Today’s choice

Previous poems

Gráinne Daly

 

 

 

Not for me Glasnevin

Nor its Irish revolutionaries.
Not for me the slate rain 
on my headstone
for ten months of the year
and intermittent showers in the other two.
Not for me the tomb of Irish soil.
Put me on a plane
and let me make one last journey
before my final departure.
Secure me in a marble wall
at the foot of a mountain 
where sodden soil can’t stiffen my bones 
and the ice of a Dublin breeze 
can’t make them creek.
Settle me in Casalattico
where the sun will surely warm me
and the snow will leave a
greener valley in its midst.
Fresh flowers will be left by my tomb.
Bury me in Italy
though I was not born there
she is in my blood
and I belong in the womb of her earth.

 

Gráinne Daly’s work was longlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year Award. She won the UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award and her writing has appeared in The Under Review, Aethlon: Journal of Sports Literature, Southword Journal, The Honest Ulsterman, The Ogham Stone, Splonk and many other publications

Rhian Thomas

On my phone a newsreel shows a car boot lifting
just above the flood. Tail lights like eyes 

caught in a comic gasp, while its body, like the carriageway,
lies under sixty million litres of last night’s rain. 

Sue Norton

Today I tipped the packet of coffee
into the cafetiere instead of the tin.
Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in.

Kathy Pimlott 

      Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars Twilight: one after another security lights click on illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns, triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed, click off. The sky is a layer cake...

Jane Spray

I’m just an ordinary dryad
not like fancy Eurydice   with her sun god father
keep things simple   I say   I don’t have her dilemmas