Sri Lanka haikuafter traveller’s tummy — ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ Fourteen Days Buddhas of Asia Europe haiku sequence ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ A Lapsed Catholic’s Prayer |
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Category: 25 Pins in a packet women creators
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Quinces.
Quinces seem to come from fairy tales.
People even think of them as aliens,
neither round nor oval
neither glossy nor trivial
not too dry and not too mellow
but Lord, how they are handsome!
They bring the Sun into a home
dusty and drowsy,
as if it had slept quietly among them!
Cats
What if, overnight,
after a cup of cocoa with milk,
we all wake up,
mewling and whiskered?
Crackling our jaws
arching our backs
becoming cats.
Better than humans?
Sunrise
The cool sunrise, suddenly
caused my heart to shudder.
It seemed that cricket songs
were slowly drilling into my soul.
All day long, in summer,
they surround me with their ardour,
their birds’ wings spread into the air,
flapping, moving since dawn,
tempestuous!If I were spring,
If I were spring - I would disguise myself without much ado as a beautiful swallow, I would chirp among the cheerful kids, weaving from the sweetest sun rays brought by the light blessing of the Zephyr, my cheery, noisy song. Which I would like, as expected, the cherry trees to ascertain. Or, better yet! I would disguise myself as a flowery pencil box to sneak into your desk. And there, I would whisper in a soft voice hidden behind the arm of your compass that spring dwells next to you, one step away!
Mihaela Dragan was born in Bucharest. She has dreamt of becoming a writer since she was a child. She was a primary school teacher for 10 years between 1986-1996, during this time she attended the University of Bucharest and obtained her degree in history and philosophy. Afterwards, She studied Law, changed her profession and became a member lawyer of the Bucharest Bar Association (1996). She loves poetry and visual arts equally finds inspiration in images that impress her through bold choices of colours, textures or composition. She has two wonderful daughters who chose to study abroad. With her newly found free time, she took on a new challenge to improve her creative skills and to dedicate more time to writing.
If I were spring and other poems were written and translated by Mihaela Dragan
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Top Shaggers
At first, we felt a clear hot rage.
This girl.
Torn into hysterics.
But not beyond reasonable doubt.Fear Response
freeze,
a mind grasps it’s body tight
brain-stem trained by centuries
in how useless it is to fight.But where justice
is hewn from happenstance
consent is an irrelevance.But those boys.
Raised on porn and privilege
paying for impunity
in more ways than one.We have let them down too.
We have let them all down.
We turned blind scoffing eyes as they grew
unfettered.
uninformed.We let it happen.
My Grandfather,
stepped into his wife’s shoes
the day she died.
He learnt to make soda bread.
Took the smallest one, my father,
to sleep in his bedroom with him
the first year after.
Squeezed the boys orange juice
before school in the morning.I never knew him in his prime.
His spark and sight dwindled as I grew.
I covet the memories of my older cousins
like jewels through a shop window,
nose pressed against a room I cannot enter.A few years after Grandpa died,
I asked my father
if he still missed him.
He laughed,
and then looked very old.
And I felt young and foolish
not to know.Someday I will be the one who hasn’t stopped missing.
Couldn’t.
And perhaps my children will fail to notice
How much my father always loved fresh orange juice.Snow
rules relaxed
neighbours greet and smile
brighter than eye whites
it tells us to slow
we walk in the middle of the road
giddy with transgression,
the air is glistened
and it feels changed forever.
melts as it falls
like the mayfly
it lives just one bright day.
we cannot help but destroy
the diamond silk of the paths
never touched by another human
we plant our footprint flags
claim it as our own.
looking at the drenched-clean city
we feel the stirring of the great water within.
that from where we come
and that which sustains.
the original sea-womb of all life.
we stand
in a drop of our own essence.
the howling lake inside
silenced in snow.
Holding
I am interested in what is held in the body
when we have been unheld
when we have split from ourselves.
Subtle as a dew-kissed leaf
a muscle hardens.
a knuckle can freeze
we crystallise
slowly,
until one day no melting can come to ease.
But turning back to the hard light
the melting pain
that cure which no one wants
because it hurts,
we can lift our arms high
in the letting go.Silence
I talk to you
as if my tongue skids on ice
the words slip out,
unruly children
no translator by my side
my word birds drop their seeds on barren ground
I stumble and mumble
wishing I could shake you and sayI CANNOT SPEAK TODAY
I have to sink myself into someone
like a hot bath,
the first touch being too much
small talk singes my skin,
always too thin
and it takes more time
than most
to unfurlBut still I talk and talk
In the hope that one day
I will have earned the right
to stay silentTop Shaggers and other poems are © Emma Gleeson
Emma Gleeson lives in Dublin. Her writing adventures include poems, cultural reviews, and essays. She has worked in the theatre industry as a costume designer and events coordinator, and lectures on sustainability. She has a BA in Drama & Theatre and an MA in Fashion History.
Instagram @emmajgleeson
Website http://www.droppingslow.com -
Our Sleeping Women
I think of my grandmothers,
their faces etched in mine,
their strength sleeps in my bones.
We meet in fields of crows,
their voices speak through the wind.Old graves sloped down
from our farm. As a child,
I played house, tea sets
on tombs, innocent,
listening to spirits.
Daughters left to work
with duty not to themselves
but others who cared little
for the objects they’d become.From the clay they cry
the song of the crone,
dreams of lives unlived, hope
moves in the soil beneath
my feet, rises in my breath,
they call – willing me on
with their work,let your blood bleed
for daughters defiled, mothers
abandoned in shame,
scrubbed of sin in laundries.Don’t listen to scavengers
who have taken your use,
their fear ripping your pleasure.
Starve if you need, until you’re heard.
Scream yourself into your body.Your face ours, your womb creator,
the only real home, your self.Red
After her father’s death she needed
a new bag, a red one, ‘a particular red’,
she searched, described the colour:
not the brown-red jasper, carnelian
or sardonyx, stoic like stale blood,
the fire red of scarlet, zircon,
flaming fluorite flames – of hell.Not caring for dark rose, blood red rose,
rosewood or even a rose itself,
she continued her pursuit, not magenta,
garnet, or even red topaz –
too dark, they felt murky, dim,
vermilion looked too dainty.
Everyone tried – salespeople,traders, desperate to sell,
appease and please, ‘No’ she said,
‘No’. She needed this bag,
this exact bag, the colour specific
in her mind.
Not jasper, fire opal or sard – although
patterns are appealing – not opaque,chalcedony stones of the high priestess’s
breastplate. Merlot felt obscure, shadowy,
and too rich. She bought red shoes,
tourmaline, not quelling her longing;
this bag, colour, stone, haunted
her travels, she needed to find it.
Crimson could suffice, virtuallythere, this hunt could leave her bereft,
she explained that the red-orange of
carnelian felt weak, it would not carry
her identity – a woman now – and the pink
red agate, amaranth and coral seemed
too youthful. Still in her prime,
the extremely rare beryl appearedexceedingly old, barn red burgundy
like lava, too strong. Salmon although
elegant, robust, was fragile and flaky
when cooked, orange-red amber
could calm. Tired in search of her red,
unable to unearth that colour, the search
for red defied her. She gave up.Her friend called. Just back from holiday,
she had found the perfect bag – Imperial Red.
Within, her gift, an antique ring, gold, with a
red stone – fire ruby.
Despondency
arrived as an unwelcome visitor,
a hungry heron, unsure of prey.
A dark cloud filled the air.
At first glance, I could not see
its slate eyes penetrate,
empty places. Sound,a vibration, like a crow
cawing before rain.
This time, I welcome its company,
unlike when shutting it out.
We spoke, I listened, chatted
about necessary loss, the thingsI loved,
pictures, trips, that china cup
and him, the importance of
grief in letting go.
Peace moved in. After,
we made tea, dunked biscuits.This dark cloak, my friend,
its pockets, brimmed with wisdom.
A Diagnosis /My daughter speaks
I remember when my mother forgot simple
things, like where she left the hairbrush.I helped her find it.
Older than my mother when sheforgot, I don’t remember little things.
Impatiently, my daughter tells me I needto see a doctor, I may even have Alzheimer’s.
‘I’m worried,’ she says, ‘you’ve gotthe wrong names for thing’s
and everything is lost in our house.’She asks about breast checks, –
her friend’s mum had found a lump.That mole on my skin needs to go,
she heard about melanoma. Yet again sheasks ‘What age can you get Parkinsons?’
After a half hour in the kitchen,‘Can I get a lift to my friend’s house?
We’re having a sleepover.’I lay the basket of her worries
on my table,I drive.
Deirdre of the Sorrows.
With fierce perseverance,
a heart, broken with love,
she walks each day, two fields
from her house, to Lough Corrib.
Picks steps like a cautious
curlew on solid ground,
finds a secluded place,
unknown to others.Hidden between reeds,
she leans in to shelter
against ancient trees.
Caught by a shimmering ripple
across the winter lake,
she dreams the music of another
and weeps for her loss.
No birds sing, instead,winter mist, in harmony
with grey clouds, reflect
on water, no corals or shells,
only the impassive stems
of dead iris flaying in the wind.
A swan drifts to the lake edge,
others wait in the distance.
She also waits, to hear a bell,as if to transform the tears that drop
like pearls in an Annaghdown inlet.Ophelia
There is a storm looming,
somewhere mid-Atlantic
hurricane legs pound toward shore.Ophelia, unpretentious
builds strength, overemphatic
waters, her eye focused,
moves with intent.
Her swirl dress manoeuvres,
blue hair stream waves
across horizon,
glisten in hazy sun,
clouds heavy with rain.You listen, hear the eerie prelude
to the roar of her womb.
A thunderous rumble,
seagulls hide behind stone.Tension, gusts,
brewing stomach knots,
like a braid waiting
to be undone;
her froth mouth
explodes, white foam lunging
her breath onto our path.A day for sitting,
looking at old postcards,
remembering
you longed to leave,
cascade like others
into the wild, like
Ophelia,
betrothed to Hamlet,
became tornado,
wedded herself.Your ticking watch,
louder than time,
ruby warm fire flames sucked,
as Ophelia swallows the tide.A garnet sky,
silver cumulus turns rose.
It is raining –
lines on cards,
from those who stormed
their adventure.Ophelia
is gathering,
criss-crossing twists
pink, intertwines blue,
crashing she flows over rocks,
floodingHer entrails
blow over your window,
trees stripped bare
like dangling threads,
call you to let butterfly
fingers, slip ribbons
onto your hair,
rip your tide.‘I will leave, follow you in winter,
‘Ophelia,’
you whisper, to scattering leaves,
pots, chairs,
the cards thrown over your table,
30 years on.‘I will wear
a blue swirl dress,
twirl swelling waves,
into hurricane.’
Attracta Fahy’s background is in nursing and social care. She works in private practice as an integrative humanistic psychotherapist and supervisor. She is living in Co.Galway, and has three children attending college. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017 and participates in over the edge poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins. Her poems have been published in Banshee, The Blue Nib, The Lake, Burning House Press, and Galway Review. -
Portobello
The summer is in town
when the ducklings wear their sequins;
performing the salsa,
gliding on the continental ripples
from the lights’ projections.
Glistening water arena of summer juices
featuring mirrored swans
wearing white tuxedos dancing the tango
to an applauding sun
and ever changing clouds
imperilled on the lacquered sky.
Delicately they flush their sacred win,gs
a waterfall of transparent energy
to baptise birds.
Happily, I rest beneath the arm
of a weeping willow.
Time is in no frantic rush,
unwinding near the rushes.
Can-Can dancers perform on the Canal Bank,
swishing their feathers to and fro,
a chorus line of marsh plants,
costumed in petticoats of weeds
and black root stockings.
They look burlesque for the seedy traffic,
as clowning butterflies uplift –
their papier-mâché coats,
like tiny fluorescent parachutes
ejecting from the smallest of flowers
landing gently on the rugged edge
of silken waters.
Brontë in Boots
Winter, my Heathcliff warms the narrative,
growing in my chamfered heart.
I imagine the moors reaching out behind
the city skyline, heather snapping like a whip;
under my studded-belt, novels gleam into portholes.
November mornings drool in romanticism,
I am at home among sinuous shadows
tailored in the fabric of winter,
listening to the wind’s barbed echoes fence the swallow like snow.
I sip my coffee, staring at the clouds’ heavy
hopelessness, whorls of hail clatter
against my window like Kathy’s shattered soul,
winter’s air is a man’s granite kisses;
the dark, his wiry black hair.
Like a metal flower, I bloom in biker boots
and cashmere, welcoming winter’s
intractable sorrow and it’s inward desolation.
Dwarfed under the emptiness of light
leaves unhook themselves from hollow trees.
Dali
You plant
your thoughts on duality
inside the cranium of her skull.
They grow into razor-edged roses
creeping down her nasal spine.
You wedge art inside her eye sockets,
arousing your desires to bloom through her frontal bone.
Her body mirrors a five-point star touching nothing,
except light touching darkness,
the moon cowering under her breastbone like a nuclear atom,
the gods assembling on the Moebius strip of her hip,
while you sit in the carnal cavity of her cheeks,
breathing in the olive air of Cadaqués,
your restless need for form hardening into infinity.
On a High
Build me a house in the cleft of a cliff
where we can live life on the edge,
raise it up on wooden stilts
so we can see the neck of the ocean
and feel the sun in the folds of our skin
drink gin for breakfast
moshing in the shadows
cracking the morning bones
both naked in blushing light
pebble-eyed and dewy
watch the night crawl like a giant crab
as we lie on the blue tongue of the moon
breathing each other in like vapour,
but promise never to look down
the fall too steep.
Out of the Blue
We enter sleep as conjoined twins,
my head resting on your chest
listening to your heart beating
like the thundering drums of China.
I lie twisted within myself
as the moon capsizes over Asia,
nursing my dreams, but one.
The heart reveals itself in time.
I imagine how beautiful it must look,
a clotted poppy
rooted between your lungs,
sluicing bouquets of blood through your veins.
I long to hold your thick burning fist
in the ewer of my hand,
kiss your hollow-pumping swell
that love acclaims
nuzzling my face into the smooth
membrane of the inner surface,
tasting a mouthful of your existence,
shadows shifting around neck and elbow
as you push in the blue light
detaching from our wild flower oneness
gaping from your wiry chest
an ugly black emptiness.
Brontë in Boots and other poems © Denise Ryan. Play Stone (Youtube)
Denise Ryan is a writer of contemporary poetry from Dublin, Ireland. Denise has been published in THE SHOP, Crannóg Magazine, and also several online journals including Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts.
Between 2010 and 2013, Denise was selected to write a series of poems for the National Famine Commemoration. In 2010 Flowers of Humility was read at the Dublin Commemoration and at the overseas twinning event in New York in Battery Park when President Mary McAleese officiated at the ceremony. Denise has been internationally received and has been highly recommended, shortlisted and runner-up in several poetry competitions. These include The Francis Ledwidge, and the Jonathan Swift awards. She is a member of the Rathmines Writers Workshop, which is the longest-running writers workshop in Ireland. Denise’s poetry has been published as part of an anthology by the workshop’s Swan Press, entitled Prose on a Bed of Rhyme (2012).Her debut collection, Of Silken Waters, was published in Autumn 2017, through Ara Pacis Publishers (Chicago, USA). Denise is currently writing her second collection for publication.
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Siegfried’s Homecoming
You come home from the war
at least a third emptier than you were,
Like all the words were scooped from your head
with the butt of a rifle
that you constructed with your own hands
and demolished too,
leaving so much of yourself in the barrel.The teeth in your gums white crosses and country lines,
none of them belonging to you anymore,
rattle like augury bones in your sleep
because in the night you are some twisted, ugly thing
like a trout gasping for breath
on the floor of a fishing boat,
running from the yawning mouth at your heart
to get away from what remains here :
a battlefield.You come home from the war and leave your love behind
in the hands of a poet,
a soldier whose eyes stare out at you in each nightmare
the claiming mark of his blood splattered across your face and emblazoned on your soul,
his smile tinged mustard yellow in your memory
but his hands so vivid;
pencil, pages, and the pistol,
flickering
callouses against your cheek
trampled into the mud
sonnets painted into your skin
frozen in his favourite shade of indigo.You are dreaming of the hospital that had become,
by virtue of his presence,
your home –
and here is the battlefield stretched out again before you
but you are tired of fighting without him,
waiting for one more cloudless day in August,
50 years away he is a bruise in khaki pyjamas,
and you come home from the war,
finally,
into his arms.Aorta
I will give myself to the sea
to the sunset
to the stars
I want to be unravelled by something greater than two handscracked apart at the ribs
in feast
a hollow empire no longer
filled with cloudless sky
venom dripping from my ears“Eat” he hisses holding
a ventricle to my lips
bloody and raw
my own; still warm
pouring rainHe takes a bite
tearing chunks with glittering pillars of jagged salt licks
this is how it is done
how you get a dying bird to eat
or freeze in the nightribs a ladder exposed that my body
might cower beneath
leaking blue blue sky
mouth agape
puffing clouds into the darkness for him to drinkthe bird with no wings
choking on aortaa sacrifice to the stars.
Eclipse
The woman lives
when the shadow of the moon
falls ebony on the earth
and the trees of her forest
are like burnt matchsticks
on scorched fields
she lingers then –
like smoke in the dark,
until we meet
in the appointed place,
two black holes in the abyss of the cosmos and
she opens
a nightmare mouth,
words slithering forth
– the tip of the tongue the teeth and the lips –
dripping from her chin
in jet black ink
“Are you ready?” she screeches
a crow
a banshee in the graveyard
I cannot speak, cannot see anything but the ink that rolls like a wave from her lips
dark and terrible
a blood moon
“I See you” she calls with open arms
a lover’s embrace
but the shadow is receding
drawing you to the heart of the forest
and she reaches for you once more
your hand twitches
the path is tangled
brambles whip and thorns claw
and you both understand
time is up
“Never again.” She croaks splayed against a tree-trunk “Never again”
the woman fades with the last of the shadow
she cannot return
and you are alone again
hands shaking in the sun
lips covered in inkDon’t Cry
The milk spills
and spills
and spills,
the table still set in neat little rows –
too long for the runner –
dripping onto chairs and floor in swathes of ivory,
but the milk is always spilling in this house
running from eyes and mouths and ears –
this is what it means to grow up,
crying years of spilled milk
like they’ll help fill the seats with warm bodies
or light the candles’ stumpy wicks,
where you sleep just to keep the weeping at bay,
in the hopes that somehow,
it’s all just a dream,
but you wake up every morning at 7 on the dot
with milk crusted in each eye and bottles surrounding the bed,
milk teeth standing guard beneath the pillows,
like maybe you were a mother,
once,
or a child;
like you still are.You Are the Sun
You are the sun,
calling lowly to the galaxy,
tragic and celestial,
40 billion light years from the closest star,
and the moon rings like a bell;
earthquake vibrations across the vacuum of space,
echoes roll over your skin, just whispers of what once was,
like a house that has already been burned down,
alarm still shrieking into the shell
that this is danger,
this is living,
but the moon is too far to hear a warning over
the bell tolls,
an angelus to Sirius and Orion and
Pyxis,
and the sun is farther still, drowning in a sea of silent stars,
baying softly of loneliness and terror to the empty night,
I am the moon,
you, the sun.
in the end, we are all just houses,
waiting to be burned down.A Witch Hunt
Tear it all down
it is built on rot,
the sickly sweet cologne of wonderland decay,
and we are starving
but watch it wither,
feral smiles painted bloody across our cheeks,
prodding at the scars with witches nails,
hunters in the fray;
spitting poison and daggers and shards of glass,
leaving small disasters in our wake,
too many to fathom
still, we are starving,
tearing the world apart at the seams
from within,
demanding:
you peel back the curtain
and you will witness the ruins
filled with our skeletons picked clean,
but the flood water is rising,
and we have been so hungry…
peel back the curtain.
we are done waiting.Siegfried’s Homecoming and other poems are © Suzanne Stapleton
Suzanne Stapleton is a nineteen-year-old emerging writer and Dublin native. She is currently a student of Film and Broadcasting in DIT, and often can be found writing poems instead of working on her scripts. Having spent most of her childhood writing, 2017 marks the first time Suzanne has shared any of her poetry with anyone outside of her immediate group of close friends. Her poems span a range of topics, including history, womanhood, and growth, but most are forms of self exploration and catharsis. -
burnt offerings
swilling cinders
of eucalypt forests burning up
and down the coast
tinged with hints of fear
singed possum hairs lifting into
clear blue air
an earthquake in Italy shakes me awake
a mother crying somewhere
volcanic embers cycling into
smoke of broken promises
women’s choices smouldering
charred remains of exiles’ lives
democracy doused with lies
and set on fire
headless horsemen prancing in the coals
blackened souls stirring
soot from scorched relics
ashes to ashesand my mother in a box too small
to hold her all
laid in a field with all the others
when she could have flown
with the four winds
so I could taste again
the sharp tang of her loss
married to the restlately everything tastes of ash
(First published in apt literary journal on 3 July 2017, with sincere thanks to Editor-in-Chief, Clarissa Halston.)
where the lost things go
we sat upon a golden bow
my little bird and i
indivisibly apart
we dived into the sky
and to the purple-hearted dark
an ocean we did cry
for all the lost things
gathered there
in rooms beyond the eye
the aie, the I, the eye(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
Between ebb and flow
Mist rolls off moss-green hills
Where wind-wild ponies thunder
Manes flying as they chase
Their seaward brothers
Locked in eternal contest
On this deserted grey milePast the little stone churchyard
Long-forgotten graves spilling
Stones onto the sodden bog
A soft snore from behind
My two angels sleeping
Thirteen thousand milesFrom all they have ever known
Running our own race
To make the best
Of spaces like this
A rainbow rises along the horizon
And I recognise herCome for my mother
Locked in her own
Immortal struggle
The sister returned
So I know it won’t
Be long nowAnd I cry a little at
The unbearable beauty
Of these diastoles
When we are all
Suspended
Here in a heartbeatBetween heaven and earth
(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
Metaphoric rise
A brief history of incidents surrounding the emergence of POTUS#45
i. rousting
hot wind howls through a hollow log
tawny tumbleweed trundles
over downtrodden plainsii. ravening
on a sunlit lawn
a plump slug streaks forward
eyes on stalksiii. a new religion
branches bowed with bloated fruit
nod to the gilded idol
dark clouds fall in behindiv. aftermath
a squat lizard basks
on a sickle-hacked trail
black legs flail from his lipsv. in the bay
beacon dimmed and tablet fractured
the lady endures
her robes about her feetvi. paradox lost
a fiery sunrise
heralds stormy days to come
ice shifts at the poles(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 20 January 2017, with sincere thanks to Martin Doyle, Books Editor. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry, 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
In memoriam II: The draper
“The town is dead
Nothing but the wind
Howling down Main Street
And a calf bawling
Outside The Fiddlers”My mother’s words, not mine
In a letter, kept in a drawer
These long years
She had a way with words
My motherThat’s why they came
The faithful of her following
Leaning in to her over the counter
For an encouraging word
Or the promise of a novenaLong before we had
Local radio
Our town had my mother
Harbinger of the death notices
And the funeral arrangementsBestower of colloquial wisdom
Bearer of news on all things
Great and small
Who was home
And who hadn’t comeWho had got the Civil Service job
And by what bit of pull
The Councillor’s niece
Smug in her new navy suit
Oblivious to the circulating countersuit“Would you ever think of coming home?”
Her words would catch me
Unawares
Lips poised at the edge
Of a steaming mugIgniting a spitfire
Of resentment each time
Then draping me for days
I’d wear it like a horsehair shirt
All the way backUntil the sunshine and the hustle
Had worn it threadbare
This extra bit of baggage
In every emigrant’s case
Their mother’s broken heartI never thought to ask her
“Would you want me to…?
So I could look out at the rain
Circumnavigating the empty street
And shiver at the wind
Whipping in under the door…?”I don’t miss that question now
On my annual pilgrimage ‘home’
My father never asks it
Like me, I know he feels it
Hanging in the air
Alongside her absenceI miss my mother
And her way with words(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 31 January 2016, with heartfelt thanks to Ciara Kenny, Editor, Irish Abroad. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)
burnt offerings and other poems are © Anne Casey
Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award in 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne). -
*dint It Began as most things do moist things do everything everything berry stained mouth beer stickied floor & blood bloom undies you ‘don’t mind’ and sure I could probably get into you I only ever feel the bubbles on impact during I’m somewhere else the sun was a hot coal in the sky seeing another one like you he came just before I decided a bit too late that I didn’t want what he asphyxiated thinking about sourcing justifications for those who insist swear that my saliva isn’t a contagion for those who are unknowing because kissing me will give you cancer then you’ll never be the invisible thing you imagined running alongside the car and In Dreams my hair falls in chunks to a cheering audience I grow old & genderless for money nightly I wake feverish trapped in the tight fist of your affection drowning between cool bathroom tiles & Christmas cake sponge but I won’t keep us downstairs knitting and gritting at the base begrudging closed doors & far off hearing while I’m far off reliving tepid buoy lights & what you wanted me to hear so I turn my mouth into a repurposed palette for the new you walking the length of it with sparse sentiments blowing you but retaining no heat because unfortunately only others can administer the calming needed for the curdled bulb of my brain between me + heaven: a place where I can smoke so I left you holding the cuff of your jumper waiting & bracing for the blowAMY: spelled the right way
Frisbeeing your father’s slicked records into the ocean foam
not ‘boomeranging’ as you had once said
not coming back, not this time
but stuck in flux and spinning
reflective disks, CDs scratched and hanging
in the treehouse from which you will fall next year
on a wet November night when you weren’t old enough
trying to smoke a cigarette you stole
that’s why you fell, they said you weren’t old enoughHalf our friendship was spent visiting each other in hospital
sparkling butterfly clips offered up on plastic sheets
conniving, bartering for my silence
I’m not supposed to tell anyone it happens
but it was hard to be alone after each cosmic collision
between tempered concussions and snapped clavicles
between fighting parents and shared rooms
so we continue, hushed and daring together, I pinky promisePrimary school passes, as it does, in a flurry
a few fearsome sparks and over, all of a sudden
as if all our memories already belonged to someone else
as if we didn’t need the fumbling trouble to become wisened
hardened, our most emblazoned fights mellowed
our passions come cartoonish like cheap plastic cheese slices
I can’t forget how you’d ring landlines all around town
to find me, 8pm and desperate before bed, to apologizeAnd when the time came to finally confront you
we were 16 and alone in the middle of a field at night
I’d crawled away from the boyfriend I got to match yours
from the tsunamis of cider, from the gendered expectation
but it was impossible still to make you understand
probably between my being drunk and crawling
so you say it never happened as you help me up
and then I just can’t stand youturning vodka into wine
*hushed* it’s not just
not just the tropic tonic_____ now
it‘s heavier glassier receptacles
that are emptied quickerquickly quenching the wild fire
the candle burning at both ends
wilting there now_____by the oven
before bare feet & childish eyessonic mother, please provide the cover
and resuscitate my ignorance
hand over cries, humming under covers
could I have been anything_____but a lover?steady the line between us_____ just & unjust
a lot thinner when you’re stumbling
I’d do anything to be older
old enough to help you upcortado
when well-meaning people align with me
align their lives with mine
it seems that they quit trying to become
or achieve themselves for a time
in a dastardly sense which can only descend
descend to ashes on communion
quickly quenching my reckless romance
romancing which necessitates an end
and so I approach you with an openness
forward an eager and honest grasp
but with well-meaning hands instead I rouse
rouse the ashes already put to bed
tidied away when setting aside the past
covertly hushing the used and the dead
so my digits recoil with the disenchanted
dragging back reverberated perspectives
the intoxicating promise of new loves
desires staining my plain epidermis
with electric potential that will not adhere
when I explain that I’m trying to be good
I don’t want to be problematic at all
honestly not at all and I never did
but that’s the woe of commitment and honesty
a small drop of milk to offset the acidity
I just wanted to love and be loved once and truly
not violently over and over as it has been
a great many loves each more fantastic than the last
the salubrious possibilities adjacent my reaching
my salivating hands reaching towards you
pulling you into the room and into my life
promising you a great many things
leaning beyond you to shield my eyes
but yearning to stay put please
hands reaching to never stop holding yours
I don’t want to disappoint another one
I will not disappoint you anymoreHinnerup
sewing after so long
i wonder if there exists a song
a glass of water warmed in the sun
for each age she’s ever been
all the taps here run scalding
following the dregs of wine
flowing from hot water factories
tell me about her lover
stagnant on the periphery
who lived three towns away
making it harder to soak
she would travel hours to him
the wilting orchids
every other weekend
softening on the windowsill
found sanctuary with his family
reaching up into the day
young and in love
delicate and deliberate
i’d like to know how she felt
like grandmother’s thin fingers
on the birthday that I learned to hate
shaking but capable
the night i faked to get away
Jess Mc Kinney is a queer feminist poet, essayist and English Studies graduate of UCD. Originally from Inishowen, Co. Donegal, she is now living and working in Dublin city, Ireland. Her writing is informed by themes such as sexuality, memory, nature, relationships, gender, mental health and independence. Often visually inspired, she seeks to marry pictorial elements alongside written word. Her work has been previously published in A New Ulster, Impossible Archetype, HeadStuff, In Place, Hunt & Gather, Three fates, and several other local zines. -
Ho raccolto un’ombra
quando salivo le scale.
Stava giusto scendendo.
Mentre toccavo le tegole
ho perso un’idea. Rotolava
avvolta tra i panni.
Poi il vento ha smosso le fila: è
scivolata
travolta di vuoti.
Il carro stava giusto passando.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –
Ho appena cambiato
l’acqua ai fiori.˜I picked up a shadow
when I was going up the stairs.
It was just going down.
While I was touching the tiles
I lost an idea. It rolled down
wrapped in cloths. Then the wind moved the strings:
and the idea slid away
overwhelmed with emptiness.
A cart was just passing by.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –
I have just
watered my flowers.
Mentre cammino in terrazza la banda
suona e ti dico “La senti?”
Mi insegue da una parte all’altra
del perimetro di confine al mio riso
perché non sentano i vicini
quest’allegria dei miei anni
spaiati al vento.
Così suona nella casa di fronte
poi dietro in piazza, davanti
al secondo piano del muro bianco.
La cassa armonica ha la sua casa sul pozzo
in piazza dove la gente passa,
si siede, ripassa le arie
che da vent’anni riascolto
d’estate quando mia nonna
ancora alle nove mi sveglia
e ripete “Valentina, la banda!”˜
I am walking on the terrace while the band
plays, I ask “Can you hear it?”
It chases me across the space
to the borders of my laughter
so that neighbors won’t hear
this joy of my years
scattered in the wind.
So music plays in the house across the street
then behind the square, in front
of the second floor, the white walls.
The sound box has a house as its source
in the square where people pass by,
sit down, repeat the melody that
I have been hearing for twenty years.
Every summer when my grandmother
woke me up in the morning at nine
and repeated “Valentina, the band!”
Io non sono per gli altri che altro.
Sono ciò che non sanno,
che tace il senno.
Io non sono che nulla
nell’inattuale molto
che la mente scansa.
Per gli altri sono l’altro
che altrimenti vaga
oltre la trascuratezza
che ci separa.
Apparenti d’essere
mutati in nulla.
˜To the others I am nothing, someone else.
I am what they don’t know,
where their reasons fall silent.
I am nothing, but nothing,
very much outdated,
avoided by their minds.
To the others, I am the other
who otherwise wanders
beyond neglect,
separating us.
You seem to exist –
you turn into nothing.
A MIO PADRE
Quando sento suonare e tu
non ci sei ma stai
in ogni spazio che ci trasciniamo
dietro da anni ogni volta è
sentire in anticipo il taglio
che entrambi sappiamo
irrevocabile un giorno.
Sei tu, compagno di nove mesi fa,
padre, che non posso evitare
col mio modo impacciato
di fare. In fondo sai
che i miei silenzi da sempre
arieggiano tra le foglie armoniche
per la nostra casa sollevata.
˜TO MY FATHER
When I hear music and you
are not here but you are
in every space, we have been stretching
through all these years that have passed
to feel in advance this cut
of which we both know
is irrevocable, one day.
It is you, my companion of nine months.
father, whom I cannot avoid
with my clumsy way of acting.
Deep down you know
that my silences have always been
floating among harmonic leaves
in our house in the air.
A STUART
Mi accorgo che in fondo
eri tu il solo capofamiglia.
Me ne accorgo dalla voce
che ancora mi esce quando
per scherzo invento parole
che non avresti mai dette.
Siamo troppo presi dalle nostre
vite in bilico per annusare l’aria
come facevi tu, alzando il capo
e il naso strizzarlo a cogliere
ciò che non sentiamo, che non
intravediamo. Tu vedevi
visionario oltre il balcone
e sfiorarti era calmare
lo sguardo che gli altri
dicono non hai.
In silenzio hai aspettato
l’ultimo calore del pavimento.
Poi hai atteso che chiudessi la porta
per lasciare di te un solo grumo
bianco sotto il letto.
E un’intera casa senza voce.
˜
TO STUART
I realize that you
were the only head of the family.
I realize it by the voice
still coming out of me when
as a joke I invent words
I have never told you.
We are too busy with our
life on the edge to smell the air
as you did, raising your head
and squeezing your nose to seize
what we do not feel, what we do not
see. You noticed,
visionary beyond the balcony.
We touched you to calm down
the look that the others
say you did not have.
In silence you waited
for the last heat from the floor.
Then you waited for me to close the door
to leave you one white clump
under the bed.
And the entire house was voiceless.
Al mio funerale non portatemi fiori.
I ricordi non patiscono il buio.
Quando volti, le rose
che hai reciso per me
prendono il colore dell’ombra
e cieche posano all’ossario dei poveri,
dei sacchi all’angolo dove posto non c’è
per un chiodo al muro.
Non c’è più spazio alla tomba
dove l’abito la sera scende.
L’ho cucito in anticipo il mio
e la coda spolvera di pizzo il pavimento,
nel caso rimanga un alone
o il muro perda di salsedine.
Alla mia tomba non portatemi fiori.
Ne ho raccolti parecchi
sul mio strascico oggi.
Il tempo è questo.
È bastato passare
per trascinare dietro radici.
˜
Do not bring flowers to my funeral.
Memories detest the darkness.
When you turn away, the roses
you cut for me
take the colour of the shadow.
Blindly they cover the ossuary for the poor,
in that corner full of sacks with no space
to nail anything to the wall.
There is no more room in the grave
where my dress descends at dusk.
I sewed mine in advance
and its tail dusts the floor with lace,
in case a halo should stay
or the wall loses its saltiness.
Do not bring flowers to my grave.
I have collected many on my train today.
This is the time.
It was enough to pass,
even as my feet were bound with roots.
These poems are © Valentina Colonna – English translations © Pawel Sakowski
Valentina Colonna is a poet and composer. She was born in Turin in 1990 in a family of musicians and published the poetry books Dimenticato suono (Manni, 2010) and La cadenza sospesa (Aragno, 2015). Distinguished in several poetry competitions, in 2014 she was presented as an emerging poet in two national literary festivals by Davide Rondoni, who in the same year dedicated to her and Giorgio Caproni an episode of In which goes the world, broadcast on RTV San Marino. -
Are you feeling this?
My desire is holding you in its mouth
shaking like a dog toy
amputated to fit my mould.
Regularly, I confuse excitement for affection
in a slow, crowded elevator
where a whisper of white buttoned shirts
is the scream of a night sky in my head,
close as a shoulder brush.
Something to work with
For the work, he says.
Square panels of it
lighting up my screen:
tarp-painted abstractions
punctuated by self-capturing,
sun-faced with grey crown
but not old.
Never old.
A father’s age perhaps.
Yet, I open the message;
orange brimming notification
tells me that he’s thinking
of my shivering in bed
on the other side of the island.
Says that he’ll be good
if he gets the chance.
Good for me.
Good for his ego.
Small slip of a thing waiting
for a night visit, the hot
shower of another body
sliding under covers.
Strong tattooed grasp
on waist; leathered, but
not old.
Light breath in my ear
catches hair like a summer
breeze in his stubble.
As if we’re not in October.
As if we’ll ever be here again.
He whispers, for the work.
It’s all this is.
I am for the work.
Candle
Eyes into the fire he tells me
that he sees it,
the next painting:
chrome yellow,
petals on the floor like ash
by our feet,
heads drooping close
like ours could
be
if I hadn’t left my heart
in the dregs of a pint
soaked through, too wet to carry.
I hold it, cold glass
little sanctuary while my legs burn
bright against the flame shadow.
He notices
I keep stretching it away,
a short press against
the slick stone and back
in again to see the orange
flicker on white,
to feel the pain of stolen heat
and I wonder
will my thin calf be the painting;
warmer in his eyes,
burning under the weight of him,
untouched.
Leftovers
A jug of milk in the fridge
is what he left me;
half of his own litre
brought from town.
For the tea, we imagine, but
standing in the kitchen
brewing it strong
he feels more like ground coffee;
ember smell of him
from lighting the fire,
rough-handed from work.
Outside, rusted mountains
crease along the skyline
like his eyes, laughing now;
almost disappearing but so full,
I want to believe, of me,
and the clouds of Kerry
in that moment
they look like cream.
At the door
Now, watch as I hang in the air
tempting as a sunset
and just as long.
Storms are not inclined to wait;
better to spill my secret wilderness
as I leave this love,
sucking light out of your blue.
At the door and other poems are © Eva Griffin.
Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a UCD graduate. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tales From the Forest, All the Sins, ImageOut Write, Three Fates, The Ogham Stone, HeadStuff, and New Binary Press.
Chris Murray 