Today’s choice
Previous poems
Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki
The Lean-to Glasshouse
Its timber frame held together by the waste
of its own decay
The rot a kind of glue undisturbed
Cracked panes of glass hold their fractures
still
Hearts tongue ferns grow beneath
the dripping tap
And at the end in the damp where
all the water pools at the bottom of the sloping
shingle path
Bricks crumble to dust
Their profile left behind
miniature terracotta towns in relief
Grey plastic sockets intrude
Dried cardoon heads hang upside down
from routed conduit pipe
Loose stacks of brick and timber slats
make staging for rows and rows of potted
plants
This is where things grow
The wind threatens with a conditioned
response
So I cup my hands to catch it
And wait for somebody to say
words like short unexpected illness
And devastating loss
Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki is a gardener and writer from Birmingham, England. He writes about trees and plants (mostly) and people (sometimes) and other unimportant things. His work has featured widely both in print and online.
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
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.