Today’s choice
Previous poems
Gráinne Daly
Not for me Glasnevin
Nor its Irish revolutionaries.
Not for me the slate rain
on my headstone
for ten months of the year
and intermittent showers in the other two.
Not for me the tomb of Irish soil.
Put me on a plane
and let me make one last journey
before my final departure.
Secure me in a marble wall
at the foot of a mountain
where sodden soil can’t stiffen my bones
and the ice of a Dublin breeze
can’t make them creek.
Settle me in Casalattico
where the sun will surely warm me
and the snow will leave a
greener valley in its midst.
Fresh flowers will be left by my tomb.
Bury me in Italy
though I was not born there
she is in my blood
and I belong in the womb of her earth.
Gráinne Daly’s work was longlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year Award. She won the UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award and her writing has appeared in The Under Review, Aethlon: Journal of Sports Literature, Southword Journal, The Honest Ulsterman, The Ogham Stone, Splonk and many other publications
Rich Yates
The bird
crept up on him, threw its voice into an empty tree
Annie Kissack
Girl Awaits the Psychic Investigators They’re late. The table is laid with a clean cloth, all normal and neat. Our visitors, city men, may find it hard to navigate the path but we can wait. They hope to gather evidence of a haunting; whether he’ll...
Jim Murdoch
We don’t decide who we love.
Who we hate, yes,
who we’re jealous of,
but never who we end up loving.
Alex Stolis
It’s 16 below zero. Actual temp. We’re sole owners of the shore, windchill pushes it down to minus 36.
Ashia Mirza
Someone is taking a photo
at a wedding
of their baby
at a celebration.
Phil Vernon
These hills that look towards both weald and waves
hold – in their homesteads, fenced and open land,
trackways and contours – all that’s happened here
Sandra Noel
I’m sorry for the screeching and swearing we winter swimmers do.
Mike Duggan
A decapitated road sign
Spears the yellow verge,
Meaningless as a symbol
Of progress. A vain strut.
Sue Spiers
I wrote a metaphor using eel
for blue-light reflections in water
on a flooded motorway