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
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark
Juliet Humphreys
Though I am not a painter
this is to be a portrait
of my parents and my sister.