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.
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
I love all these poems about the tides and think they are evocative, imaginative and poignant. My three favorite include" The Water Bearer, Aman Cara And Syntax Of The Tide.
In "The Water Bearer" . I think the title is perfect and the poem illustrates the sense of place and legacy through the relationship of parent and child, sea and soul. These lines were full of beauty and a protective sense of guardianship that haunts the readaer --
"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."
In the poem, "Syntax Of The Tide", the use of the extended language metaphor shimmers with imaginative orginality and focus. The sea does have its own way of speaking and communicating with its inhabitants and surrounding landscape. One stanza builds on the next and; we as the readers, are given this unique question and response to the purpose of life's language..
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.
In the poem, "Anam Cara", I am drawn to the concept of the title meaning "Soulful Friend".
The sea drifts in with its version of gifts from driftwood to a green piece of plastic And then with a sense of power and storm like motion the tide rushes in, changing everything. Though viscious on the surface, it allows for a spirtiual change within the observer. A sudden intimate knowledge and closeness devleops between human and nature.
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.
Really enjoyed these diverse poems.
Thank you Jai-Michelle and Saraswati along with all the contributors.
Sincerely,
Wendy Howe
I was delighted to discover these poems and particularly congratulate Oormila and Erwin for their beautiful and inspiring poetry.
Helen Bersten