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
Jennie Howitt
Those full udders will slowly burst
spitting milk onto the grass strands.
Matt Bryden
at the cider farm, eight minutes
before handover, we strike on
feeding the donkeys –
Colin Pink
to embrace you is like clasping
a fist full of briars
Simon Williams
What were these fairies called
before we knew of hummingbirds?
Bumblebee moth because of the size?
Reed-nose moth because of the proboscis?
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
Susan Jane Sims on Mothering Sunday
Matter cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.
I think of this as I pour the almost white ash from
the green plastic container that came in the post
into the vibrant red metal urn I have ready.
Daniel Sluman
just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds
of the animals outside
the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change
in aspect & colour
Farah Ali
Notes from nature on how to survive this:
1. Learn crypsis and mimesis be a gecko or a mossy frog
2. Method actors sway like dead-leaf mantises on branches
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.