Category: 25 Pins in a packet women creators

“Disarticulation” and other poems by Clare McCotter

September 13th, 2016

Selfie With Thelma

after Thelma and Louise

In the Southwest desert
shedding turquoise on an old man’s palm
she trades time
for a beat up Stetson hat.
Only a day or two
since she posed with rose red lips
black sun glasses
and Audrey Hepburn headscarf
marking the start of their journey
with the big Polaroid held at arm’s length.

A snapshot of two smiling faces
left lying on the backseat
of a convertible
loaded down with all the stuff
they thought they needed
pencilling in borders
shoring up boundaries
soon smudged with ochre earth
lost in the dust from a stampede of stars.

Everything looks different now
doused with dirt they are part of place
gunning the engine
before flooring it for the canyon cliff.
Out here at Dead Horse Point
there are no shallow graves
wooden markers or name plates
only a thunderbird
still whipping up storms
suspended in a high solitary leap of faith.

Disarticulation

in memory of E M

For them the grave gave no rest.
Solely a spot to have and hold
not visit on stormy nights
with avellana and white lupin.
Their beloved kept above
the inscrutable depths.
Each light riddled skeleton
dispersed near and far
along slender paths
in groves of mountain thorn
among the forest’s earth stars.
Scattered bone shrines
leaving the departed free to wander
across space and place and time.

Out there in the raven Mesolithic
would they have buried you
with ochre and antler
deer teeth, flint and amber?
Far from settlement
on an island low in brackish water
would they have fanned flames
to seal the grave’s scarlet lips?

Back in our un-velveted sixties
dying the wrong death
your own was dug in liminal land.
Striking distance
of font and altar and magenta
gold and indigo glass
the tract where they lowered you
our dangerous dead.

But soon unearthed bones
will gleam in a blue Bedouin moon.
Humerus ulna radius
set on the valley’s wind scoured floor.
Femur fibula tibia
high on dry northern chalk.
Mandible and skull
without blessing stone or feather
here above bog and pine
and old ghost trains.
Alone where the watch bitch walks.

Whittling

From boyhood he had an eye for wood
reading sycamore and sitka spruce against the grain
he knew where to dip his hands into the shallows
scooping out rainbow trout and salmon.
It was all about patience, he said
kings of the orient and stars and lambs and shepherds
coaxed to surface with small short strokes.
Knife more buff than blade
guiding stag out of oak that wanted to be deer.

Disappeared on august sixteenth nineteen eighty one
his was a long wake
push and pull motion paring flesh to bone
laid out in half bog half quarry three miles from home.
Twenty nine years of Sunday searches
brought her a graveside
to shadow with time and worry whittled skin.
Thin as each and every syllable they chip in granite –
it wasn’t authorised by the leadership.

Shergar’s Groom Wonders

What friends would think
if they knew
history is filtered
through the eye
of a horse
other times would have buried
in a bridle of brass
with grave goods at his muzzle.

Shergar’s groom wonders
if those rebels
would have emptied a Mauser
into the river running down his face
or turned him loose
on mountain or meadow
slapping his rump
just for the hell of seeing him run.

Shergar’s groom wonders
if his bright boy
expected car-lined afternoons
bookies shouting odds
a jockey punching air
being led up that rickety ramp
night a soul-shaped thing
was glimpsed in frosted breath.

Shergar’s groom wonders
if Equus could really be attuned
to the rhythms
of the human heart
his dark pulsings
the last
the horse heard
no other could have gotten so near.

Shergar’s groom wonders
to this day where his bones lie
knowing they thought
him the perfect hostage
free from blood
they thought wrong
the horse
more brother than his father’s son.

And he would have been made lovely
for the earth.

“Disarticulation” and other poems are © Clare McCotter

Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She also judged the British Haiku Award 2011 and 2012. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Envoi, The Galway Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, A New Ulster, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp, The Stony Thursday Book and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry.

The Light Dancing” and “Lizzie” by Catherine Conlon

September 12th, 2016

The Light Dancing

When I close the door
my father’s coat slow-dances
against the dark wood.
It is old, this coat,
marked by many winters,
labours of a lifetime done.

I imagine him in the front yard
screening sand for the new extension,
coat collar upturned against the breeze,
a cigarette ashing towards his lip.
There’s a light in his eyes
when I stop during play
to prattle and hear him say
“you’re the best woman in the house”

Now coming from the Big Field,
the day’s farming done,
his great hands in deep pockets.
Dark shoulders that bear a darkness coming,
the last of the light
dancing on his wet boots.

(first published in Ropes 2015. Issue 23)

Lizzie

I had a child’s view of her,
black stockinged legs
without shape of calf or ankle
at my grandmother’s hearth,
the fire shining in her laced-up shoes.
Balls of wool from an old shopping bag,
and her tongue like the clappers
as she looped and purled.
Her needles took up the light,
flew like red spokes
in the garment cradling her lap.

She measured me
in the breadth of her childless arms
and grew me a shawl the colour of flame.
Its touch to kindle her memory
to set old fires dancing.

(first published in Skylight 47. Issue 5 )

The Light Dancing” and “Lizzie” are © Catherine Conlon

Catherine Conlon lives in Celbridge, Co. Kildare. She has been shortlisted for the RTE P.J. O’Connor Radio Drama Awards and has had two stage plays performed. Her short stories have been published in Stories for the Ear and Boyne Berries. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, Books Ireland, The Cuirt Journal, Ropes, Skylight 47 and in various anthologies and newspapers.

“Love & its Edges” and other poems by Anna Walsh

August 29th, 2016

is it

is it ok that i am lying on my bed
not having any useful
or funny thoughts
is it ok that i do this
is it ok that i am lying on my bed
unshowered
and not replying to anyone
is it ok that i do this
for no grand gesture but just
because
i can be lazy sometimes
is it ok that
when i don’t have to work
or go, or eat
i like that i don’t have to
is that ok
to just waste
some time blinking

in times of overwhelming panic

it’s sometimes too overwhelming
and sad
to be alive
in the world
and to know
that being alive is overwhelming
and sad
either way
you have to sit down
and be quiet
and think,
fuck, i’m so lucky
i love the people that i love
i’m not a total prick
and i can sleep when i need to

love & its edges

i have decided to start practising
assertiveness, and
telling people how frustrated it makes me
when they don’t wash their plates or
when they make me feel bad about myself.
i don’t know what hurts me more
grinding my teeth almost constantly
or you when i start to say no

ugly

i am so bored of
trying,
trying to be
good, trying to be good
at trying

why does success have to be measured against something else?

i am trying
not to be the messy girl, the
person who needs people so
nakedly
they cannot be around her
for more than an evening

i hate realising things
it is like
that moment of
disconcert, when you
squint at your screen in the sun
to check the time
you see your face
and then you can’t see anything else

Love & its Edges and other poems is © Anna Walsh

Anna Walsh is from Mullingar, and holds an MA in Creative Writing. She has been published in the Bohemyth, Belleville Park Pages, and Headstuff. She co-runs The Gremlin.

Anna Walsh at The HU
The Gremlin homepage

“Bookmarking The Oasis” and other poems by Srilata Krishnan

August 24th, 2016

Things I didn’t know I loved

(after Nazim Hikmet)

I didn’t know I loved windows so much
but I do – enough to wrestle
someone to the ground over them,
so light can, once again, flood my eyes.

I didn’t know I loved bare feet so much,
or walking away on them to wherever point,
my heart slung over my shoulder
like a sheep-skin bag.

I didn’t know I loved small islands of quiet
in the middle of the day,
but I do – they feel like old friends.

I didn’t know I loved the idea
of night descending like a tired bird
or birds flying in and out of rooms and poems
but I do.

I didn’t know I loved so many things.
Only now that I have read Hikmet,
am I setting them free,
one by one.

from Bookmarking the Oasis (Poetrywala, 2015)

Looking for Light, Sunbirds

I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.
(Hafiz of Shiraz)

Looking for light,
sunbirds hop
on hopeful, spindly legs.
I am no different.
The same distaste of darkness,
and, at dusk, the same torment
of light fading.

Often, the only light to be had,
is desperate and feeble,
too deep to access,
my body, a manhole from which
I must rescue that one sweet ray

or remain, forever, bereft.
from Bookmarking the Oasis (Poetrywala, 2015)

Bookmarking the Oasis

I
That spring, I started placing
my poems into printed pages.
Bookmarks of dream-hope,
they grow into slender, green leaves,
their pores closed,
place-holding,
in readiness for summer afternoons,
the promise of an oasis within.

II
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said,
inking itself green
in leaf-vein
and human heart.

III

I have been working for years
on a four-line poem
about the life of a leaf;
I think it might come out right this winter.
Winter
and the only leaves to be found
are the ones
hibernating
inside books of poetry.

In the fall, the black bear
carries leaves into the darkness.
I follow
the trail
To the centre.

Note: The lines/phrases in italics are drawn from David Morley, Songs of Papusza (Section I), (Philip Larkin, The Trees (Section II), Derek Mahon, The Mayo Tao (Section III), and Mary Oliver, Some Questions You Might Ask (Section IV).

from Bookmarking the Oasis (Poetrywala, 2015)

What I Would Like is to be a Victorian Man of Letters

What I would like is to be a Victorian man of letters
and retire to my study when seized by that particular need
to be solitary and aloof.
I have dreamt of this for years.
Female and non-Victorian though I am, I can see it all.
It is crystal clear, and oh! so delicious:
that desk – neat, rectangular, coffee brown,
its drawers deep and seductive,
holding secret things from another age,
a moleskin notebook,
a cup of tea,
a swivel chair with a pipe somewhere at hand
and a bookcase – except with my kind of books,
lots of Jane Austen and some Emily Dickinson for those long cold nights.

No adolescent daughters abandoning dresses in contemptuous heaps,
no grubby sons, their dirty socks hidden like bombs under books,
no spouses, no mothers, nor mothers-in-law with urgent and important thoughts.

On crazy days crowded with adolescent daughters and grubby sons, spouses, mothers and mothers-in-law,
I dream short-burst dreams of that study, some of them so vivid they make me weep between chores.

Deadweight

I carry her around with me everywhere.
There’s no escape. It is as simple as that.
Her weight’s on my lap when I sit.
My live, rotting Siamese twin,
You are the one who looks out of my eyes each morning.
When the day is folded and put away, it is your eyes I reach for
so I can dream in them.

Do you remember?
It was your eyes I was using when we saw that female monkey,
dragging along her still-born infant.
Which one of them was the dead one?
“Such love, I am told, is common, in the monkey world,” you said, too quickly.

Such love.
Such love.
It hung in the air between us,
heavier than a rock,
more dangerous than a loaded gun.

“Bookmarking The Oasis” and other poems © Srilata Krishnan

A Professor of English at IIT Madras, K.Srilata has four collections of poems: Bookmarking the Oasis, Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child. Her novel, Table for Four, longlisted for the Man Asian literary prize, was published by Penguin, India. She co-edited the anthology Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry (Penguin/Viking), Short Fiction from South India (OUP) and The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History (Zubaan). Her short fiction and poetry have been featured in The BloodAxe Anthology of Indian Poets, The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry by Indians, and Wasafiri. Srilata was a writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, at Sangam house and at the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul. She is currently co-convening a trans-national poetry initiative.

“Iago’s Curse” and other poems by Liza McAlister Williams

August 11th, 2016

September Tenth, 2001

Outside the store, at the sidewalk sale,
the breeze lifts each dress again
as the shop girl tries to smoothen them:
musses the chic brown challis pleats,
ruffles the flamestitch voile
whose turquoise and chartreuse V’s
seem borrowed from another day.
Sun, when it shines on this scene,
is playful, peeping between
steely clouds whose sky business
does not admit playfulness.
The baking, lazy summer’s over –
the long summer when the towers
that are about to fall amidst us in ruins
have so far felt and withstood only
the earliest tremors of their collapse.

Serenade

(after Kevin Young)

Rain popping on the air conditioner
like hail on a tin roof

like a handful of pebbles against a window
like the pinging of a car engine cooling off –

you can make a story to explain
being alone again on a drenching night:

a hobo curled in the hay
of another anonymous barn

a virgin with cold feet
ignoring the signal to elope

a travelling salesman
out of gas in Barstow CA –

the story makes no difference
when the ending is the same.

Hit and Run

A brown curled leaf that clings to the winter oak
long past its season’s close is a lingering sign
of the cycle’s natural end. But when she phoned,
her voice ragged with tears, and choked through sobs
the name of her young friend, the hand of panic
laid its icy finger on my neck.

This seasonless attack on order’s wrecked
the borders we’ve protected: it’s a force
unforeseen – death seeps between the seams
of the earth, its garden smell of mulch and mould,
one inconsistent note mixed with the old:
of twig and leaf in newly sundered green.

Déjà Vu

Something shifting low in my gut tonight,
an air bubble from the lentil soup,
made me suddenly think of you,
how we’d lie together curled in sleep
and, turning, you knocked your elbow
or knee peremptorily against the inside of me.

Now that I’ve known you for twenty years
I smile to think of your string-bean limbs
and your purposeful disposition even then,
the two recently married and trying
to get along in the tight quarters of my womb,
and you and I too, not yet having formally met.

Iago’s Curse

I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit.
Othello I iii lines 384-6

They met together after a long time
and, as from separate dreams, awoke
from their ideal worlds of Art and Rhyme
to see around them loss, decay and crime.

“There will always be another test,”
one thought, and nearly spoke,
as she lightly, secretly caressed
the absence of the aching, missing breast.

The other knew a different way to lose:
a child, in thrall to greed; broke;
drowning his qualms in power and booze,
hate, for ‘sport and profit,’ as his muse.

They heard, somewhere around them, out of sight,
the heavy sounds – from chestnut, and from oak,
from the great elms with their hopeless blight –
of limbs falling, falling in the night.

Iago’s Curse and other poems are © Liza McAlister Williams

Liza McAlister Williams has taught writing and literature at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, for many years, finding that poetry is a bridge-builder to the artistic process of art and design students. She and her husband have raised two daughters amidst the pleasures and challenges of old-house-living and urban gardening. She writes creative non-fiction, poetry and children’s poems. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Measure, Blue Unicorn, New Hopkins Review, and Light, and she was a runner-up several years ago in the Howard Nemerov sonnet competition.

“Nurture” and other poems by Liz Quirke

July 28th, 2016

Nurture

In the nine months I didn’t nourish you,
I made notes, I studied the seasons
for ingredients to encourage your growth.
Scraps of paper, post-its hidden
in case anyone would view my thoughts,
pity my trivia of leaves and berries.

A mom yet not a mother,
a woman yet not a woman.
My preparation took place in private,
not in maternity wards or hospital corridors,
but in the hallways of my mind
where I could put up pictures, time lines,
fill cork boards with plans.

As the folic acid built your brain stem
I collated ideas to stimulate it further,
mapped journeys for us,
paths we could walk together,
a staggered relay to start
when your other mother
passed your tiny form to me.

And I could see myself holding your hand,
using my limbs to scaffold the structure
your mother put so beautifully in place.
I am your mom without the biology of mothering.
All I have for you is my heart, my brain, my lists of things,
all but those nine months when I was waiting.

(first published in New Irish Writing in The Irish Times)

Juno

I gave you a warrior name.
Brazen, audacious,
a statement of intent.

After the third scan,
I set out across the world’s mythologies
to uncover the name to herald you.

I found you in the pages
of an old hardback,
barely two inches in a row of columns.

Sensible, poised,
waiting for me to arrive and collect you
at the obvious conclusion,
assured that this is where you had always been.

For weeks after our first meeting
you kept me company.

Your name fell in ink from my pen
until that sturdy bulk of letters
came as familiar as my own.

The shape of you rolled around my mouth
like a boiled sweet,
pushing taste to unreachable corners,
forcing my buds awake until I had a full sense of you.

Your vowels whispered through my lips,
soft as the steam after a kettle click.

And when you arrived, emergent, slow to pink,
but quickly, so quickly,
your name gushed out of my mouth
like your first breath,

triumphant,
your first victory,
your battle cry.

(first published in New Irish Writing in The Irish Times)

Ashes

When I die, bring me to the lake
and pour me in. Don’t scatter.
I want my toes to mingle
with the clay at the bottom.
I will become part of the sediment,
constant and forgotten.

Fish will nibble on my innards
and transport me to tables
all around Boluisce,
as a reminder to torchlight
poachers that they can never know
exactly what they’re eating.

My hair will sway among the rushes,
caressing the soggy shore.
My shoulders will fall into holes
left by bedraggled cattle
trying to water themselves.

My heart, I want you to lob
into the middle of the lake
like a stone wrapped in a love letter,
where a salmon will find it
and make it its own.

All this, love, so when you sit
in the damp, my hair will
brush your hand and my heart
will graze your hook.
and the wind will carry
my mouth saying
“catch me, I’m yours.”

(first published in The Galway Review, Vol 1)

Rite

There will be a changing of the guard,
if such ceremony will be allowed,
A dusting down of dampers to
purge all lamps and lights.
Shops will mourn from their facades,
black-ribboned in the old way.
Passers-by will nod and scuttle
to spurn the mists of death.
Great coats will be sponged as they were before,
and shoes spit-shone to a pitch-like gleam.
The footfall slap will ring out around the streets.
Wedding services kept for cakes
will peek from muslin blankets
to sour-crust dry triangles,
while whiskey flows like speech.
Clocks will chime only grief notes,
humming deep into the silence.
Eyelid mirrors will reflect the dark beneath.
Running along on idle tracks,
children will be shunned
from the adult world
palming flowers in the breeze
to mimic final kisses not received.

(first published in The Stony Thursday Book 11)

Salvage

New rooms I will build from you, bones and all.
The laboured rungs of your spine will stack neatly,
beautiful furniture. Angled strength
siphoned through your forearms,
trust wrought from the ballast lines of your limbs.

You are the structure I crave, but I have little
to give to this construction,
no materials or design.
The dimensions must come from you,
your shape and clever eye.

I will unpack my flimsy particles for assessment.
Spread me out, inventory what remains.
If you see fit, assemble my unruined elements,
joints, anything you can salvage.
Wrap tight, firm till I set and can stand alone.

These rooms will be a composite of us both.
You, the shape, register of craft.
My fingertips will press your intercostal
muscles to cornice definition,
push your art to show itself.

Debris thickens your knuckle bends
and fist-curled territories,
but this is our arrangement,
where my tiles slot into our mosaic
and you are the setting clay that holds.

Once done with your reclamation,
survey the scree, hold the smallest parts together,
dust my skin with cement-rough hands.
Through the heat of your palms
I will come back,

resembling what I was before,
but better because of you.

(first published in The Ofi Press)

Boluisce

I root my fingers, burying them back and down.
A twist into black, acidic soil,
deeper than anything man-made.

I push to the graves of the lake families,
generations who lived and died by the water.

I pay my respects in the only way I know,
by kneeling in the sodden earth
and sinking parts of me towards parts of them.

I do what no record does and remember their passing,
their assimilation back to the land.

I want them to teach me how to inhabit this place,
to reanimate and diffuse their knowledge into my urban bones,
our times merging under a canopy of living skin.

(first published in An Áit Eile)

Nurture and other poems are © Liz Quirke

Originally from Tralee, Co. Kerry, Liz Quirke lives in Spiddal, Co Galway with her wife and daughters. Her poetry has appeared in various publications, including New Irish Writing in the The Irish Times, Southword, Crannóg, The Stony Thursday Book and Eyewear Publishing’s The Best New British and Irish Poets 2016. She was the winner of the 2015 Poems for Patience competition and in the last few years has been shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and a Hennessy Literary Award. Her debut collection Biology of Mothering will be published by Salmon Poetry in Spring 2018.

“While girls my age were toddling in heels” and other poems by Ruth Elwood

July 28th, 2016

There’s no place like…

In the life God never bestowed
my home would be more than a crate
residing on the side of the road
it’s with you and her
puppy, running for treats
not you judging me
alone on the concrete.

An age has passed; left broken by your mum
you look at me now, drunken scum
never knowing
I could have been your father.

Your first hero
taught you to read, write
push you on the swing

but she didn’t want me
or the ring.

While girls my age were toddling in heels

My mind drifting elsewhere –
like on saving for my own set of wheels
scanning milk and jam by day,
it was the nights that sent cash my way.
promo and waitress for “Al’s Betting Joint”
“Come to Al’s bring your pals”
or “ Would you like some ice?”
“interested in rolling the dice?”

Shop money simple stable,
Al ‘s nightly, radical all under the table.

A moral battle in my mind,
but the angel always lagged behind.

Till the last week of July.
Galway Races, most hectic time of the year
incapable of getting through a shift without the fear.

They looked at me like prey
travelled in packs
drunken creepy men
still in the slacks
whistling , insulting, groping
each trying their arm
loudly hoping
their winnings
would include me.

That car had three doors
the mild scent of spilt fried rice
but I never allowed a set of furry dice

I’m still getting to grips with
how people can look at me like a stack of chips.

Insomnia

I’ve had enough
losing this fight
in too deep
can’t sleep

wondering what could be worse
feeling mutilated, deflated
another gone in the hearse.

It’s really a disgrace
the only ones comprehending
wear plastic bags on their faces

Where to for help ?
Totally numb
how can they slash this budget
by a seven figure sum

Time Bomb

You were the one I could always trust
                           Yet now this friendship is rust
                           Maybe it’s since we both changed,
                           Or possibly after my diagnosis your priorities
                           rearranged.
                           I came to you tears in my eyes, vulnerable bare
                           Despite the contoured fake smile
                           It was obvious you didn’t care.
                           So here I am after falling down
                           Begging for company, comfort, a friend anything
                           While you stand high and mighty wearing the crown.
                           I guess it took the hard way to learn my lesson
                           You want a friend for photos and to like your posts
                           Nothing real just followers like ghosts.
                           As I try to rebuild taking it slow 
                           There’s something I want you to know
                           Being “fab” make-up and selfies will all fade
                           But you’ll always be the bitch 
                           Who treated me like a grenade.

While girls my age were toddling in heels and other poems are © Ruth Elwood

Ruth Elwood is an eighteen year old Galwegian native. She attends a creative writing class for beginners taught by Kevin Higgins. She has read twice at the Over The Edge public readings. One of her poems was published in a new digital magazine The Rose. She is currently on a gap year and is hoping to study Arts with Creative Writing this September.

The Rose

“Kafes” (The Cage) and other poems by Müesser Yeniay

July 21st, 2016

Carvansarai of Night

Tonight
here should be
dance of words

-in the carvansarai of your glory-

tonight I am as joyful as the grasses
that saw the sun

and full with the existence of my dream.

Kafes (The Cage)

Like a bird looking for its cage, 
                    I am flying around time

In my chest, human voices…
Then an army of ants dissolving

-an ant is eating another-

 They call it a proverb 
                    as they pound on the country

Menstruation

                  Postfeminismus

Silence becomes word
drop by drop

I am a woman, a poet
in this nothingness 
that batters my body

egg that leaves my womb
every month
has a legend
in my body

it has a trace

my womenhood
my Achilles toe

my dog that barks every month

                          a man can't be a poet
                          a man can be a pen for a poet

MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; she graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She took her M.A on Turkish Literature at Bilkent University. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Muse Pie Press in USA.

Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains, a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second poetry book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia as Requiem to Tulips. She has translated the Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated the Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published a Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She also translated the poetry of Israeli poet Ronny Someck (2014) and Hungarian poet Attila F. Balazs (2015). She has published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul. Her poems were published in Hungarian by AB-Art Press by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa (2015).

Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: Actualitatea Literară (Romania), The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA&England); Kritya, Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci, I poeti di Europe in Versi e il lago di Como (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Tema (Croatia); Dargah (Persia). Her work appears in the following anthologies: With Our Eyes Wide Open; Aspiring to Inspire, 2014 Women Writers Anthology; 2014 Poetry Anthology- Words of Fire and Ice (USA) Poesia Contemporanea de la Republica de Turquie (Spain); Voix Vives de Mediterranee en Mediterranee, Anthologie Sete 2013 ve Poetique Insurrection 2015 (France); One Yet Many- The Cadence of Diversity ve ayrıca Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Come Cerchi Sull’acqua (Italy).

Her poems have been translated into Vietnamese, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Persian, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. Her book in Hungarian was published in 2015 by AB-Art Publishing by the name “A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa” She has participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia); 2nd Asia Pacific Poetry Festival 2015 (Vietnam).

Müesser is the editor of the literature magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey.

“Phoenix” and other poems by by Müesser Yeniay
An Index of Women Poets

From “Parvit of Agelast” and other poems by Máighréad Medbh

July 18th, 2016

From Parvit of Agelast

'Your face is ridiculous: O. . . . . leeeeee ugly 🙂❤ / thanks, 
sure i know !’ :L’ – Ciara Pugsley, ask.fm

net
whn th little lite shinin frm abve doesnt
n younguns mad fr luv r spected 2 b home
thumbs go drum on magic pads n open windows
so they travel in thr dreambots huntin souls
they go weft upon th crystal warp unshuttled 
hookin up witout a plan 2 build a planet
trances risin tru th base n snare of ask n tell
wot u c is wot u feel n wot u feels rite
tho snot a total giggle when th trolls r out
—no1 knows th cause like with any freakin demic—
bitch please u aint jesus wots wit all the posin
howd u like my cock up ur ass, u cross-eyed ho

som1 feelin tiny in the sprawlin fabric
hauls back in2 her drum for a re-birth much 2 brite
bodys blinded so her double takes it weepin
2 th woods 
		to be an hero 
				wit a reel 
						hank 
							o rope



(Verse Fantasy, published by Arlen House in 2016. 
The poems are aspects of the ‘real’ world.)

‘…the body of Wafa became shrapnel that eliminated despair and aroused hope.’ – Adel Sadew

The Key to Paradise

You will be snatched back from the place of no landmark,
where you wander, scapegoat, under the frozen hot eye,
blister-backed, hairy, and crunching backward to beast.

You will regain the unrivalled kingdom of your source,
your beauty will be unsurpassed, and you will sit
on the right knee of a virtuous king, all-powerful but
for his abject love of you. There will be bright-plumed birds
and four undying springs of milk, honey, oil and wine.

Your lover will adore you under the great tree, and there
will never be a touch without the perfect ecstatic end
that leaves you weak and wed to the grass you collapse on.
There will be no argument and never pain. Balm will drip
from every leaf in this catchment of considerate sun.

Best of all, you will be thought wise, not inessential.
So gird your waist with red rockets and blow your littler self
to the garden of infinite fecundity. Do it. In one starry bang.

Sleep is the only escape I have. When I don’t dare think, I dare to dream.’ – Jaycee Dugard

Pine

Each autumn, in Lake Tahoe, El Dorado county, CA,
the kokanee salmon turn from silver-blue to vermilion.
After spawning they die and their carcasses are meat for mink,

that some unabused women sport as symbols of perhaps love.
The kokanee is not a native, arrived in 1944, so a mere child
compared to the happy-birthday lake two million years old.

Jaycee’s eleven were a tiny tint to that time spread,
and the moment when her fingertips touched the pine cone—
print to Fibonacci imprint, whorl to spiral—a netsuke eye.

That darkened in the backyard in the small shed where sleep
was the best activity and a gnarled man made her pine and desire
the woody grenade that was the last thing she had touched before.

A pine can last a thousand years, an eye much less; Jaycee eighteen
in the pulp of a small brain, twisted in and round, not knowing
what would sprout when a forest fire melted the resin
and out fell, in hazardous liberation, winged seeds.

From: Imbolg

(Unpublished Collection)

Your Grace

You are alone in what they would call a new life. What they don’t know is
that for you nothing is old. A morning is always a question, as if you were
a web living each day in a different cell of itself, seeking.

Seeking maybe nothing, but in that mode, hiatus behind and before. It has
seemed true to take a sable cloth to the slate of fact and not only wipe
but cover, occlusion of the frame removing the form entirely.

Entirely it might seem, but like minerals that leave a trace in water, small
events make change. Tonight you have remembered a Columbian dress you bought
on impulse at a Fairtrade sale, undyed, handwoven.

Woven into your consciousness now like most of your clothes, but you wore this
slinky to a wedding and people remarked. For the first time you thought your
body taut and that of the normal, not a flop. You flaunted.

Flaunting was your wont in a sub-chador sort of way. Exclusivity was the bait,
the prospect of private vice. But you see in the mirror tonight a shape that
could turn heads. There’s a Grecian curve at the base of your back.

Back to where you sat huddled in a lone hut by a struggling fire, watching the small
yellow flame fight the red. You had crammed a bush into each windy gap of the hedge.
Beyond, how could you know several had gathered to your grace.

Grace was a false thing, you said, being rustic. But many thought you walked like
a careless queen. They took the switch in your hand for a sceptre, wielded fiercely
against the meek, shaken at the indifferent.

Indifferently endowed, you thought you were, and hardly cared, except for the
faint sense of an untried trail. It occurs to your image now that you could have
kept your own counsel, sat straight-backed and been petal-showered.

Showering in what was given, you might have made some plans, not waited for
a suitor to tear at the bushes and tell you your mind.

climacteric in the extreme

the room darkens. foetal faces draw
	spotlights from the dense matrix. she kneels.
not a whimper but centrifugal quake and strain.
	ovular potentials huddle in lines for stringing
	crowded and frozen onto a tight choke.
she hugs her shoulders, surrogate, unconsoled,
	and a creature leaps out, trailing chains,
	snarls and spits, goes surfing the tidal walls.
he will not come again to her bucking bounty,
	her bawdy talk, her raucous primitive yells;
	she will not be the bright-haired goddess of the barstool, 
	fabled and revered in ten parched villages.
hail of the ripped legend falls in blades,
a thing of flesh flames in the mouth of the monster 
and she recalls a hard prophesy told in the spring grass.
	lincolns rev on the melting brick
	informants crouch in a lonely copse and beg for mercy
	in the torture room the air sparks and yellows
	black seeps into old pictures
	and the girl with the lank dead hair creeps blindly from 
the screen.
she probes her body and finds a silent blowhole.
	her fingers return a thousand red messages
	that pool and brindle in the cradle of her palms.
if she screams she doesn’t know, but colours
	curry the weather pumpkin, desert and vulva, 
	lunatic yellow, bum-in-the-gutter green.
she crashes, glass and glint flinging themselves too, 
	watches her eyes picked to the veined bone.
	girl, crook and goblet smithered on the lizard-
	dark floor.

history

(from ‘the second of april’)

I walk.	
Where is home except in repeated kisses of foot and ground.
I am having affairs.
	With, for one, the bonded pavement, complicit as a slice of river.
I glide on ice,
	step lightly on the unreflecting glass panel of a foyer floor.
Nakedness is rare.
	I don’t tell how I used to take off my shoes and mesh my toes with sand.
But even that was a skim.
	I slyly stepped on a rock and, recalcitrant, took off.
I pause at running water
	and watch its inscrutable fingers take sun to rock in a work of art,
then abandon it, dissatisfied.
	Among a tree I become a stretch of soil and burnt grass and harden.
There are always tears.
	They seem to come from outside and wash me down until, like ivy,
I am again rambling.
	On a tarred path my jaw is jolted by hard, inexplicable haste.
My ankles wound each other.
	I bleed and wonder if I should spancel myself to slow.
There are creatures
	who only pace the one field. Even a hobbled route finds knowledge.
I look at my feet and don’t know them.
	Too long with my eyes on a misted goal has cost me my body.
Happenings are always outside. 
Strange, when I see no walls. Where is the place of occurrence?
I thought life was movement.
	Coming to gravel I have less ground and that brings thoughts of release.
Water is too deep
	and I fear high places. To walk is the freest I can do and I wipe my tracks. 
What will pass is the breeze
of a small body, non-native, a light touch on a puzzled cheek.

Máighréad Medbh was born in County Limerick. She has six published poetry collections, and a prose work, Savage Solitude: Reflections of a Reluctant Loner, was published by Dedalus Press in 2013. Since her first collection, The Making of a Pagan, in 1990, she has become widely known as a performance poet. She likes to explore themes, which led her to write a sequence on the famine, Tenant, published by Salmon Press, and a sequence inspired by astrology, Twelve Beds for the Dreamer, published by Arlen House. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and has been translated into German and Galician. She has performed widely, in Europe and America as well as Ireland, and on the broadcast media. Máighréad has written three novels and a fantasy sequence for children. The novels are online as ebooks. She has also written for radio, and publishes a monthly blog/essay on her website. A verse fantasy, Parvit of Agelast, is to be published by Arlen House in 2016.

www.maighreadmedbh.ie

PDF version of this work

“Wending” and other Poems by Allis Hamilton

July 12th, 2016

Mrs. Piper

after Pied Piper of Hamelin

He came home with that wooden whistle
one blustery winter’s day.

Said he found it on the snow
at the crossroads of Hamelin and Coppenbrügge.

It was just lying there he said.
He learned to play it fast enough,

one could well say he was a natural.
But I got rather fed up with his playing here in the cave.

It bounced off the stonewalls and I could get no work done,
so I sent him out.

The first time my husband returned after a day out
with that whistle, it was flies that followed him.

All a-buzz in swarms like swallows on a summer’s eve.
Next it was the worms slithering along behind him

like one enormous python.
He used them to catch us plenty of fish.

When he brought home the rats,
that was quite something.

I smoked the meat from most of them;
we had a winter’s worth of food.

And I tanned their skins of course;
they made for wonderful shoe warmers.

But when he brought home all of those children,
that was something else altogether.

Published in The Australian Poetry Journal 2015 Issue 5 No. 1,
Edited by Michael Sharkey

The Fottie

Often we saw her walking the hushed hills,
making her way among sheep-worn heather.
Her feet shod in the skin of lambs – lambs

whose dead eyes knew the pecking beak of crow.
Always she was wrapped in her tan and green shawl,
her hair as wild as night.

She collected clutches of wool caught in clumps of hawthorn,
tangled in clusters of heather, blown by winds’ fierce breath
onto thistle-thorn. Sometimes digging roots with a broken antler

on the burn’s steep brae where the roe deer spar.
She gathered lichen long grown on granite rocks; picked
yellow flowers off gorse with small careful fingers,

placing them like stolen kisses into her apron pocket.
We villagers wondered what she did with her collection,
she, as shy as fox, as quiet as grass.

After we found her beautiful body beaten blue
by the bashing burn – washed up on the banks
from a tremendous storm – we discovered her craft.

She had woven exquisite colourful, detailed tapestries
that covered the walls of her crumbling croft.
There it all was, the stories of our lives as seen from her eyes:

Missus Brodie and her black-eyed triplets, husband long dead
at the horns of a boar; Johnny the knocker with his four-fingered
hand standing by the blacksmith fire; laird Edward McIntosh

with his mistress Missus MacLeish laying deep in the shade
of a willow grove; Claire and Norma trading goats’ milk
in sloshing metal pails, sometimes for more than money;

Albert and Dave climbing down a tall Scots pine,
crows’ eggs in their mouths running, late for school;
and there was myself, my brown eyes wide, looking
longingly towards her.

Fottie is a female wool-gatherer.

Published in Painted Words 2015, a BRIT TAFE Anthology,
Edited by Professional Writing and Editing Students

Wending

On a grey rainy day, a cuckoo bird comes to a tree at my window.
At irregular intervals it hammers among fat drops falling on the flat tin roof.

Uncurling the sleeping cat from my lap, I walk out into the misty sky to try and find
the feathered form. Given a choice I would live forever in a day like this: wet, grey,

visited by birds singing their intricate songs. I would read stories of bicycle rides
and embroider the thoughts of a honey bee. It takes me days to wash off

the nagging world, rinsing and rinsing until finally I find my own skin.
Though I just can’t seem to find that bird that is hammering.

Published in Plumwood Mountain, Volume 3, Number 1,
Edited by Tricia Dearborn

White-necked (Pacific) Heron,

Ardea pacifica

Still
as stone you stand
on long leather legs
in water older than stars

As stone you stand
keeping patience
in water older than stars
lapping the lips of the lagoon

Keeping patience
your incremental movements
lap the lips of the lagoon
more monk than bird

Your incremental movements
clues to the source of stillness
more monk than bird
head bowed collecting prey

Clues to the source of stillness
serpent-necked fisherman
head bowed collecting prey
using shadow as ally

Serpent-necked fisherman
your charcoal cape enshrouds
using shadow as ally
a trick the sunshine taught

Your charcoal cape enshrouds
scrying water’s soft underbelly
a trick the sunshine taught
from the sky’s open lid

Scrying water’s soft underbelly
beak poised as a precise knife
under the sky’s open lid
waiting

On long leather legs
still

Published as part of the Bimblebox 153 Birds, An Australian touring exhibition
Compiled by Jill Sampson

Wince

Amanda eats ants
underneath the cherry tree,
placing the acrid
green biters
on her wet
flinching tongue

Published in The Caterpillar Issue 12 Spring 2016
Edited by Will Govan

“Wending” and other poems is © Allis Hamilton

Allis Hamilton lives in a small, hand-built shack powered by the sun, in regional Australia where she scampers barefoot over rocks. She creates poetry, art, and music. She was an acrobat and classical musician until a brain haemorrhage put a stop to that. Allis is a co-convener of PoetiCas, her town’s poetry readings. Some of her poems live in Australian Poetry Journal, The Caterpillar, Plumwood Mountain, among other places.

The Story Telling Tent