Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ananya S Guha
Halting Dreams
The leaves are growing out of
a harangue of loneliness
palms cupped I listen to silences
of winter or summers
and unmask faces caught in
tangle of storm, the history of
what was not written or recorded
in books, time’s erasure in moments
fraught with changing paths or charge
with turbulence of rains;
A vast momentary haul of a ship’s load
or a vessel’s yachting,
it is fun to remember and demonise time
in these hills where a cloudburst thumps
the heart, pounds on it like merciless beating
of bird’s wings, or like the beak of a crow
steals thunder, I walk and then a reservoir
pumps blood into the hiatus of living the dead.
Or, the dead living. Shadows typically torment,
lengthen or shorten to spin yarns
in these dead blue hills where a rosary
does not match prayer, but the bluish hue
carps on dreams and a thicket of grass
stumbles in front of you. I wash pains momentarily as a rising quicksand halts
my dreams.
Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong. He has ten collections of poetry in English and has been writing and publishing his poetry for the last forty years.
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.
Max Wallis
god grant us the serenity / to accept the things we cannot change / the courage to change the / things we can / and the wisdom to know el differencio /
Play, National Poetry Day: Heather Hughes, Laura Webb, Jude Brigley
We searched so long for that clover.
Every time the sun shone we scoured
the fields and woods, running past
the children playing with skipping ropes
Play, For National Poetry Day: Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Charlotte Dormandy, Lee Fraser
10 Children dart in the dark, screamers
streaming sweets and neon, their parents
Play, for National Poetry Day: MD Bier, Catherine Sweeney, Rachel Burns
Those hot hot summer days. Hair curling against sticky clammy foreheads.
Pony tails, pig tails or braids. Keep it off our neck and backs.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Ruth Aylett , Brian Comber
They can imagine a forest,
we don’t need this minimalist tree,
we’ll represent a place to live without walls, without foundations or a hearth.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Jennifer A. McGowan, Judith Shaw, Robin Houghton, Wendy Klein
Over and over, you are Dorothy
or Glenda the Good,
me the Wicked Witch of the West
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.