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.
Melanie Branton
At boarding school, I had no idea what to do
with myself. Most of the time,
I hid myself in a paper bag . . .
Lucy Calder
I arrange my books in order of height,
on a bank of cow parsley,
amid the random oscillations
of a cool breeze
Tanya Joseph
I know others blossom
but I vomit ectoplasm,
and squaring the corners of my bed,
the nurse reminds me I’m not dying.
Lucy Heuschen
It is known: a woman like that
brings evil on board.
Carolyn Oulton
Heat on the window
baking my face like a biscuit.
I move some hair, look over
at moss and narcissi, in a pot –
Jennifer A. McGowan
You have buried your mother and put
a memorial bench on a high hillside where
the wind blows sunsets straight through
and it’s always better to wear something warm.
Matt Bryden
You used to wind yourself in curtain turning taut,
look down at your feet, pirouette
as the fabric hugged you in.
James Coghill
the undershrub, shored up,
stakes its waspish claim,
its hereabouts
Peter Bickerton
The gull
on the meadow
taps her little yellow feet
like a shovel-snouted lizard
dancing on a floor of lava