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.
Clare Bryden
seek justice
and you hold
a seashell to your ear
hear
Gail Webb
He cuts. I lie still, teach myself
to dream of St David’s Bay,
seaweed strewn on incoming tides,
surfers slice big waves in half.
Kim Cullen
I pull a dress over my head
calm foggy blue linen
sleeved in lavender,
press frizzed hair
Mark G. Pennington
Vigo in Autumn is still a furnace
the nightjars
roost on ram-tarmacked roads
and hot guapas carrying fish baskets
Ivan McGuinness
Begins
in a bubble
strained by chalk.
Where the brim-full hill cries,
weeping tracks merge
Elizabeth Wilson Davies
There are places in Wales I don’t go: reservoirs that are the subconscious of a people – R S Thomas
Cofiwch Dryweryn, that two-word protest,
white on blood-red background, landscaped in green,
Kay Feneley
Some days I must immerse myself in the waters
These days are more than others
Monday 09.06 – a sewage overflow has activated
David I. Hughes
He does not shout. He charts.
Where treaty lines once hung like old nets,
he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade.
Anne Stewart
Huddled on the cat’s blanket,
hyenas crying through the night.
Scribbled notes regretting tea,