poetry

Prickly Hedge – 100 words

June 12, 2023 By Ellen

Prickly hedge Don’t touch Don’t get too close Don’t look at me so I feel dirty Don’t presume Don’t tell me who I am Don’t be late Don’t make my decisions Don’t stand me up Don’t tell me what to think Don’t use me for your jokes Don’t turn your back Don’t tell […]

Priorities – 100 words

May 30, 2023 By Ellen

Priorities Will the world be better with my poem in it? We won’t find out if I hang out the laundry first, or answer emails and scroll some internet fluff. The world may not care what I write about varifocals or politicians or heatwaves, but it won’t get the chance to judge if […]

Dryad – 100 words

May 23, 2023 By Ellen

Dryad I’m young in the woods with new-hatched insects, buzzing busy, and idle hop birds, indolent and dusty. I can see child hands, pressed on rock, in sand, digging and wriggling with worms or gleaming beetles, palm of night-green leaf crush. Kneeling to work and study knobbles under canopy ferns: my nest, […]

Imposter – 100 words

May 9, 2023 By Ellen

Imposter I used to have a hat. It was beautiful with a dashing brim made of the softest emerald felt the colour of spring moss with a feather that swooped. I swished a cape around me it was green like midnight forests and the velvet stroked my back. It fastened at my throat with […]

Aye IA – 100 words

March 5, 2023 By Ellen

Aye AI It’s the latest addition to the frightening list soon, they say, we wordsmiths will be unnecessary machines will vomit everything they need to get our messages across. Across where? Who knows? Giant buckets of dictionaries, heated, agitated until, with a burp of punctuation, a sentence escapes. A grammatically correct construction: born to be […]