Today’s choice
Previous poems
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh
And when you step into the clearing
there will be dancing. The unsteady moon, shaken
to ribbon; shimmering through regalia of clouds. Shawls,
as if ermine, still scurrying (wee winter-whitened weasels).
& the one elm sways too. Lit, like a many-armed Durga.
You think a tree can be stilled by soil? That roots would
drown a soul in ground? Stay your sights, even as body
sends you circling. Look, un-giddied. Remain: forward
& centre. Pasts done & undone. You, the rhythm of quake.
Waken. Clear forest from your feet. Listen. It will be your
name calling & you hearing it spoken, for the first time.
Cáit O’Neill McCullagh‘s debut collection The Bone Folder was shortlisted for The Saltires, in 2025; the year she won the McLellan Prize. Living with cancer, at home in the Highlands, she is writing her next collection (TBP 2027). See @kittyjomac and www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org
Iris Anne Lewis
The track leads through thickets, threaded with eyes.
Elusive scraps of dreams, they gleam, flicker out.
Antonia Kearton
On my son’s desk lies
the periodic table of the elements.
I look. Amongst the arcane names
I recognise, easy as breathing,
carbon, oxygen, gold, beloved of kings.
Elizabeth Loudon
The first three days of war
have a surprising holiday feel.
No deadlines, just the giddy gasp of shock.
Ordinary life continues.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
A lacquer table, gloss under fingertips. A raised stage with dark linen. A young woman smiles with her hand-held harp, its nine strings glistening. The room swells with the cadence of her pearly notes. Beneath the pendant lights—a vision of serenity.
Pratibha Castle
Conscience
as taught her by the nuns was a bridle
on a young girl’s tongue
K. S. Moore
Teenage years
everything begins
it never ends
Jim Murdoch
I didn’t know what to do with all my dad’s love
so, I minded it for him fully intending to give it back one day.
Finola Scott
Such a knife, a real Et Tu Brute number. Bone handled, incisive. Decades of marriage
had whetted the blade to feather lean. Anniversaries marked in metal.
Sarah James/Leavesley
My mother’s knife made the first cuts –
she removed my fertile light bulbs,
then stuffed my womb with shredded tissues.