"When Jellyfish Are Gone (Medusa Tanka)" by Joan García Viltró

Dive after the gale

in desolate shafts of light

to opaque fish stare

and flurry shifty answers,

They’re unaccountably gone.

In yearning I swim

hunting for that purple-tinged

torrential back pulse,

Where’s beauty? I’d ask again,

It’s inexplicably gone.

Joan García Viltró is a poet from Cambrils, on the south Catalan coast. His poems reflect Mediterranean mythologies and Nature under human pressure. Published in Borders and Belonging (anthology, Cephalopress), The London Magazine, Full House Literary, etc. Shortlisted in 2022 for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, longlisted for the erbacce-prize for poetry.