Today’s choice
Previous poems
Rongili Biswas
Rosary peas
Girls under the tree,
one with hands clasped as in worship,
the others picking
the scarlet fallen seeds,
so they could string them,
those necklace beads.
They’ve played this game
since sun-up, and even now,
all through this windswept day,
rosary peas fall to their feet,
waiting quietly
to be gathered
and picked and gathered again
for a stringing
that will never end.
Rongili Biswas, a bilingual writer and musician from Kolkata, India, writes across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work, published in journals and magazines internationally, explores memory, observation, and the rhythms of daily life. She has received multiple literary awards.
Emma Lee
Snow’s Reset The roofs blend with the snow-laden clouds, borders softened so it’s only memory that differentiates my space from my neighbour’s. The wet smell confuses pets whose footprints meander over territorial edges, leave crazed patterns like...
Lisa Rossetti
Toughened Bark it takes a hefty blow sometimes to split you open a sharpened blade to split through years of tough old bark in the deeper channels feel how sap and resin thicken sap to carry nourishment keeping the woodiness supple resin to...
Maggie Mackay
A thirty-year-old woman walks into
the wee sma’ hours of a December
night. Snow is light
on her hair and the back
garden shrubs. It thickens. The sky
turns white. She stands still.
Short Poems Feature III
as a child, I learn to eat words
fill me up with words
brittle like sugared almonds
they crunch in my bones
Amaleena Damlé
Short Poems Feature II
The second Short Poems Feature with poetry from James McDermott and Edward Heathman.
Short Poems Feature I
Our first Short Poems Feature with poetry from Sylvie Jane Lewis and Joanna Woznicka.
Jemma Walsh
Siberian Larkspur Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. She is currently doing an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. Her work has been published in The Irish Times, Moth Magazine, HOWL Magazine, Crossways...
Cormac Culkeen
Stay silent
under eyes of stars
quietly watching,
Rebecca Gethin
I won’t forget her on the beach – fur the colours of sand.
We wouldn’t have spotted her were it not for the jiggle
of her gait, the turn of her head with ears pricked,
the spine’s taut bow and torque of her hocks.