blessed in brine

the winged muse competition winners

to the sea I bring offerings of hibiscus. red hope swirling in the shimmer of dusk. the shaper of shorelines swallows sorrow, endures. where loam of salt and earth embellishes my soles, I worship silvery time. the scent of my joy returns to me, blessed in brine and whale song. Saraswati Nagpal

time has rolled along swiftly and we are still bathed in the radiance of writing inspired by Hinterland. it is spring in Delhi, and glorious flowers are flamboyantly blooming in parks, terraces, windowsills. i cannot tear my eyes away from these explosions of colour, this affirmation of hope each day.

today we celebrate yet another month of beautiful responses to our monthly writing competition the winged muse, this month on the theme of ‘TIDES’. Jai Michelle and I were moved by your poignant writing, and March’s competition winner and with no less than six commended writers are featured in this micromagazine, below.

Steven Gouws, Water’s Footprint

we are delighted to announce that our overall winner of the competition is Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad for her shimmering poem that carries us back and forth through time, bathing us in nostalgia, shining with resilience.

huge congratulations to Oormila who will be receiving a three month paid subscription to this magazine, which includes bonus writing from our EIC, submission recommendations, monthly write-alongs, and our new book-club gathering.

here is her poem along with writing by our commended poets:

THE WATER BEARER
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

 
I first learned to float in a sliver of sea
so hemmed in by the arms of dunes,
 
the waves were benign creases
stripped of their feral power.
 
No fury, no tumult of sand or brine,
or glassy mists like over the oceans
 
where my father learned to hold
his breath until his lungs were forced
 
to flower into gills. I glided on slipstreams
of linen green, my days long and languid,
 
sunlight tingling on my toes, each ray
teasing rings upon the expansive calm.
 
One night when I was five, I dreamt
of a torrential deluge, of waking up
 
in a whirlpool that clutched my hair
by its roots. My merman father swam
 
to the depths to brush the dream salt
from my locks, whispering a grace
 
of protection in my ear. I saw his palms
leak light—his face lambent like the velvet
 
petals of water hyssops, as the wavelets
surged around him, heavy with prophecy.
 
Years later, I left the calm of the horse latitudes,
and waded in one breath into the wildest current.
 
Never once did I fear the belly of the tide,
Never once did I look to the shore for succor.




A SOLSTICE OF SEA AND LAND
Lucy Coats


Yesterday, in Sedna’s cove, I let tide
take me, begged blessed Tethys for 
healing, for a sign. Her waters pulled
me out and back, scouring my spirit 
with bitter bite of whales’ teeth
along my back, a sharpness of oyster 
shells without the pearl, spider crab
scuttle across my drowning flesh.
 
I felt her lips close round my throat,
drenched with ochre kelp and brine. 
Seagull swooped low, then rose,
flung high up by inexplicable aether and
mewed ‘persist’, as if I hadn’t set my 
shoulder to the world’s wheel forever. 
*
Kerid’s meadow, twining round sea wind,
Is salt-heavy as I walk the stones, 
uncounted merry maidens, leaning this
way and that, decked with ox eye daisies,
 
ancient as sun and sinless like rain. 
I call on mother earth, make offering
of a striped cone shell from Tethys’
realm, wedding land and sea, 
and see crow balance blackness
on the southwest breeze, wings 
uncertain of direction. I lie spread-
eagled on red Cornish clay, weep 
white clover and the pink of mallow
flowers for all the barriers yet to fall, 
for all the work of freedom yet undone
and still she begs me to persist or die.




BETWEEN THE TIDES
Wendy Howe


As you sleep, the morphine drip
lets you fade from your mortal life
and drift toward the sea. Young and strong
again, you sign the sand with feet
that descend from fins. Your footprints mingle
with starfish that tombstone the beach, marking
the terrain where tides wash in and death dissolves
into an afterlife. Bewildered, you stare
at the billowing darkness as I float
on its wave. A woman of flesh and scales, my hair
turning to copper in the moonlight. My lower body
layered in emerald and silver. It’s been years
since we loved ; but still you remember
the shimmer of my tresses and tail. The seaweed
binding us like an umbilical cord
to the ocean’s womb. Our home, our heritage
before the greener tide of hills and trees
lured you inland. The scent of fruit
beyond orchard or vineyard. Eden also
had its corporate garden -- while I plucked
the long days of your absence
on a coral harp. Its strings undulating
with deep sorrow. Tears luminous as plankton.
Now, I wait along the shoreline. My shadow
a painting on the sand -- that you step into
partaking of the salt air. The moon wearing
her crown of circling gulls. Their cry your own --
primal, desperate to return. The surf spilling
your name over the rocks.





SYNTAX OF A TIDE
Erwin Arroyo

What is language but a mouth that won’t hold its shape?

A tide is a verb that devours its own subject,
          a current is a pull is a thought is a mouth
that forgets the name of the land it kisses,
          then starts again—stammering foam, mid-sentence.

What is language but water—spilling, swallowing, erasing itself?

Waves curl like quotation marks into liquid grammar,
            syntax wrecked against the rocks, full stops swallowed whole,
prefixes and suffixes washing up on shore, scattered
           in fragments for children to pocket like fossilized shells.

I heard someone speaking by the seashore once—

Was it a child whispering into a conch?
           Was it his mother tongued in saltwater?
Or a sailor who once left his nouns
            on the dock and never came back for them?
Now, he speaks only in prepositions:
           on, up, in, down
Now his vowels unstitch from meaning:
           au, ei, ee, ou

If the sea takes what it wants, what does it give back?

Only half-chewed adverbs of place—
           as if the tide itself were trying to explain
that our own drowning is a matter of location—
           Nowhere becomes no where becomes now, here.
Tonight, the sea revises the present tense—
          pull, release, pull, release.
And the tide breaks as before.
          And the tide rewrites the shore.



ANAM CARA
Miriam Grace
 
The sea brought in driftwood.
almost it seemed strange
a dinosaur, from dead skies,
gentle-skinned.
and a red and white ball, and a green piece 
of plastic. 
All these it laid, at my uncertain feet.
 
The tide whipped through like the spring. 
 
and after its vicious doing, 
the daffodils’ heads drifted on the foam. 
the bubbles shivered, and broke.
 
I was yellow, my heart is 
a yellow singer, like the gorse.



THE SEA STEALS OUR PICNIC BLANKET
Chris Campbell

and returns cling film cleansed. Scrub
your fingertips in the fairy-liquid waves,
my captured goodwill floats away in our lunchbox.

At the scene of the crime you tilt your soaked
face to evict ear-squatter sand, ask why
I had positioned us so close to the sea. Shells prise

my protestations. My eardrum bursts, wax surfs
on pulsing waves. Jellyfish fireworks
sting the sky. Rocks thud like bailiffs:

I’d dragged our blanket, four-course platter
and cava down to the shore. A downpour
threatened, even the tide was leaving.

But in a final assault it nicked our basket:
a week’s wages feeding the fishes. My wrists
freeze under my seaweed-soaked shirt.

Your pupils are beads from the seabed
drawn by nature’s net. I want to pick
at your best bits, before you leave again:

this open shell won’t close. 



THE PULL OF THE MOON
Laura Cooney


I need to find someone
to go to bed with
at nine pm.

By the time I get back to the car for the third time,
the tide has gone right out.
Earlier it lapped up at the rocks and I imagined
—.

Right now there’s nothing to make me sleep.

Inside my gut resides the pull of the moon
lunar,
lunatic,
leftover.
lonely.

I fill my days with
anything
and I feed my soul with
everything I can.

I eat nothing.

If I could pluck that star from the sky
put it in my mouth and push it into
my empty belly,
it would be plunder.

The black ink of the sea doesn’t reflect 1000 stars,
but it will reflect the moon,

moving further,
further
further
away.

we thank every writer who responded to the winged muse prompt this month, and we invite our readers to stay tuned for April’s prompt (coming up next week!) which will be ekphrastic, as we open submissions for April.

we are also hosting our monthly write along this Friday. a space to write in companionship with other writers and an opportunity to speak a little about our process. if you are interested it is available for our paid subscribers, this, monthly submission lists, book club and exclusive writing, all for the equivalent of 5 euros per month. if you have questions, do reach out to us we are really delighted to welcome you closer into kin.

thank you for reading, sharing and participating in our community. we would so appreciate if you could leave a comment for the poets here and perhaps share (restack) on substack and beyond.

Saraswati and Jai Michelle