Today’s choice
Previous poems
Betty Doyle
At Sea
Both cast out to sea, I wonder –
did your ashes ever meet?
It was under the same sun setting,
although years and miles apart.
My grandmother, loosened slowly
into Cardigan Bay under a Hay Moon.
My best friend, spread across a bed
of Pacific seamount, five years before.
Down there, the rocks are hot.
They fracture. Plates upend and falter.
It is a far-off land, alien to our Irish Sea,
with no way for their salt to meet, but still
I imagine their greetings –
a grain from my grandmother’s jaw
grazing dust that used to be my best friend’s knee,
their cinders caught by current,
tumbling together. The loam debris
of a femur, loess of skull dome cupping
one another. What do they talk about?
I hope it’s me. In darkened rooms,
in the land of the living, I click through
learning the names of bones
that have been calcified, atomized, sown.
My inherited orbital bone, the lunate
I used to hold; the incus that only hears
the rush of opposite tides, mandibles open
to taste the salt, the spray, the tears.
Mark Rutter
when the people are gone
and the wooden house
has been burned down
to recover its nails
Gráinne Daly
Not for me the tomb of Irish soil.
Put me on a plane
and let me make one last journey
before my final departure.
Rebecca Cohen
If you don’t believe in God, my friend says,
why don’t you eat pork?
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.
Steph Morris
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts.
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...
Sharon Black
My thoughts are skittish,
peck at whatever they find.
I flick each whitewash flake
into the bin. Shadows on the walls
Vanessa Napolitano
Floors are unvacuumed. Spices remain un-alphabetised.
I bless the spaces between the furniture to keep everyone safe. Seven.