Eve without stars or...
Siobhan Logan
There’s something wrong with the sky
it’s the colour of a bruise and smells
of burnt toast. Do you hear that noise?
Someone’s shredding the blue
Alex Searle
Something started you to wake,
Leaving sockprints in the parquet
H.J. Thomas
We ate it leaning against the rail
above the harbour –
black cherry,
melting down the cone
Stephen Keeler
Among the joys of love was when we got
our first apartment on a boulevard
above the trams and tree-tops and the wires
that cut the street like tangram puzzles and
Khairina Anindya, Genevieve Beech
‘Khair’
At the feet
of al-Ka‘ba
you asked for a daughter.
‘BIRTHLIGHT’
You are ordinary
to the teenager on the bus,
the doctor at our six-week check.