The Poem of the Month for July 2025, selected by 2025 Anthology editors Val Braendler and Ben Adams, is Vital Statistics by Roger Higgins. The commended poems are autumn’s last day by David Cookson, Is It Love by Maeve Archibald and For the One I Have Become by Doris Nickolas.
Vital Statistics
(or Working in Winter in Kazakhstan)
Roger Higgins
Expect minus twenty-seven, feels like minus thirty-three,
I am decked out in thermals and multiple layers,
cheekbones feeling like thin glass
that would shatter at a touch.
And we are already below forecast
without counting the chill of a wind
piling snow to the rooflines of the few buildings
the window glass displaying in strata
the past week’s weather.
Vital statistics
Thirty-six, thirty, thirty-five
imitating the figure of a centrefold
but these are the temperatures below zero
at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
**
In this the crews work
pouring concrete and erecting steel,
five weeks on so far, feels like twenty,
and chicken again in the mess tonight.
There are other vital statistics here
this one has a daughter, sixteen with a habit
this one a son aged eight, gone with his stepfather
a mother BP seventy-five over fifty and failing fast
a best friend who isn’t returning messages any more,
and it’s minus thirty-seven now on the gauge,
feels like minus forty-five,
nothing will keep them warm
and no way to get home for five more weeks.
**
Accidents happen too easily
the incident rate is one point five
productivity is down to zero point six
the work is twelve percent behind schedule
and everything is on the critical path.
Vital statistics.
Three birthdays and two anniversaries missed this week
eighteen emails about loneliness across time zones
three supervisors went to town, got drunk, were fired
eleven men did not return from field break.
The temperature is back up to minus thirty
but the wind is gusting to twenty knots, feels like minus forty.
**
My breath is icing on the window of the four-wheel drive.
I scrape at it with my red loyalty card from Cibo
perhaps the best value I will get from that card
although I would enjoy a cappuccino right now, dusted with cocoa.
My piss steams in the frozen outhouse
horses stand like weather vanes to the wind.
autumn’s last day
David Cookson
The portents have gathered.
An eye on the weather quarter, the last nomads in the tourist park
have packed up pills, re-tied bikes to their van, flee north for sun
past the closed sign peering tipsily from Chloë’s Crafts’ window;
patchouli though still loitering, nostalgic for Woodstock’s mud.
Bush-bash tyre tracks plait the sandy road to the beach, empty
except for waves grumbling at rocks on the point and beards
with ocker names, their off-roaders scarring dunes, scaring
dotterels.
On the Esplanade joggers in frowns and fit bits dodge around
the 80’s contingent, gloves redolent of mothballs, who also watch the
south west while walking and being walked by look alike white dogs
past codgers on benches whose eyes follow them like tin cans on a
string, even though only their toenails are still hard and horny.
Early afternoon. Those apprehensive glances have
proved prophetic as panzer clouds bully the wind into banishing old
coffee cups and any chance of autumn lingering.
The locals hunch
further into anoraks, scurry home for tea and Tim Tams to mull over
how to cope with winter’s indigo moods—
consider afternoons
engrossed in Le Carré, sip coffee spoons of T S Eliot, perhaps sharing
soup and sourdough toast with friends, a wine or two, or just listening
to the night rain; its abstract harmonies and rhythms complex as any
Chopin; the daily benediction at midnight of woolly, red bedsocks.
Is It Love
Maeve Archibald
Is It love
When I hear his name
in every ring tone
Is It love
When the conversation suddenly
dies mid-sentence
And I I have lost all my words
Is It love
When his eyes meet mine
And I am heart stung
Is It love
When his smile lights the day
And I am left breathless
Is It love
When his hand brushes mine
And I am star struck
Is It love
When his lips touch mine
And I drown in his depths
Is It love
When his hand slides lower
And I close my eyes lean in
Is It love
When he undoes each button
soooo slllloowwlly
And I am already over the edge
Is It love
When I feel his weight
And the frisson of fire
Is It Love
Is It?
For the One I Have Become
Doris Nickolas
This is a tribute
to the woman I am today.
To the woman forged in sorrow.
The woman.
Reshaped by loss.
Since the day my precious child left this world
I have learned, that until God calls me home
nothing
will ever break me.
For I never imagined I would keep breathing.
Carry a soul broken beyond repair.
Yet, here I stand.
Surviving.
Learning to move
through the void of a world I did not choose.
But one, that claimed me without mercy.
And to deepen the wound
those I once held close
the ones I gave my best years to
vanished in my darkest.
Only now do I truly understand abandonment.
Felt the sting of betrayal.
Yet, in their absence, it is they who are made small.
A truth that speaks not of me –
but of them.
Grief.
Has gifted me resilience.
Pain.
Has gifted me strength.
Through every tear a clarity has emerged
a knowing that cannot be undone.
This is a tribute.
For the one I have become.