are you a veil?
micro magazine of poetry inspired by Biophilia
dear readers, last week, I (Saraswati) wrote about my exploration of movement through Kathak and ballet in an essay here. this week, we bring you more beauty inspired by Biophilia - poems by Carmella de Keyser, Paul atten Ash, Miranda Barnes and Neethu Krishnan. both Miranda and Carmella read their poems at our Biophilia for Substack evening on zoom earlier this month. it was such a pleasure to hear them. the title of today’s museletter is a line from Miranda’s poem, “Where Death is an Opening.”
YORKSHIRE DALE DISCORDANCY Carmella de Keyser A fragrance of penny reeds reaches out across these unborn fields. I become a degree of silence, As your hand whispers to mine in fortissimo, In hybrid haze. The dales are golden giants, Our bodies sleight of hand matchsticks, Stacking in congruence, within melancholy thistle. Your hair exhales silvered silk onto your spine, Our chest’s breaths, A cascading, waterfall of our fallen thoughts. Stolen. The dales are our witnesses, A deceit of lapwings terraces us, Sheltered under your threadbare human wing, The reckoning terrifies me, Union. A rarity, and I am atomic in your earthshaking realm. The expanse now weaves into a dense and persecutory fortress, Confusion. I’m left shattered into severance and the dissonance of noise.
JOHATSU Paul atten Ash as he moves beyond this world his spirit half-chides you are more dead than alive to me and this is how a man vanishes beneath a gibbous moon consumed by numbers, news, the worry pit in the stomach but let us bear witness to the spectralisation of the soul Ghost Mt. comes swimming into view black blossom half-greyed by rain for he is johatsu now lost to the vapours of the onsen an end to it all forever perhaps as time evaporates his fingers the cold curlicues of cherry trees in autumn this final fading of human thought the reaching-out of root-lines to become under-crust surrendering to the earth’s core his breath the crush of subsoil dust his pulse a faint thrum of vestigial rivers nature’s dialect of love lingering an orison intoned to the disappeared for the lost will be together as one like spectres limned by a failing star darkening at the edges of the self this leaving a longing for the last light that will flood the forest floor
A MORSEL OF GOLD Neethu Krishnan After the first few days of gleeful welcoming, monsoon becomes white noise. The sky a slaty tarpaulin. The earth a stretch of washed greens. The air so thoroughly perfused with the wet perfume of earth, it doesn’t register as dreamy anymore. And then on a grey day, the Sun peeks from behind silver-lined clouds, tentatively, coyly, like an anomalistic wonder. It pours syrupy gold for a blink and before the splayed wings of relieved birds can get their fill of welcome warmth, swarms of urgent, bulbous clouds sidle towards each other, swallow the soft white orb, curtain the last vestiges of its light. The sky is wet and moody grey once again; the Sun easily forgotten, again, as always, as darkness goes back to caging our skies.
we hope you enjoyed these poems as much as we did. thank you for reading, for commenting, and for sharing them.
until next week…
Saraswati and Jai Michelle
read about today’s poets and artist here:
Carmella de Keyser writes poetry exploring her part Balkan identity, ambivalence, otherization, 90’s sub-cultures, liminal spaces, grief and displacement. Published in magazines, anthologies, broadcast in BBC Essex, and the forthcoming 2025 Macmillan Poetry Anthology ‘You’re Never Too Much’. Founder of the Harlow Circle of Poetry Stanza. Judge for the ‘Harlow Open Poetry Competition’, 2025, Honourable Mention 'Dark Poets Prize' and a winner of the Hedgehog Press Micro Pamphlet Competition for her debut collection. Paul atten Ash is the pen name of Bristol UK-based writer, composer, and art-photographer Paul Nash whose work has been widely published (BBC Radio 6 Music, Broken Sleep Books, Butcher’s Dog, Dark Mountain, Magma, PBLJ, Poetry Scotland, Shooter, Under The Radar, among others). His debut pamphlet 'Searchlight Seasons' was published by Atomic Bohemian in October 2024. Prize shortlistings include: Ginkgo Prize (2021, 2022); Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize (2023). Links: https://campsite.bio/northseanavigator Miranda Lynn Barnes is a poet, academic, and interdisciplinary researcher with a keen interest in where poetry and science intersect. She is the author of Blue Dot Aubade (V. Press, 2020) and Formulations (Small Press/Tangent Books, 2022), a chapbook of new poetic forms based in chemistry, co-authored with Stephen Paul Wren. Miranda’s poems are widely published in journals and anthologies, both in the UK and abroad. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge. https://mirandalynnbarnes.wordpress.com/ Neethu Krishnan is a writer based in Mumbai, India, who writes between genres at the moment. She is a Best of the Net Poetry nominee, Bacopa Literary Review Creative Nonfiction Award winner, and 2024 Erbacce Poetry Prize longlisted poet. Her works have been curated in 35+ international publications so far. Maryssa Paulsen grew up in rural northwestern Wisconsin and currently lives in northeast Wisconsin along the shores of Lake Michigan. In her free time, when not out admiring the sky, the birds and the trees, she attends book club and reads literary fiction. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Great Lakes Review, bramble, Unleash Lit, Wandering Toft Point: A Nature Journal, and Green Bay City Pages. You can find her on Instagram @maryssapaulsen or Substack at https://substack.com/@marsonearthxo.
Loved JOHATSU by
Paul atten Ash, it was really beautiful.