Category: A Sunday Morning Poet

“Feather Quill” and other poems by Deirdre Gallagher

November 20th, 2019

Teanga le Teanga

Ní mise an leannán Iodáilise
a bhreathnódh ort go paiseanta
le súile donna doimhne na foraoise
a chuirfeadh faoi gheasa cosúil le Naoise
le sruth órga meala focal binn
a thabharfadh ar chliatháin an aoibhnis thú
ach ar deireadh
a d’fhágfadh tú gan puinn scrupaill
ar bhóthar an chroíbhrisidh.

Ní mise an leannán Fraincise
a chaithfeadh leat mar rí is banríona
le plámás moltach bréagach
a chuirfeadh do cheann ina roithleán meidhreach
le hamhrán grá síoda fuaime is gutaí
a tharraingeodh go géar ar shreanga do chroí
ach ar deireadh
a thréigfeadh tú gan fiú súil siar
ar bhóthar an eascairdis.

Is mise do leannán Gaelach
a mhaithfidh duit é
nuair a chasfaidh tú do dhroim orm
a fhanfaidh dílis duit
nuair a rachaidh tú ar tóir suiríoch eile
a gheallfaidh buaine duit
nuair a shéanfaidh tú ár ndlúthcheangal
cé go mbeidh mé díreach os do chomhair.

Lasfar splanc an aitheantais eadrainn aríst
Lonrófar síol labhartha tréigthe na nglúnta
Preabfaidh comhcheol ár n-aontachta trí chuisle
Is tuigfidh tú m’fhiúntas.

Ar shaighead an ghrá
a scaoilfear ár snaidhm seirce
trí spéartha na maidine nua gile
Is buailfimid teanga le teanga.

Sea

Silks of waves
fold and unfold
in pleats akin
to sapphire skin.

Ribbons of waves
dance and swirl
curl and furl
in decadent twirl.

Ripples of waves
sugar-coated sprinkles
murmuring dustings
of iridescent twinkles.

Sighs of waves
heave to a swell
the lappings onshore
in reply do quell.

Caresses of waves
soothe whispers deep
secrets of loss
untold she keeps.

Yet be not deceived
by her velvet foam
on the glint of
iron fist, we roam.

Feather quill

In skies of pouring creams and azure silks
A feather swoons to sun kiss breeze
Rose petal swirls and spiral arches
Dipped in liquid gold of a melting sun

Pirouetting on an eiderdown of ripe green grass
It cushions itself next a glistening blade
Curling tips in slumbered plié meet-
Peace falls lithely, as a feather quill.

SONGBIRDS

Songbirds joined by fine gilded thread
Weave their motif, a tapestry bed
Embroidery petaled in flints of gold leaf
Spools intertwining shimmering sheaf

Spinning wheel hums to pleated crochet
Seams gleaned by yarns day and by day
Snowdrop lilting heads in blissful repose
Honey dawn strums stream on silvery sloes

Seasons gliding and spinning wheel ceases
Doré thread clipped, songbird releases
Woven spools lost to land and to sea
Satin love tails soar into winged infinity –

Feather Quill and other poems © Deirdre Gallagher

Deirdre Gallagher has works published in A New Ulster, Crossways Literary Magazine, Poethead, Comhar, Feasta and upcoming in The Stinging Fly. Literature is passionate, powerful, restorative and transformative. It makes an immense contribution to our evolving world. A language enthusiast, she believes that we can dispel the shadows cast by checkered history and disconnection to see the emergence of a bright, compassionate, and equitable future that celebrates the advantages of multilingualism within national and global contexts.

“Mná na hÉireann” and other poems by Anne Walsh Donnelly

November 18th, 2019

Mná na hÉireann

To die not having known the frenzy
of making love with a woman
is to live without ever jumping
over the bar of your crib.

How could you not want
to watch a woman fling her underwear
on your bedroom floor
present you with soft skin

for your nails and teeth
to score like blades on dough.
How could you not want
to feel your edges

slip into her hollows, like a spoon
folding flour into cake batter.
How could you not want
to hear her whimper,

crescendo to a jungle roar
while your fingers move inside her.
How could you not want
a denouement to your play,

when secret stories leak onto ivory sheets
then tease tongues and start the sequel.
How could you not want
to drag a woman to bed

at seven on a Saturday evening
rise at two on Sunday afternoon,
sleep-deprived
and smelling like a marathon runner,

race outside to tackle
weedy flower beds
gleeful that soil will not rest
in your clipped fingernails.

First published in Animal Heart Press, 2019, Editor Amanda McLeod

Being in love at fifty

plucks me from death row,
Hands expunge
the curdled cream & bitter fruit
from my body. Medley of skin & bones
sink into a bowl of Eton Mess.

Being in love at fifty
makes me wonder if Eros will crumble
like Wensleydale cheese
or taste like Blue Stilton, after a year or two,
or if it can be transformed
into the perfect soufflé.

Being in love at fifty
makes me cry, my daughter’s image
of me, creases, feels like
she’s lost Santa all over again
has to make room for someone else
to sit beside her in my heart.

Being in love at fifty
makes me grin, my shopping bag
contains a birthday card
& polyester shirt for my daughter
to give to her father. Lying on top,
a cerise lace bra for my lover.

First published in New Irish Writing in The Irish Times, 2018, Editor Ciaran Carty

My Menopausal Womb

Hairdresser empties tubes
into a black bowl, stirs a mixture
of what looks like day-old blood.
366, he calls the dye.

He pastes my greying hair,
doesn’t take long to cover.
Thirty minutes of flicking through Image,
Hello and Good Housekeeping
and I’m scarlet again.

Gynecologist puts my feet in steel stirrups
tells me to spread my legs
covers his hands with latex gloves
grabs a speculum
tells me to cough and inserts.

When he withdraws I know
what he has to say before he
opens his mouth. And I wish
there was a colour like 366
that would turn my shrunken
womb, scarlet again.

First published in Spontaneity, 2019, Editor Ruth McKee

The Day My Vagina Spoke To Me

After Martina Evans

Don’t you dare, write a poem about this conversation,
said my vagina to me, as I toweled myself dry.

You’ve enough written about sex, vulvas,
and unsatisfying penises. Get over it.
Write something different, use the Irish Sea,
Croagh Patrick or Clew Bay as your muse.
Everybody loves poems about landscapes.

I’m sick and tired of seeing my personal details
all over the web. Who wants to read about a menopausal
vagina or any other type of vagina?
Nothing glamourous about what’s happening to me.
If you paid a bit more attention you’d see that.

You should be out looking for a man
instead of spending so much time writing.
Delving into the unconscious, you say.
Load. Of. Bull.
It’s delving into me you should be doing.

That vibrator of yours is crying out to be used.
Though it’s the real thing I want.
The buzz from that yoke, used to give me a terrible
headache, the few times you did use it.

That gay phase didn’t work out very well either, did it?
Still, that doesn’t mean you have to close up shop.
It’s a bit of fresh air I need.
Can you not smell the must?
There’s mould starting to grow down here.

Mná na hÉireann and other poems © Anne Walsh Donnelly

Anne Walsh Donnelly lives in the west of Ireland. Her work has appeared in many publications including New Irish Writing in The Irish Times. She was nominated for the Hennessy Literary Award for emerging poetry and selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2019. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, The Woman With An Owl Tattoo, published by Fly On The Wall Poetry Press and the short story collection, Demise of the Undertaker’s Wife, published by The Blue Nib.

To find out more about Anne and to order her books go to her website: annewalshdonnelly.com

“Awaken” and other poems by Sinead McGuigan

November 17th, 2019

Awaken

For what are dreams without eyes
to look upon melancholic fields of truth?

They plunder my feverish plight,
sanctify my most chaste body strewn,

break the silence of dagger tears as
gentle breezes dance upon the blades.

Awakened by soft mountain dew,
transparent memories nourish parched lips.

Darkened thoughts stretch to bloom,
sun reflections dazzle in the midst of change —

Hollow sight blossoms to fertile springs,
I open my eyes to the dawning day.

Untitled

Ruins crumble tinge regret
Bleak winds whisper life’s decay
Drops cling to a crimson flower
Life’s shadow depletes blossoms
Streams sluggishly flow to green
Curve towards humanities fork
Stagnant poisonous ideals
Nostalgic deluge prays wings
Shades of twilight cloak intent
Chill of dusk blackened slate
Night rises in vengeful spite
Storms of wisdom pound dark sky
Truth sweeps to thunderous claps
Clouds weep upon a dark domain

Lost Souls of Tuam

As the sky poured down its crimson pain
torturous holy wrath condemned us.
Blood washed the passion from our veins
silent prayers whispered at our graves.
Unmarked and hidden from the world
Lost souls sang hymns, their stories untold.

Oh righteous pleas, stolen lives,
babies torn from their mother’s arms.
Silent cries in death’s cold embrace,
never become part of the human race.

As bitter fruits of passion weep,
hidden burgundy sins pour.
Religious hands that cradled flesh,
illegitimate secrets are laid to rest.

Awaken and other poems are © Sinead McGuigan

Sinead McGuigan a UCD graduate lives in Navan, Co Meath. Sinead has returned to writing poetry in various styles for the last year. Sinead’s’ first book of poetry called “My Muse of Restless Nights” will be released soon.

Anon | Shreds of Colour

November 12th, 2019

Shreds of Colour

Black

Black seeping
from pores, I choke
on its own smoke
– unspoken words,
A fire has been lit.

Standing in flames,
drawings and words
of what you think
to do, on once blank
canvas’s now speak

of what you drew,
Isolated four
seasons, almost
a fifth – silence,
A fire has been lit!

Blackbird beckoned
from the trees
of nearby eyes
in darkness
– peering

into the warmth
and light
of my nest,
young awaits
her food,

she sings, unaware,
protected from
your secret and
I draw – curtains,
A fire has been lit!

Every pulse fills
a rage, spins the air
around me,
Standing in armour,
I draw a sword

My blue eyes
change to Red,
with each and every
single
blink

I. drip. flames,
my hair
now charcoal black,
sweeps across a gaunt
pale face,

a barefoot thud
across the earth,
no longer high
heeled feet,
black cloak rattles

in the wind,
a primal roar
shows my cutting
fangs, fiercely
ride a horse

as dark as me.
A fire has been lit
and a mother sips
flame dripped tea.

Red

Is the colour
of every word, etched
canvas in a self-made
studio that hangs
a degree of fine art –
put a noose around
once welcoming

paper, spits
your vulgarity now,
menacing smile,
gritted teeth
and stinking
mind,
etching, etching, etching

your paint-stained
hands, blood-coloured
dripped and dried,
shakes the hands
of unknowing
artists and smiles.
“congratulations

free expression,”
must have watched
my smile a million
times, each tooth
aligned
and imperfections
– mine, anonymous

skull exhibit –
My pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out,
my pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out,
My pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out !
– lyrical, visceral sight,
shreds of colour
beckoning to write.

White

Is the colour of the sheets
to write and to sleep,
a moonlit sky
that once shone on two,

the colour of the walls
that held the night
secrets for too long
and the once crisp

laundry you splashed
with paint and hung
to dry in a gust
of colour and wind,

I wished you painted
the flowers instead
thrown from a
window at your feet,

smiling, hushed
hearts – my own
left me before
now

– a betrayal known
to only the walls
and I, birthing
colour’s while others

in whispering
winds of an artist’s
frenzied brush
and I’m almost blue

in pretentious walls
as though they are
still white,
shreds of colour
beckoning to write.

Blue

Is a sparkle of colour
left behind (- White -)
an enraged heart,
a gut that churned
in pencil grey

and contemporary art
-I rolled in darkness
of early morning birds
that sang yellow
songs reminding me

some things are still
the same and even
if they are not,
poetry won’t set
them free

so I retreat in colour
new, to never write
of shreds again
or infinite blue
– the colour of my silence.

Shreds of Colour is © Ana-Mai Smith

Ana-Mai Smith lives in Ireland. She holds a business qualification and she has a passion for reading, writing and reciting poetry.Ana-Mai has been writing privately for some years, she has began to submit her work. She enjoys to experiment with non-traditional structures and styles and she writes various different themes. She loves to incorporate colour intermittingly into her poetry.

“Cinderella Tráth” and other poems by Aoibhe Ní Loingsigh

November 10th, 2019

Cinderella Tráth

Chaill sí a bróg (agus a croí) I bpobal I gConnemara,
Rud simplí ab ea é ag tarlú ó thús staire,
Cad a tharla dár gcailín óg, dár ‘Cinderella,’
Phóg a buachaill álainn deas cailín éigean eile,

D’Fhág sí cuid dá anam ag glanadh miasa go tapaidh,
Tom-Bán ag míniú nuacht dóibh “Bhreatain, cinnte rachaidh,”
Ag an am rinne siad iarracht an seanfhear bocht a éalú,
Beagnach am don chéilí, cad mar gheall ar smuidiú?

Cé go bhfuil sí arais I gCorcaigh fós cloisfeá a guth ag gáire I nGaillimh,
Insóidh na scéalta grinn is fearr, coast a dhó ar an dtalamh,
(An cúinteoir crosta bocht …bhí a fáinne cluasa mar éin),
Scéalta naemhdíobhálach ar an mbus ina bhfir grinn dóibh féin

Mo hata

Look keep your warm calloused hands and your smiling eyes,
Keep those sea wet salty eyebrows under Connemara skies,
Keep the easy-going attitude “Beidh gach rud ceart go lóir,”
Stay there and sit in factor 50 on the sandy shore
Keep the dances we danced together and try to dance like me
Think of Fiachra eating lunch in a jellyfish sea
Keep the classroom coincidences I don’t even care
Sometimes I wish I’d never met the loveliest boy from Kildare
Keep your kayak bravery and your rounders skill
Please promise me you bless yourself when an ambulance passes still
Keep a list of people and counties and keep the Cork lads close
Ní raibh mé do chailín níl mé anois ach b’fhéidir go mbeidh mé fós
Keep “tá Oisín chomh deas” yeah keep especially that
Keep it all ná bach leis but give me back my hat

Jack Hall

His hair was long and greasy to his waist it did fall,
His face was yellow from lack of sun poor ol’ young Jack Hall,
His Father stood, on one leg, at almost six foot two,
But when he leant on the other foot the opposite was true,
His mother who once long before he was told had been pretty,
Now wore within her hair, heart and clothes the griminess of the city,

An army of ivy leaves held their house under siege,
“Gone too far,” “Nothing to be done,” this was of course agreed,
Outside the back, their garden ran a short mess of Bush and tree,
So overgrown that out the window one could barely see,
In the overgrowth danced fifty to seventy very well-fed rats,
A happy coincidence altogether for next door’s tabby cat,

The weather outside brought about the temperature inside,
In winter months their bones d’shiver in Summer months they’d fry,
Electricity had yet to reach, this last house on the road,
And would not for many years until it would at last be sold,
He spent his evenings at the gate confined behind the wall,
Watching the other lads kick a ball, poor ol’ young Jack Hall,

Sometimes alas by accident the ball would bounce up to,
The peeling door of house number a hundred and fifty two,
The woman with the raggy clothes and the horselike mouth,
Would brandish a sharpened butter knife and from the door she’d shout,
“I swear to God the Lord above ye’ll not me disrespect,”
Each time the plastic pound shop ball would soon be truly fecked,
And cast aside in the overgrowth, of grass beyond the knee,
A reminder if her triumph that everyone could see,

One Summer day our Jack he stood and maggots he did make,
Inside his heavy big black coat. He drummed his fingers on the gate,
Music filled the terraced street amplifying as it drew near,
The promise of something sweet that his mother deemed ‘too dear’,

The ice-cream van skidded to a halt in the middle of the road,
It’s tinny song advertising what it was he sold,
A father sauntered out of his house and walked up to the van,
He smiled and chatted on and on, he clearly knew the man,

“Six half cones, Murphy, that’s it for me”
He took the six cones with a wink and quickly paid for three,
A cone for each of his three sons and for their friend Big Noel,
And for the youngest Healy boy who they’d always stick in goal,
He then began to walk, where people didn’t go,
To the ivy house with the tall tall grass nobody’s mow,

He handed Jack the bit of ice cream sliding off the cone,
(Jack Hall the crater who spent his time standing all alone),
Jack’s two eyes lit up with joy, a smile slid across his face,
The ice cream that was in his hand he could all but taste,
For once and not in some cruel game,
He truly felt the same.

Cinderella Tráth and other poems are © Aoibhe Ní Loingsigh

Aoibhe Ní Loingsigh is a poet from Cork. Aoibhe writes both in English (her first language) and as Gaeilge (her favourite language). One of Aoibhe’s Grandas inspired her love of Irish at a young age. Time spent in the Gaeltacht helped to further this grá. Aoibhe hopes to work in an Irish college (that she previously attended) in Connemara during the Summer. A short story of Aoibhe’s won a competition in her local library and a past English teacher read a poem of hers at her wedding. Aoibhe wrote a book last summer (while helping with the Leaving Cert exams) in English with the dialogue as Gaeilge. Aoibhe is an aggressively (the word agressive is used for emphasis) optimistic person and decides to see the good in everything. This is reflected in her poetry. Her sense of humour is evident and helps to give her poetry a universal appeal.

“A Life Unanswered” and other poems by Susan Kelly

November 10th, 2019

The Bittersweet

Her passion was historical biscuit tins
or so he’d tell visitors
who marvelled at the growing stacks of embossed lids
that glinting with landscapes, landmarks
locations she hadn’t seen,
he thought it best if the world came to her.
He liked her to display these gifts he brought back
from places he visited with work,
that was what he called her.

He’d produce a new one
the morning after his return
assuming her quietness over breakfast
had been due to the non-presentation of a tin,
she accepted them
but never the treats
that she bagged in black
where they grew crumbly and green
and sweated in the confines of their own wrappings.

No tins came for some months
work no longer needed him
so he dozed his days away in front of the box
until he breathed his last,
the remote control limp in his hand.
She scattered the tins around the living room
and took a hammer to the shiny lids
that remembered everywhere she had never been
until they didn’t shine anymore.

The Bittersweet – Poetry Ireland Review, editor Eavan Boland

Skinny Jeans

His quiff came undone in the night
to fall about an acned face
that contorts in an afternoon yawn.
He shifts his body about the bed
to untwist the studded belt
that pockmarked him as he slept,
the impressions red against his gothic skin.
The seams of his skinny jeans draw lines
up and down his tall boy legs,
revealed as he inches them off
with pink-heeled persistence
before they’re dumped on the floor
in a dark, denimous pile.
The day looks in on him
through not-quite-drawn curtains,
the gap, the width of an ice-lolly stick,
the day, bright as July.

Skinny Jeans – The Stony Thursday Book, editor Paddy Bushe

A Life Unanswered

Dust smothered hat boxes stacked, empty,
blue and white Switzers stripes dulled by years.
Flapper dressers and bridge club receipts idle in drawers
lined with the Letters page from a 1920’s Irish Times,
fragments of lily of the valley talcum powder tangible.

I have your eyes but I don’t see what you saw
history witnessed, decades endured,
did they roar, were they hungry, did they swing,
did scarcity wage a local war to leave you wanting,
did world events impact, always make contact?

Did you mind leaving Achill to settle in Westport,
urbanity on your new doorstep,
did faith and prayers of two Roman-collared sons
ease untimely widowhood?
Clacking rosary beads, murmuring novenas your mantra.

Was my mother an appreciated ally
righting the balance, nurturing anima
or did she steal your mantle as lady of the house,
did you mind or was your arched-eyebrow sternness
an act of survival in a male domain?

November evening your pen ran dry
and expired batteries silenced your radio
yet you needed no replacements,
you knew that night
that you would also go.

A Life Unanswered – Abridged, editor Maria Campbell

Lapsing

He files his thumb nail on a match box
softened by pockets,
the swatch almost worn by forty strikes.
A neighbour walks by,
he nods to the al fresco attendees
who religiously avoid a pew,
preferring to stand the hour.
A speaker nailed to the buttressed porch
bugles across the hedges
crackling its master’s voice.
It spouts prayers for the faithful
who respond en mass
in a monotone breathless recitation,
pausing on cue by rote.
He drops the smoothed box
and squashes it into the green
joins his hands and breathes deep
the flinted air.
He rests his head on the pebbledash
his weekly penance
meted out in pointy pastels.
A couple arrive too late to creak open the door,
they angle for wall space
budging him from his idling spot,
the flock thickens in the noonday sun.

Lasping – The Weary Blues, editor Emily Cullen

Room 41

Bath-freshness beckons
but she chooses to accept
the week-old grime
and the specks of kamikaze talc
that land on her lashes
as she powders her oily hair,
the ash-brown lank.

She doesn’t care,
there’ll be no neighbours calling
like the news-hungry vultures
they pretend not to be,
no postman delivering a daily chat,
nobody knows how committed she is
to being alone.

A large orange pill
wrestles its way down,
eased by tepid water
from a polystyrene cup
and condescending words
from a woman in white
who locks the door as she leaves.

Room 41 – Boyne Berries, editor Michael Farry

A Life Unanswered and other poems are © Susan Kelly

Susan Kelly is from Westport, Co Mayo. Her work has appeared in Cyphers, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Crannóg, Revival, Abridged, The London Magazine, Boyne Berries, The Weary Blues, Burning Bush 2, wordlegs.com and was short-listed for the Writing Spirit Award 2010. She was a featured reader at Over the Edge in Galway 2011, shortlisted for the New Writer of the Year 2013 and longlisted for the 2014 WOW award.

Sequence: “Motherhood” and other poems by Laura Daly

November 3rd, 2019

The Leaking Breast

Premature mother’s milk escapes my swollen breast
Unapologetically heralding the other inside.

‘You’ll never be lonely again’ the inane
distortion of the truth of never
Occupying aloneness.

Your body holds but a temporary occupier
Once released your mind will be prostrate before them
Forever.
Simultaneous ecstasy and anguish.

You will crave
The control of the cocooning womb –
Even now breached by the disruption of the leaking breast.

Washing my mother’s hair after an operation.

Bent over the under the showerhead,
Submissive as the child I was
I feel a strange feeling, knowing I too will wash the
Hair of my child growing inside me.
I occupy the position now of the in-between carer.

I lovingly smooth away suds
Under the steaming water
And wish she knew
How much in that moment that I cared.
I badger her restless nature in a vain, cyclical attempt to protect.
There is a comfort in this moment
Of vulnerability
For us both.

I will protect as she protected,
I will mind, as she has always minded,
And we will love intrinsically forever bonded, bound spiritually.

The Abortion Referendum – May 25th 2018.

She will bow to the patriarchal figurehead of the Church
and it’s grotesquely skewed morality and
Vote No.
Bitter words have passed between my mother and I –
Yet she is adamant.

‘Do you believe then that abortion should be illegal everywhere?’
‘What about all the women who will still want or need abortions if the vote does not pass?’

Silence. A superior, taciturn morality. Divorced from the reality of the human condition
And the female body.

My unborn inside me forbids me travel,
Medically,
I am ironically excluded, my adopted home holding my
Pregnant body hostage
As my maternal home does to thousands of pregnant bodies

I crave the little girl inside me.
For her future autonomy
I crave for her grandmother to recognise the nuances of female life,
Female choice, female autonomy.

But I crave in vain and look instead to my undecided father
To vote for his two absent daughters
His two granddaughters
His wife.

For the Pleasure of the Male Gaze

Have you ever seen a rose so riotous in bloom
that the inner petals outdo the outer
for the pure please of life, for reaching the sun first? –

Why should the gardener cut off the inner petals,
Harm the rose,
For the pleasure of the male gaze?

Who would look at the open fruit and then attempt to sew it up?
Who would mute and paint the vibrant colours of the butterfly
To fit with ill-fitting, fleeting trends of fancy –

Where else in this wonderful world of natural beauty
do we so utterly, subconsciously, unquestioningly exist purely for the pleasure of the male
gaze?

Our bodies no more than parenthesis encircling the vehicle for male desire.
Our minds continuously redrawn to mirror a society from which we are continuously
disempowered.

Go forth, bloom.

Chip

You called out to me in the semi-darkness on the naked street
On my way to the station
And I turned in the usual way to see if you were sneering at me,
half hoping for the friend who would return your call.
There was no one else there.

You chip away at my sense of freedom with your emboldened, unwelcome presence
Intruding into my psyche;
One of the lads.

Striking that you probably could barely make out my form
Detail still smothered by weakening night
Other you sensed instinctively and that yearning to assert ignited.
Interesting no one there to witness or applaud, habit.

My sense of caution heightened, exactly as you wanted
The power of my early morning commute marginally diminished
By wariness

Chip away with stares
Chip away with an unwanted brush against us
Chip away with sending pictures to your friends
Chip away with shouting ‘compliments’ at us
Chip away with beeping your horn while we are running
Chip away by asserting dominance in the home
Chip away by doing less in the home
Chip away by paying us less
Chip away by using pregnancy as subtle way to hold us back in our careers
Chip away by idealising unrealistic body types

Be sure not to recognise yourself here,
be sure to demonise me,
Be sure not to admit to the greatest oppression of our age,
Easier to label me, than see what we see.

Untitled

We force meaning on sadness and madness
to make it
bearable

We assign reason to the deep cracks in our souls
Building paper bridges over chasms on which to travel with fragile dreams.

To give the pulsing wound a rudimentary suture
And watch it scar ruefully

But happiness needs no storyline
It sits like a perfect, unexpected, dewy morning mist on a field
Being
Shrouding
Crystallising what it touches

Soon to vanish with the rising sun –

Sequence: “Motherhood” and other poems are © Laura Daly

Laura Daly is a poet, writer and teacher born and raised in Dublin, now living in Amsterdam with her husband and daughter. She holds a BA in English Literature, an MA in Gender and Writing and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from University College Dublin. She also received her MEd in Leadership and Management in Education from Trinity College Dublin. Her passion is feminism and exploring and making visible the female experience through her writing. She is working towards her first collection of poetry as well as a feminist non-fiction book for teenage girls titled Welcome to the Desert of the Real.

“Edinburgh Castle” and other poems by Eva O’Connor

October 27th, 2019

I.

Edinburgh Castle

I proposition you
I splat my soul onto cobble stones
While you have a fag
You smell the same
Of sweat
and the burnt dust from shite parcans expertly rigged

You smell the same
But everything is different
Your edges are rougher ,
You are thinner now
Your eyes sparkle less than I remember

I know you broke your collar bone
I snatch glances
But there are no protruding bones

Your hands are red raw
They tell-tale betray you
your skin’s not good
I want to undress you
To heal you with kisses

You study the cobbles
perhaps you can see the vague outline of my soul
Like the coastline of a small country
bathed in the blue light of the castle

I proposition you
I tell you plainly
That there are others
But it is you.
That a year on
The cigarette burn you left on the white of my inside arm
Simply
will not fade

I want to hear you laugh
I want you to split me open with your smile
I could dance for you, I think
But not on these cobbles stones
Not in these shoes
Suddenly I am tired

as I speak I remind myself
Words are my weapons
My allies
I will bend and buckle them
Til you relent and hold me

But once they are borne into air
They do no float as I have planned

You inhale and meet my eye
You squint at me like I have slighted you
I think about how my vomit would look
A light layer of floating bits
Like packet soup
Spilled atop my soul
there on the cobbles

You drop my gaze again
Like I am a game that bores you now
You say something about keeping your hands in your pocket.

You finish your cigarette
and toss the butt between two cobbles
I watch it glow a terrific orange before it dies
A tiny amber star
Beside the blackness of my soul

II.

I left beers in the fridge.
Two bottles of overpriced Beck’s from a stuffy corner shop, the one with the basket leathery apples by the till.

I hoped when you sipped from the hard green glass, you’d think of me and smile.

I left a pair of hoops on your bedside table, cheap ones from Penny’s, gold come greenish bronze.

I hoped you’d mistake them for expensive, a family heirloom,
And post them back with a note and your initial.
Or keep them in a secret drawer til next time.

I left a purple charger with an Eva sticker on the plug.
I hoped you’d find it, wind it up and wonder about me.
Marvel at my Hansel and Gretel trail on your home and in your heart.

I left a tiny piece of my soul I think. Triangular and glistening like a shard of glass.
It slipped down the gap between the wall and the luxury mattress I was using you for.

III.

I walk past your house
On Brick Lane
And tears spring up
Behind my eyes

You are long gone
But I’m sure I glimpse you
In the window
In those tracksuits bottoms I bought for you (soft and jaded and green) and a t-shirt with a loose neck.
I can nearly taste the Sunday sweat of you
Salty and warm
Crippled with come down

I remember that time I sat on your doorstep
crumpled and crying
an inflatable toy pierced with sadness,
i called your name through the letterbox,
Til i was hoarse,
Til the lad from tattoo shop on the corner offered me a green tea

Your street is thick with market now
Packed with the same over priced vintage junk
And white trainered tourists

We used to watch them from your sitting room
Of a Sunday
You
Smoking on the window sill
Crippled with come down.
Me draped across you
Smug in the haven of your half love

IV.

I hear you work in channel 4 now
the drama department.
congratulations.

One day i will sit opposite you
And sell you my ideas

I will pitch so hard
I will floor you with my composure
my unwavering conviction
my staggering original idea

My proposal to you
Is this

Be kinder
To future loves

V. I had a dream your mum kissed me on the cheek
And whispered in my ear
You cannot save a drowning person
if they already belong to the ocean floor.

And the warmth of her face
Was like a sea of calm
Against mine
Her skin
The same crepe paper feel
As yours

Eva O’Connor is a writer and performer from Ogonnelloe, Co. Clare She has written for stage, screen and radio. Her plays in include My Name is Saoirse, Overshadowed, Maz and Bricks, and MUSTARD (winner of Fringe First Award 2019). Her short story Midnight Sandwich was aired on BBC Radio 4.

“Alone on the Blackstock Road” and other poems by Aine McAllister

October 23rd, 2019

Alone on The Blackstock Road

I buy a yellow armchair
and a stone grey bookcase, carry books
from the attic in Ireland, choose titles
I think speak something of me.

I sit at the table and watch
buses stop outside and strangers look,
my hackles rise, I lift a shoulder
and twist my back to them.

I turn to write another
note to self and you: Finally
you came; distant as a far moon,
you didn’t look at my books.

But, close in the dark I opened
the book about words. You lit the page
with a candle’s light and I read
how to be ‘Alone’.

Aqui me pinté yo

I live alone above a Japanese take away,
the hallway smells like last night’s dinner.

I put flowers on the bookshelf,
beside the silhouette of a woman

pulling up her stockings. I stick
a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo to the fridge,

with a list of small domestic items
I need to make a house a home.

In my bedroom bits of clothing spill
from suitcases I’d like to give away.

Rain on Rathlin Island

The rain that salves,
that smoothes the fibres
of a frayed heart,

the rain that draws you into warmth
like the harbour
of your grandmother’s arms

or her bed at midday in childhood;
blanket cocoon.
That was the rain that day. Kind rain.

We walked to the other side of the Island
past yellow iris, rushes and the lough
to a family of mottled seals,

at the inlet at Ushet.
I planted my feet on the rocks
stood legs apart and gave myself back

my name, called it into the rain bringer.
I sent my name
where the Atlantic swirls up in the Irish Sea.

Murlough Bay

Rue lighthouse on Rathlin casts gold light;
a thurible swings the Sea of Moyle.

Western Isles of Scotland rise;
peaks in incense smoke.

Stones are lichen marked;
mushroom, terracotta, olive green.

Nettles spring, heathers crop, harebells drop,
thistles brighten violet to white,

they wisp their creamy beards to breeze,
to bird song, to a man’s voice from rocks above.

Sycamore’s arms reach,
gather honeysuckle in.

A six spotted burnet rests lace wings;
black, red, on stem green.

Bees move in blackberry flowers,
open, pink in bloom.

A daddy-longlegs floats,
trampolines the ferny verge.

The old mine in the mountain opens low;
dank – heavy drops fall slow.

The black lump rises fast – gut to throat,
a skim of coal is hard pressed in soft palm.

The long slow beat of a sea bird
brings blue expanse to basalt cliffs.

Purple waters rock and sway,
back again to Murlough Bay.

The Moon

for Christos

I thought the moon was a man,
slow hurtling
into the distance of a different universe.

I thought I was the earth,
the tide, the wolf;
the woman he turned his face from.

I thought the earth was dark, barren,
the tide, a witless,
loyal fool.

In my mind’s eye
I saw the wolf, dull-eyed and bent,
no light to cast her shadow into.

But you taught me the moon.
The moon, the moon, look at the moon,
it is a waxing crescent.

She is orange in the sky tonight,
low and full over Red Bay
and the world is pregnant with her promise.

Aine McAllister is a poet from the Glens of Antrim, who works as a Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL IOE. She is currently completing an MA Poetry at Queens University. Her work is published in journals and she is working towards her first collection. She is interested in exploring how poetry gives voice and using dialogue as a tool for writing and for facilitating writing.

“Needlepoint” and other poems by Erin Vance

October 18th, 2019


Hiraeth 

In the turpentine afternoon
I wanted to beat my wings— hollow

so       hollow.
  
And in the rectal evening  I wanted to be a hummingbird.
A hum   
    m      
     ing
        bird.

In the frost-swept night 
I wished you a Lamb.

Soft like cotton balls and languid 
                              with musk.

Turn me into a violent fresco,      Lamb,
and touch me like hot bricks

in the wet dawn.

I wanted to be a leaf lodged in amber.
               — — An insulin needle.
  
And at the musk-soaked August’s end 
I wanted to be hollow
                    t r a n s l u c e n        t
a hum
    mingbird 

with — — insulin — — needle— — 
                legs
lodged in amber.

My hollow wings snap
                   ping 
In your lamb’s mouth,
                  turn me into a violet fresco,           Lamb, 
                      
                    touch me like 
                       hot 
                     bricks.

Confession

After Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, photographers of The Cottingley Fairies

When Frances followed the little thing
into the shallow beck
I stayed back, watching her stockings
sag in the water, flapping at her ankles
like bloated second skins.

Frances batted her eyelashes
and the imp trusted her.
Confession: I wished to catch it
and place it in a box
like a little pet in a spider-silk dress,
pull it out at parties to flutter and tease
and spit.

When Frances giggled as its wings
tickled her rosebud cheek—
I confess; I wanted to hold
its gossamer body in my palm,
knowing that I could practically crush it
with my breath.

The waters of the beck leaked into my shoe
the cold water like tiny, elfin teeth
biting my toes. A gasp and— oh!
the thing is dead.
caught under Frances’ fat palm;
she slipped on a patch of moss like an oil slick.

The photos may be fake, but the fairies—
They were real.

Weren’t they, Frances?

Sister, Speak

I wonder where you are
where our home is
now that the skeletons of our earliness
belong to the birds

I wonder if the ground where we placed you
is infected with your dreaming

I sit in your closet
empty now, but the ghosts of your
dresses hang around me
like rainbows dripping lifeless from the gallows

I used to lay in your bed
wanted to feel everything you’d touched
for our skin cells to feed the same microorganisms

I’d lay in the dirt and imagine I was you
but when ants started up my neck I couldn’t help
but twitch awake and run back inside

Mirrors

Mother, can I have the velvet box of milk teeth
that you keep in your nightstand?
Every night I dream my teeth are falling out.
I think they miss me.

Mother, what is the combination to my middle school locker?
I rescued a bird fourteen years ago
and hid it with my gym clothes
I think it’s getting hungry.

Mother, can you braid my hair one last time before I cut it off?
Will you keep a lock of it for a day
when I am not picking up my phone
and you have bad news?

Mother, will you help me down?
This tree is much taller than I expected and this branch
is much thinner and I am much older
than I’d planned.

Mother, will you remind me
to wash between my toes and to take my glasses off
before I fall asleep
even when you don’t remember
who I am?

Needlepoint

When we were young,
Still slippery and mosslike,
Our father embroidered sparrows
Onto the backs of our necks
He held the whiskey bottle in his free hand
And like a mean waterfall the
Blue threads cut through our skin.

For our tenth birthday
Our father bought us stallions,
And after an afternoon of riding,
He added to the hieroglyphs on our necks;
Pomegranates that made our throats
Look like bloody gaps with yellow teeth.

We were fourteen when we stopped dreaming
One morning we woke up together
Our minds empty, our hands steady,
And we clutched the bone-handles of our
Hairbrushes, counting to one hundred
In each others’ hair
Careful not to pull a single stitch.

We worked like machinery and every five years
Father took the needle and we took turns sitting
At the oak table while he stitched
His memories into our skins.

Hatching

For Stacey Walyuchow

When I was six years old,
I played Odette in a Kindergarten production
of swan lake.

My movements were decidedly more
like that of a magpie
and my understudy was called in

after I broke my ankle tripping
over a gold watch.
I cried and watched the birds outside my room.

They played and threw acorns
danced and drew shapes in the dirt
I opened the window and called to them

in my best outside voice.
One by one they jumped onto the sill
and teetered on the threshold

of my world and theirs, their heads
cocked their eyes shifting their feet
twitching until they jumped hopped skipped

into my bed.

Erin Emily Ann Vance holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary and studies Irish Folklore and Ethnology at University College Dublin. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Sorceress Who Left too Soon: Poems After Remedios Varo (Coven Editions) and Unsuitable (APEP Publications). Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, EVENT Magazine, Augur Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, and more. Her first novel, Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers will be published in Fall 2019 by Stonehouse Gothic.

Learn more at erinvance.ca.

Erin’s social profiles

website www.erinvance.ca
@erinemilyann

Category: A Sunday Morning Poet

Teanga le Teanga

Sea

Feather quill

SONGBIRDS

Mná na hÉireann

Being in love at fifty

My Menopausal Womb

The Day My Vagina Spoke To Me

Awaken

Untitled

Lost Souls of Tuam

Shreds of Colour

Black

Red

White

Blue

Cinderella Tráth

Mo hata

Jack Hall

The Bittersweet

Skinny Jeans

A Life Unanswered

Lapsing

Room 41

The Leaking Breast

Washing my mother’s hair after an operation.

The Abortion Referendum – May 25th 2018.

For the Pleasure of the Male Gaze

Chip

Untitled

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

I had a dream your mum kissed me on the cheek And whispered in my ear You cannot save a drowning person if they already belong to the ocean floor.

Alone on The Blackstock Road

Aqui me pinté yo

Rain on Rathlin Island

Murlough Bay

The Moon

Confession

Sister, Speak

Mirrors

Needlepoint

Hatching

Erin’s social profiles

I had a dream your mum kissed me on the cheek
And whispered in my ear
You cannot save a drowning person
if they already belong to the ocean floor.