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.
Jade Wright
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
Ruth Lexton
The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.
Claire Booker
Never has there been so much interest
in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth
like the little man in a weather clock.
Jacob Mckibbin
my brother saw his attacker
at a petrol station
Janet Hatherley
He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him
twenty-eight years older, not eighteen.
Syed Anas S
We are the ones
who see big crackers
burst every day—
Dharmavadana
She barely glances at you when you chink
your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still
spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls,
Tim Dwyer
Shedding Annamakerrig It begins high up the chestnut tree with leaves on the twigs on the tips of branches where sap has slowed. Turning amber carried by the breeze they touch the earth, rest on the grass where autumn begins Tim...
Gopal Lahiri
From this far-side apartment
you watch jarul leaves darkening with the seasons