Today’s choice

Previous poems

Betty Doyle

by | Sep 25, 2026 | ,

 

 

 

At Sea

 

Both cast out to sea, I wonder – 
did your ashes ever meet? 
It was under the same sun setting,
although years and miles apart.
My grandmother, loosened slowly
into Cardigan Bay under a Hay Moon.
My best friend, spread across a bed
of Pacific seamount, five years before. 
Down there, the rocks are hot. 
They fracture. Plates upend and falter.
It is a far-off land, alien to our Irish Sea,
with no way for their salt to meet, but still
I imagine their greetings – 
a grain from my grandmother’s jaw
grazing dust that used to be my best friend’s knee,
their cinders caught by current,
tumbling together. The loam debris
of a femur, loess of skull dome cupping
one another. What do they talk about?
I hope it’s me. In darkened rooms, 
in the land of the living, I click through
learning the names of bones
that have been calcified, atomized, sown.
My inherited orbital bone, the lunate 
I used to hold; the incus that only hears
the rush of opposite tides, mandibles open
to taste the salt, the spray, the tears. 

 

Betty Doyle has two pamphlets: Girls Parts, published by Verve in 2022; and Fruits of Labour, published by Seren in 2024. She has a PhD in Creative Writing.

Nairn Kennedy

by | Aug 3, 2026 | ,

You notice the nose: webbed veins spritzed
with little flicks of red, purple blotches
daubed with a palette-knife, broken ends
where blood-vessels gave up the ghost.

Mark McDonnell

by | Aug 1, 2026 | ,

Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise
I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot
until someone taps me sharply on the knee.

Sylvia Banham

by | Jul 28, 2026 | ,

Pigeons have invaded the garden, two then four, then a flock.
They roost in the apple tree to nest, reconnoitre or mate
 
ignore my sorties to deter them and shit without stint
on patio and herb bed, foul lovely hyssop and thyme.