just salt

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Be most welcome, my dearest digital friends. Welcome to my poetic realm of salty memories. 🧂

After reading this week’s poem, if you’re so inclined, feel free to scroll down and check out some of the things happening in my world as I continue these adventures in writing. Now, on to some new poetry….

This week’s poem got me thinking about salt, which is one of those substances that has no business carrying as much symbolic drama as it does.

It sits there in a plain little shaker, minding its own crystalline business, while quietly having spent centuries preserving food, purifying wounds, sealing covenants, seasoning suppers, and making bland things worth returning to.

Sugar has always struck me as a flirt. Salt is older. Salt has convictions.

I trust it more.

There is something almost sacramental about salt. A little transforms everything. Too much overwhelms. Too little, and the whole dish falls flat with a kind of edible despair.

Life seems to work that way too. We are forever trying to find the right measure of tenderness, restraint, humor, honesty, grief. Enough to feel fully alive. Not so much that we drown in ourselves.

What interests me most is how salt keeps turning up wherever human feeling has reached its limit. At the table, yes. In ritual, certainly. And in tears, which are perhaps the body’s oldest proof that love and sorrow have always shared a border.

That is part of what led me into this week’s poem. The cucumber itself is humble. Common. Forgettable.

But salt changes it. Salt wakes it up. Salt turns it from produce into memory, from habit into inheritance, from something eaten into something almost received.

And when grief enters the room, the salt does not disappear. It deepens. It moves from the tongue to the tears. It becomes, in its small and faithful way, a sacrament of longing.

Perhaps that is why grief so often gathers around the plainest things. A little salt. A remembered taste. An ordinary ritual that suddenly feels holy.

Is there anything in your life that is commonplace, yet salted with memory?

As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts, feelings, and reactions to this week’s poem in the “Leave a Reply” comment section at the very bottom of this page.

-PS Conway ☘️ ☘️ ☘️

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just salt

i keep forgetting
the cucumbers.
every week,
i walk past them in produce –
their patient green certainty,
the mist baptizing like something
holy.
something still dusty with original sin.

last summer,
my father asked for cucumbers
with salt.
no dressing.
no vinegar.
just salt.
he said it like a password
to an older country.

now i eat them
standing by the sink.
cold.
wet.
salty.
like small, obedient silences
followed by unjustified tears.

i still forget the cucumbers sometimes.
like names.
like prayers.
echoing in the confessional
of this empty house.

wishing father could taste them.

☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️

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This Week’s Links to my published work…

Media News…

*COMING SOON* Just finished my interview with Steve Cuden for his brilliant podcast StoryBeat – what a great conversation! It should air April 21 at Noon. More to come – but do check out Steve’s interviews with other writers and artists – https://www.storybeat.net/

*NEW* My interview with Editor-in-Chief, Gabriela Marie Milton of Literary Revelations Publishing House: https://literaryrevelations.com/2026/01/25/the-portrait-of-a-poet-ps-conway/  🌹☘️

*NEW* My interview with author Tricia Copeland on her podcast Finding the Magic Book is now available to watch: https://youtu.be/NhieYECI-H4  🤯🥂

Latest Publication News 

It has been a productive last few months for me. 7 POEMS published. If you are interested in a reading any of these, I have embedded the Amazon links below.

  1. My poem mercy will be published in The Ekphrastic Review on May 12. They are a literary “online journal devoted entirely to writing inspired by visual art. Their objective is to promote ekphrastic writing, promote art appreciation, and experience how the two strengthen each other and bring enrichment to every facet of life.”
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  2. My 3 poems – the wet centre is bottomless, laugh tracks, and three flights away – will be published in Mouthful of Salt in Issue #3 on April 27. They are “a Black-led literary journal dedicated to bold, boundary-pushing storytelling. Our editorial vision is shaped by a wide range of lived experiences, and we are committed to creating a space where writers from across the globe can be seen, heard, and celebrated.”
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  3. My poem the color of staying was published in the Spring’26 edition of PHIL LIT Journal on March 15. This literary journal “promotes writing that engages with philosophical, metaphysical, ethical, & existential themes; without sacrificing beauty, craft, surprise, or risk.” Please be sure to check it out.
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  4. I have 2 poems – paint and i have seen love do the same – published in The Belfast Review, Winter/Spring 2026. Based in the north of Ireland, this gorgeous emerging literary magazine, in addition to poetry, “aims to create a dialogue between the arts, featuring genres not usually included in literary journals such as song lyrics, plays, screenplays, and hybrid forms, to better reflect the lived experience of art, the self, and the city.”

Latest News – Life Sucks…

So far, Life Sucks has received so many ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Editorial Reviews. More to come soon.

I’m anticipating a whole bunch of solid Reader Reviews to begin populating Amazon in the next few weeks, too. The goal is to get to 50 Reader Reviews asap to kick Amazon’s promotion engine into a higher gear.

Speaking of Editorial Reviews, we secured a BIG ONE – BookLife. This is the indie press division of Publishers Weekly and represents a major credibility lift to my published work. Here is a link, in case you’re interested in reading the entire review:

https://booklife.com/project/life-sucks-memories-and-introspections-during-the-great-covid-lockdown-101267

And here are a few other snippets of other editorial reactions so far!

– “Snort-laughs and gasp-worthy wit – PS Conway goes there, and it’s hilarious.”

– “A must-read for anyone stressed, cynical, or just in need of a damn good laugh.”

– “Darkly funny, brutally honest, and weirdly comforting – like therapy, but with colonoscopies.”

☘️ COME BACK EACH WEEK FOR NEW POETRY ☘️

2 comments

  1. This poem is a hauntingly quiet piece that captures the way grief turns produce into a religious experience, where a simple cucumber becomes a relic of your friend’s father. I like the phrase “small, obedient silences.” It seems to frame the act of eating as a private ritual that inevitably leads back to the weight of loss. Great job, my friend! I enjoyed it.

    Reply

    1. Thanks, PS! I have found in my own grieving process that it is the simplest things that remind me most profoundly of those I have lost in recent years. So weird. Thanks so much for your kind thoughts! 🙏🏻🥂🖤🥂🙏🏻

      Reply

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