Conundrumming
BY DARAGH FLEMING.
Trapped between two lines of a riddle --
have to figure this from the inside out.
Fortune cookie walls keep us rigid.
Taste of paper pulp and question-mark ink
The reality of being stuck,
I should have paid more attention when
my grandfather was talking.
I was more concerned with finding
the ends of blackberries than the
lesson he was trying to teach.
Daragh Fleming is an author and poet from Cork, Ireland. His debut in nonfiction, Lonely Boy, is published by BookHub Publishing. He has poems in Beir Bua, Trasna, The World Transformed Sunday Morning at the River, and more. Fleming won the Cork Arts ‘From the Well’ Short Story Competition in 2021. He has been long-listed for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and the London Poetry Prize, commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Fool for Poetry Prize, and shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. You can find more of his work on his website thoughtstoobig.ie, and on Instagram and X (Twitter) @daraghfleming.