Category: A Sunday Morning Poet

“Swimming” and other poems by Eimear Bourke

June 30th, 2019

Cerebral Sorbet

I’d like to take my brain out

Just for a day.
And put it on ice
Cerebral sorbet

A chance to cool down and let these thoughts melt away

A hollow cranium could be lots of fun
My skull drying out while I play in the sun

I’d go to the beach and get salt on my skin
Under the waves,
With the fishes I’d swim

Deeper and deeper
To dark blue I would dive
Where ringing in my ears would signal
I’m alive

I’ll come back of course.
There’s no other way

A brainless lawyer in the sea cannot stay.

Sand ‘tween my toes, I’d walk to the shore
Encephalon recharged
Bad thoughts no more

Attempts to summarize nine years in a page

First, there were bubble-gum candy shoes and a low-slung ponytail
You. Standing in the hallway of a dorm filled with 2011 college girl energy.
Which you were lacking.
Half nervous. Half apathetic.

I had my own reasons for coming out to say hi.
In bed with a beautiful boy. But wanting any excuse to get away.

Unhurriedly yet firmly a friendship formed.
Small gestures like doing one another’s dishes. Chatting over popcorn and MTV.
Invariably leading to hangovers, and four friends in a single-bed.

Time trundles on.
Priorities and personalities change.
New sexualities and new focuses are found.
There are drugs, lights and endless amounts of paperwork and studying.

Sometime mid-2013 (I think); we come together on a peeling couch
In a friend’s apartment on Cork Street
And after that nothing is quite the same.
Not wanting the sex. Not wanting you.
Wanting to hurt another person. In a far off place.

But alea iacta est
The death knell of one form of friendship
And the beginning of a new era.
The “Complicated, What’s Going on Years?”
I wouldn’t take them back.

Like a drawstring purse. I hold them close to my person.
Even still.

Memories of phone calls that lasted ‘til the early hours of the morning.
I’m a lawyer now. And you’re in pilot school in Spain.
It’s 2016 but we’re watching a 2003 Louis Theroux documentary over Skype.
In the laptop screen glow and the breath in my earphones, I could tell you anything.
But I can’t. There is so much not said.
But only sometimes.
Other times there is nothing there. We’re just watching neo-Nazi children play guitars at 4am.

Every time you’re home we’re holding hands beneath bedsheets.
Is this normal?
I feel like I’m losing my mind. And losing all sense of what our friendship once was.
And talking to you is like talking to a wall.
So in 2017 I pick freedom. After that, I don’t talk to you at all.

Until 2019. When things aren’t quite so raw.
When we meet for a formal coffee I can still see that nervous teenager in your eyes
What do you see when you see me?

Cycling to Howth in Autumn

Spokes spinning
faster than our lazy legs are pedal
pressing

Out of time

Adults on bikes
Cycling to the past

The sun’s reflecting off your backlight
I’d follow you anywhere
Not just to the beach

An Explanation

You’d imagine there’d have been a broken plate,
—I’m wracking my mind—
But in the rubble of six years, there’s not one household item.

I can think of whispered furies,
On cobblestoned streets in Temple Bar.
Or even drunken outbursts,
And shrieks —like wounded kittens screaming—
For everyone to hear.

But like there’s no home,
There’s no friend to turn to.
There’s no advice you can ask for,
Not when you love in a box.
(You can scream but no one can hear it)

II.

I used to dream –and fearfully I’ll add
–Why not be honest?
That one day it would be real.
I don’t know how it would have happened.
Or what you would have done.
It probably wouldn’t have been like in the movies,
Where you’d grab my hand and say she’s the one.

A quieter victory I guess.
An L’Oreal moment.
Where you’d turn and say she’s worth it.
If even just to me at first.

III.

What happens when there’s nothing left?
I’ve always watched the waves flee to sea.
As a young girl, I didn’t believe in reconciliation or salvaging.
But the waves that go come back.
Still —they don’t break the same.

Swimming

And so from the heights of a top bunk
We plunged
Into the wet depths of a deep blue sea

As children, we couldn’t have understood that no lifeboats would come
That one would swim ashore, while the other treaded water endlessly
Incapable of forgetting the coloured fish and dizzying euphoric rush of salt on wet skin

Mermaids they were
Half-legged and half other that no one else could understand

Yet you walked ashore and resigned me to a life as a whale

Coming back on occasional twilight eves
To swim with me in the moonlight
To dance under the waves

Water pounding against our eardrums
Eyes flooding with burning confusion
And yet it’s calm

DRUM DRUM DRUM
and what is that whoosh and crash
The rushing promise of you coming home —

It’s gone forever.

You crash upon that shore
Green blue turns to white
And I sing this lonely whale song

Having become a woman you can’t possibly understand.

So I wait.

To be harpooned,
Or to drown, to die.

Swimming and other poems are © Eimear Bourke

Eimear Bourke is a 27-year-old Irish lawyer who has always been interested in poetry and writing. Born in Dublin and raised in Navan, Co. Meath, she graduated from Maynooth University in 2013 with a degree in Law and English. Her writing focuses on interpersonal relationships and Irish seascapes. She is inspired by Yrsa Daley-Ward and Rita Ann Higgins.

“Queen Medb Speaks to the Shy Poet” and other poems by Trish Bennett

June 23rd, 2019

Connemara Rocks

You held me with champagne
in a Galway crystal glass.
The light fizzed through its facets,
and danced a sparkling ring.
‘No dawter of mine’ll be on time,
make him wait’ you said.
Your brother; our driver,
obeyed.

We parked at the church,
set into the mouth of a bad turn.
The blessed virgin — mounted on granite,
stood guard outside.
Celtic crosses scattered
on the grave hill behind.
To the side, a stream flowed
under the stone-bridged road,

feeding the lake in front,
from where two swans watched
you open the door,
and hold my hand
to support my high,
heeled step.
You carried the weight of my frock,
the countryman’s Gok Wan.

I held tight to my autumn bouquet
as we strolled into that place,
built on unyielding rock
—a slope to its aisle.
‘The Coolin’ began.
My Bridesmaid led the march,
you slipped your arm in mine,
laughed, as you led me on.

Flower girls ran in a fizz to grab hold,
and tow us up that hill,
to the green marbled altar.
You smiled,
as you sacrificed me there,
to face the music
— half-cut.

Publication Credits
An earlier version, entitled Galway Crystal, Shortlisted, North West Words / Donegal Creameries Poetry Award 2017. Published in North West Words Magazine, 2018. Editors, Nick Griffiths, Deirdre Hines and Deirdre McClay.

Slices

You caught me today, at the turn
of that tight hill, before home.

When the sun dissected the trees,
a slice of the past shone;

that summer’s day
in our shop,

your suet-softened hands
held the knife,

as you dissected a liver
to show me fluke

‘Keep a tight grip‘, you said,
so it won’t slip as you slice.

You carved the disease out,
diced the rest for cats.

‘I could be a surgeon in another life’, you remarked
and we laughed,

before the memory fades,
replaced by the last sigh from your lungs,

as the grip tightens
around my heart.

Publication Credits
Published, Issue 1, Smithereens 2018 Editor Kenneth Keating.

Wisps

In the half light
betwixt day and night,
A glimmer whispers
by the edge of my eye.
Tendrils of a moment,
caught
between the suns last rays,
and the moonlit sky.

In the half light,
they appear.
Goosebumps salute the past.
Tense.
Yet, no deceit lies
in those prickly scents,
mellow roses,
wisps from a long-dead pipe,
envelop the heir,
to their circle of life.

Publication Credits
This poem was previously published in A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine, Female Voices in Ireland, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

Rituals

I stand in the corridor of power
and face the congregation.

The sun
illuminates the island altar.

Solid walls echo the sizzle of pans,
steaming hymns.

Often, my chant — not quite Gregorian,
catching the custard on the cusp of a curdle.

We’ll leave soon.
I will miss this chapel of a kitchen,

the soul of a borrowed place,
we never called ‘home’.

Our brown boxes,
taped to escape,

surround the naked dresser
in scribbled rows.

I plant my feet firmly,
whisk in hand,

seize a tight grip on the bowl.
The final liturgy begins.

Publication Credits
This poem was previously published in A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine Female Voices in Ireland, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

The Day I Became a Royalist

The memory of that day’s still sweet,
the way the sun filtered through hedges
beginning to explode
with blooms of hawthorn and chestnut;
the coconut trace that floated up
from yellow bubbled whin;
the excited buzz from her fans,
humming as I set to work.

Deaf as beetles they were,
yet they danced their tales,
while their friends watched
and felt the vibrations.
I longed to dance too,
but my rebel feet refused.

I looked the part.
In fact, I was smoking,
with all the right gear to meet a Queen.
No high fashion, fascinators, stilettos or frocks,
demure — in loose white,
a veil over my face,
and gloves.

The roar arose from the crowd.
Herself was close.
Royal guards drew lances,
made charges as if to say,
‘Your kind’s not welcome here’.
I worked on — ignored the line,
like my Father before,
when I was a child.

When her Highness appeared in my frame of view,
maybe it was the alien look of her dress,
poured out in layers like dark chocolate,
or maybe it was her long legs,
that could do with a rub of the razor,
that made her look huge.
She walked that confident walk of a girl at the top.
Her retinue fussed, had respect.
While her signature scent was strong,
they remained happy, loyal
content.

My senses captured it all
in a way no camera could;
that joy as I watched them dance and hum,
the chinook noise from drones,
the scent of our land collected, condensed,
mind-stamped into my memory cells,
that brought me home to childhood days
when my brother and I dug sections of gold
on our Fathers return.

The memory’s still sweet of that day
when I turned,
on meeting the Queen
of Apis Mellifera Mellifera,
my black honey bees.

Publication Credits
BBC Radio Ulster Time of Our Lives, Jan 2019.
The Leitrim Guardian 2019, Nov 2018, Editor Bláithín Gallagher.
Highly Commended, Bailieborough Poetry Prize, 2018.

Queen Medb Speaks to the Shy Poet.

In my time,
the bardic kind commanded the rath of royalty.
For fear of their sting,
we gave them everything.
They ‘liked’ me,
shared my scéal*,
I was Eireann’s Kardashian Medb.

The monks’ day dawned
and Kings were drawn to the power of the quill.
The page had turned.
The Bardic way faded like old ink.

Clerics came,
they scripted my tale in “post truth”.
Two thousand years have passed,
yet pilgrims still climb Knocknarea with a stone for my cairn
wondering whether I lie there, or at Rathcroughan, my home.

II.

Twenty first century banfhile**,
cooking, cleaning, rearing young.
You hold back your words for fear of their power,
twitter as you peer into your faceless world.

Grasp the quill in your hand banfhile**
but feel that bard in your blood,
share your words aloud.
Let the tale prevail,
yet script your celtic truth,
or sit there doing nothing,
and become a relic too.
.

*Scéal = story.
**Banfhile = poetess.

Publication Credits
An earlier version of this poem was previously published in ‘A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine, Female Voices in Ireland’, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

Trish Bennett hails from County Leitrim. She’s got the breeze of Thur (the mountain, not the God) in her blood. She crossed the border to study over twenty years ago and was charmed into staying by a Belfast biker. They have settled themselves into a small cabin near the lakeshore in Fermanagh, and try to keep the noise down in their bee-loud glade. Bennett writes about the shenanigans of her family and other creatures. Sometimes she rants. She was a finalist in seven poetry competitions in the past two years, including North West Words, The Percy French, Bailieborough, and The Bangor Literary Journal, and has won The Leitrim Guardian Literary Award for poetry twice. Bennett is a Professional Member of the Irish Writers Centre.

Twitter: @baabennett Facebook: trishbennettwriter Blog: Bennett’s Babblings

“The Many Splintered Night” and other poems by Aishling Alana Heffernan

May 26th, 2019

The Many Splintered Night

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad,
wakens the dire horror of an unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire
of focussed restraint.
To dance under the moonlight in the eyes of the lights that pound into my head,
with the horror of a dancers aching bloodied feet,
the ache in a temple which builds, with quaking stranded legs,
It’s time to meet—
the one.

On the night watch stand, where the pendulum swings
into the land where the kings head swings, my destined king,
down, down into the bloodied dancers path in the mud strewn grass,
his head spins into the shining glass cut meadow
King
King
KING — without a head, but still
crammed into his crown.
—a sane mind is a very over-estimated thing.

When thought splinters into the cosmos,
minds shatter like a thousand splintered feelings captured in the grip of an opium haze
in the laze-y summer night
of a thousand splintered nights–
thought splinters into the cosmos of minds buzzing like hive-bees outside of the hive
-mind

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad
wakens the dire horror of unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire of unfocussed
restraint
restraint, restrain it—the feathered spectrum of desire that seeps into the many splintered night.

How I loved the headless king,
How he sent me into the many splintered night.

Morning’s Good Morning

I open tender, dust encrusted eyes,
to morning’s good morning,
—fresh sunrise,
turn feverish cheek into
soft, soft cotton dreams,
even as they run far far from me.

Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
When the morning sun rises,
from the freshwater sea?
Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
Now your dreams are setting you free?

Kaleidoscope

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him—
not what it meant or where we had been
I wanted to feel the colour inside him
unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

He’ll wander my mind and settle in my skin,
my pores will open to let the colours in,
breathe him in.

I know what he wants—
I can’t give it to him.
But still this Kaleidoscope draws me in —

And I see forests, a darkness that breathes, swirling broken oaken leaves falling onto a ground
filled with violets, touched by the moon in this room as rain draws me back to Earth.

Was it that much of a sin?
To want to taste his skin, and let
the colours in?

Even as they dragged me to his world,
and I bent down to drink,
the colours stopped my will to think.

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
Settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him,
Not what it meant or where we had been,
I wanted to feel the colour inside him,
Unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

Rag Doll

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside.
Locked and cross-hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain.
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll.
And from your mouth words like drops of infected blood creep into my skin and etch from my
pores the sunlight so recently sucked in,
From me you leach the life you crossed over and hid behind the painted veil of a painted face of
a painted life in a painted world,
Until your lies spin lies and worlds of their own, and your words lose even the ring of truth of
the suffering that once bound you to an earthly sphere,
And there in the madness of the clouds above, in the realm of the small and dead Gods, is where
your eyes see me, Rag Doll.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates,
They pay homage to the world left behind by the world left behind and the words of dead priests
still shuddering in their graves from the sins that mark the ineffable continuity of the energy of us *-
there is no hate from me to you,
The hate you hold for yourself is the hate of a civil war, tragic and born not of want but of a rising
tidal wave of resentment and fear and a driving blind force.
I was born when your child was not. Me, the fatherless one, gained the love of your father.
From me words you banished spill, not like drops of infected blood, but like names. Names bring
power, I name you, scarred one, weaved one, embroidered one, Rag Doll who from the corners of
my nightmares rises in the depths of my mind and teaches me again and again the meaning of
fear and love that is not love but bound to the conditions of a loveless bleak world in which you
are the rag doll and the needle both. The creation of pain and the creator of pain and the weaver
of lies and scorn.
Weave me, spin me, crosshatch and dress me. Strip the sunlight from my veins and from my
breathing skin, infect me with words so often told to yourself and still I will fight.
In and out the needle stitches you rag doll, kept in the past of a past of a past we never forget.
We never forget.
Stare at me.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside
locked and cross hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll,
even as you pull the sunlight from my skin–
I stand and sing to the heavens you no longer see through the cold, walled slates of your eyes.

Skin Covered Moon

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys,
forcing into unbending skin,
the desperation of their need to dominate,
and open-
Bleed, unbending skin, under the moonlit songs,
of long forgotten kin.

The sky is wakening,
it’s eyes open wide,
earth is dancing with its mother tide-
the songs we sing as the mortals underneath
(the steel bled unbending moon)
in our open wounded skin
fall notes of the orchestras
like stitches to a disease
they are the songs of a people
wandering the waste heat of the universe cold in crystalline beauty—
The heat of the blood pumping through our veins
As the clitoris touches the head of the universe of man
Key to Key
Forcing unbending skin—
Are we already forgotten?
Shall we etch pain and match scratches, scars to scars,
as the earth trembles and tears fall from the stars
up from Earth hollow are the cries
of the steel bled keys
The steel bled keys.

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys
sing to the ones who’s bodies were never meant to bleed
and yet the songs of their people
mirror march to home
the songs of the forgotten
—the ones who felt alone
as they watch the moon
skin covered and open
through skin veiled eyes.

Aishling Alana likes to think of herself as the embodiment of organised chaos. In her short(ish) life, she has overcome progressive pain diseases, has met ex-prisoners of death row, interviewed Ted X speakers and gained a Masters in Philosophy of the Arts. She loves bouldering and the sea, and can often be found in the thinking ‘woman’ pose while learning how to code. Having been born in Ireland at the brink of an intense culture shift, her writing takes in fantastical elements of sexuality, religion and identity.

“Homage To Kinsale” and other poems by Linda Ibbotson

May 26th, 2019

In the Absence of Boundaries –

The Third Movement

A note from the other side of silence
hangs in mid-air blue.
Undefined, intangible, unchartered,
neither lengthening nor shortening
or pulled by gravity’s umbilical chord.
I wonder if the wind will carry it in her wings,
perhaps into another realm?
Is it transcending, tentatively balanced on the sacred,
votive, perhaps coiling around a prayer wheel
or roaming the streets of Manhattan
to dance with Ksenia in various shades of black and white?

It has no place for concealment, no obstacle to circumvent.
Is it an apparition on centre stage with no curator,
a muted tone on a Chagall,
lowering its pitch to a finely tuned line of cerulean blue
or does it linger in an atelier in Antibes
where, ascending from a counterpoint
it improvises with the light?
It does not hide in the mouth of frescoes
limed with cardinal red where it cannot speak of freedom
or in the narrow place where it cannot stretch
and where the light does not enter.

Sometimes, it weighs as heavy as a Caravaggio,
a magnum opus as dark as a requiem’s crown of thorns,
a dying cadence longing to flee from a penitentiary stave
to lightly play between the shadow and shadowless
in your visionary third eye, the eye between eyes
where those who listen, see,
and those who see, listen.

In the Absence of Boundaries—
The Third Movement

Was published in California Quarterly Volume 42 No. 3 September 2016 (Editor, Jeanne Wagner, President – John Forrest Harrell)
Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire. Invited to submit by Editor Helene Cardona

The Paris Sketchbook –

Pastiche
Paris opened as a book under my skin.
‘A Moveable Feast’ Hemingway once said.
There is no war under my skin,
only art that sometimes speaks of war.
In Eglise Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre the first six notes
of Bach’s Marcello ‘Adagio’ chime with Notre Dame.
A note cannot play without the air
and the air was filled with hibiscus.
Paris is a panacea, my alter ego blossoming
as sweet as Spring on Sunday’s stroll
in Jardin du Luxembourg, with Antonia.
Along the Seine, unblemished bathers
in July’s La Plage, promenade next to drowsy
heat of the afternoon; right and left bank booksellers
and posters of Le Chat Noir.
Pont Neuf, a synapse, lay between.

I watched the way the light fell
and I fell into myself
and it felt good and it felt strong.
I watched sober shadows from second story windows
at La Palette etched into lithographs
at Musée d’Orsay, in the same room
as Madamoiselle Chanel’s nonchalant eyes,
half sleeping, half remembering
the protagonists at Rue de Seine
more than a generation ago.

I wandered into antiquity, a mileu of veined alleyways
leaning into the bow of Île Saint-Louis.
I searched for lost time; a la recherché du temps perdu,
with Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre,
unconscious Belle Époque minds unleashed
along with expressos and coq au vin at Café de Flore.

I turned away from the rifled gendarmes and unrest,
opened my book and began to sketch.

The Paris Sketchbook—
Pastiche
Published in Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire, Invited by Editor Helene Cardona

The Paris Sketchbook—

The Art of Seeing

There is a place
I sit and sketch the still shade
before the light fades
in and out of restless dusk.

There is a place
where broken shadows rendezvous with La Boheme
and Chopin’s Étude in C minor.
Falling as arpeggios,
weightless snow weighed heavily on cold bones of Paris,
impermanence melted white on soundless white
audible only at the edge of silence.

At Place de la Concorde,
Cleopatra’s needle stitches clouds,
an easterly wind severs flesh and pleached limes,
paper thin leaves shudder into chaos,
to bind winter wounds the colour of blood.

I sketch in grey graphite, the colour of stone
feel the chill of a revolution in my bones.

At Notre-Dame,
knarled gargoyles gather rain and Gregorian chants,
understand and mis-understand
the things that were, things that are
and l’ave nir, things to come.

It is cold at Père Lachaise as I watch the city of light tremble
and I wonder, would we see more clearly in the dark?

The Paris Sketchbook—
The Art of Seeing
Published in Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire. Invited by Editor Helene Cardona

A Celtic Legacy

Rising from Celtic mists,
calloused white boned fingers
on goatskin
unravel lyrical etchings
on ancient stone
that weeps beneath wounds
swathed in redolent moss
and pink veined thrift.

Stone that cleaves to breath
from Uilleann pipes
shaped to spear the horizon
of Atlantic blue,
carrageen and crab.
Flint and turf furrow
Skellig spines
that once housed the faithful
and guillemots.

Ribs of currachs
kneel before
Ulysees and crosses
scoured by silent storms as
ancestral skin stretched
to beckon retreating tides.

Anchored between the sacred
and calloused white boned fingers
the Book of Kells
lay bleeding.

A Celtic Legacy
Published in The Enchanting Verses Literary Review Issue XX 2014 Editor-in-Chief Sonnet Mondal and Guest Editor Helene Cardona
Eastern World – Editor-in-chief Asror Allayarov
‘A Celtic Legacy’ in addition was read on radio in France and Ireland, performed at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne

Beat of the Bodhran

I hear your hands.
A benediction of skin to skin,
a mantra of ancient bone
rising above celestial scars
and swan sons of Lir.

I hear your hands
beneath the solstice;
acoustics ascending
from wings of sorrow
as Tara’s breath exhales,
lifting her emerald veil,
meadowsweet and whitethorn
woven to crown the halos of pilgrims.

In the distance,
shadows awaken
and dance with eyes
that speak of legends.
Drifting,
in the half light of an eclipse
time falls like snow
on Sliabh Luachra,
cold flesh bound
in sacred stone
as Danu’s limbs
coil around the limbs
of the immortal.

I hear your hands
In the heartbeat of ravens,
echoing in the womb
of the Holy Well
and the gentle whispers
of the wind that
cradle a lament.

I imagine laughter,
binding the wounds of heroes
turning blood into
petals of scarlet flax
as if fragility
becomes fertile.
On the street of the stone ringfort
I see streams of colour
in a blind pipers eyes.
Through each scarred hue
a solitary reed softly sings.
Behind, a damselfly
opens its wings
to catch the colour
before it too
bows its head in prayer.

I hear your hands
as they slip between Atlantic blue,
each wave knowing its birth.
In time and out of time
the restless salt breeze
flies with wild geese.
Somewhere,
in the rhythm of soft rain,
each drop remembers.

I hear your hands
in the flute song of the egret.
as Erin kneels before the ephemeral,
the sanctuary
of the known and the unknown,
her mossy gown
unfolding half forgotten myths.

I hear your hands,
a heartbeat
on an incandescent moon of skin,
a rhythm
in the wintered hands of a scythe,
in the footfall of red deer,
and in the light of the eternal.

And as I watch Celtic mists rise
above ancient stone,
I feel both a longing
and a belonging
to this land, this people, these words
that linger as a mantra,
in the warmth of solace
beneath the silent boundary
of my skin.

Beat of the Bodhran
Published in Asian Signature 30/01/2016

Homage to Kinsale

As nights obsidian curtain lifted,
the skylark heralds the dawn chorus
in my demesne of duck egg blue.
From my balcony,
a mirage of matchstick masts
navigate the thirsty mouth of the harbour,
and my skin drinks it all in.
Sometimes, when I bury myself, in myself.
never quite reaching the point when thinking stops,
I unlatch the door, drink tea, and savour wild berry tart
at Poets Corner,
or stroll to the Spaniard
where the swans dance to Francesca’s mandolin,
and in my solitude I feel quietly content.
I look at life in black and white at The Gallery,
buy a chiffon scarf from Stone Mad,
peacock feathers with hand stitched beads
and fly it like a kite on the beach.
After sundown you’ll find me in The Black Pig
sipping a glass of red,
satisfied with the feeling that finally,
I have arrived.

Homage to Kinsale
Published in Irish Examiner 27/10/2015, Iodine Spring/Summer Issue XVI 2015 Editor- Jonathan K. Rice, Eastern World- Editor Asror Allayarov, Douglas Post Issue 1216 w/e 30/04/2016, Live Encounters December 2016 Editor- Mark Ulyseas

Linda Kinsale Linda Ibbotson was born in Sheffield, England, lived in Switzerland and Germany and travelled extensively before finally settling in County Cork, S. Ireland in 1995. A poet, artist and photographer her work has been published in various international journals including Levure Litteraire, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Iodine, Irish Examiner, Asian Signature, Live Encounters, Fekt and California Quarterly. Linda was also invited to read at the Abroad Writers Conference, Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, Butlers Townhouse, Dublin, and Kinsale, Ireland. One of her poems ‘A Celtic Legacy’ was performed in France at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne. Her painting Cascade has been featured as a CD cover.

“Dreams of a Happy Ending” by Farideh Hassanzadeh

May 12th, 2019

Dreams of a Happy Ending

I throw my nightmare
into your arms
with all my shaking and sweat,
but you stick your hand
into my heart
to pluck my boobs.

I throw my fear of losing words
into a book,
but you throw your shirt
on the clouded pages
to let me know
“It is missing a button”.

You have thrown in my face every day
all the small particles of dust
on the shelves and in every corner,
more sharply than a magnifying glass,
but you ignore the sandstorms
devouring your mate.

Ah! how simply you turn
our shining marriage ring
into a stinging snake
slithering so fast towards
my so-romantic dreams
of a happy ending.

“with many thanks for Becca Menon’s help recreating this poem in English”

A song of despair

People go to the park together
People go to the cinema together
People become friends now and then
and write letters to each other
they even marry each other sometimes
and live at a home for long years
always together
but always apart
like the books in the shelves
or like the stones on the graves.

Dreams of a Happy Ending & A Song of Despair © Farideh Hassanzadeh, English translation by Becca Menon

Farideh Hassanzadeh is an Iranian poet, translator and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was twenty-two. Her poems appear in the anthologies Letters to the World, Contemporary Women Poets of Iran by Faramarz Soleimani, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo, The Poetry Of Iranian Women by Sheema Kalbasi, Tonight, An Anthology of World Love Poetry by Amitabh Mitra.

She is the author of Eternal Voices: Interviews with Poets East and West and The Last Night with Sylvia Plath: Essays on Poetry. In addition she has translated Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson, Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Women Poets of the World, Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry, Selected Poems of Iaroslav Seifert, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Blood of Adonis by Samuel Hazo, The Beauty of Friendship: Selected Poems by Khalil Gibran, Love Poetry of the World, Classic and Contemporary, and Selected Poems by Blaga Dimitrova. the Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.

Her new book is Footprints of Cats in Poetry, Stories, Paintings, Politics, Religion, Medicine, Cinema and Science.

“Pomegranate heart” and other poems by Miriam Calleja

April 21st, 2019

Four million years of eyes

Heady honeysuckle sweat
Skin ripe fruit

Lips floating
Scents

Four millions years
Of eyes

(first published in Pomegranate Heart by Edebooks)

Pomegranate heart

She counts the seeds
Of my pomegranate heart
The same, always the same
No matter how many times she counts.
Her fingers are stained
And though she may wash and scrub
There I will be
In her skin, lodged in places
Where she cannot wash me out

(first published in Pomegranate Heart by Edebooks)

A new kind of courage

You give me a new kind of courage
you’ve seen me crawl out of my own skin
frustrated beyond words
shaking my fists and my beliefs
at a world that
just
won’t
understand

because, who am I?
and who are you?
and what is it we are doing collectively that
would matter at all?

you’ve seen me rise out of the destruction
of my own dreams
bright-eyed
brushing every bloody tear off my face
in the way only long, hot showers and music can

you’ve seen me run and crash
and change direction
breathless, jaw-clenched, eyes circles that don’t
stop
believing

you’ve seen me consistent and committed
to the grave
I started to dig
in my own creation of a beautiful garden
and then smile with conviction
as I covered it up and swore to you
it will never happen again
and I believed it

and we both know
that I am a fool.

Without end

Translation by the author of ‘Bla tarf’ – a poem originally written in Maltese

A fire without edges
I’d cuddle up inside of it
but without hesitation
it gets away

melts between my fingers

darkness without edges
I cannot figure it out
it falls to the ground spreading out
it cannot be picked up

darkness without ends
I’ve forgotten where I’ve put it
I cannot understand how it opens

darkness of memories
of another world
you’ve already forgotten about me in the dark

I’m going to find the darkness
I’m worried that I’ll never find you in the dark
it’s dark as I finally get home to settle in for the night
I’m full of joy for you

I open the windows to let some light in
but instead, I let in the dark

October

Translation by the author of ‘Ottubru’ – a poem originally written in Maltese

I’ve left the saltiness behind
the scents of the sun
the ground still warm beneath bare feet

I let the months drag on
then at the end, in the last few hours,
I melted them in sweet ambrosia

(I wish you’d told me
you’d help me turn a new leaf
it’s as though we’ve started over)

Pomegranate heart and other poems are © Miriam Calleja

Miriam Calleja is a bilingual author from Malta. Her poetry collections, Pomegranate Heart (EDE Books, 2015) and Inside Skin (EDE Books, 2016), have been described as ‘fresh’, ‘intimate’, and ‘sensual’. In 2015 she was shortlisted for a literary excellence award for her poem Burying the Dark, which has been published in an anthology by Magic Oxygen in the UK. She dedicates her time facilitating creative writing workshops, writing for performances or publications and devouring words. She has read at events in Malta, London, and New York. In 2017 she was recognised by the Network of Young Women Leaders as a leading female artist in Malta. She moonlights as a pharmacist, loves the sea, cats, and coffee, and would like to travel as much as her poetry does.

“Damascus” and other poems by Rebecca Ruth Gould

April 21st, 2019

Yerevan in Winter

As we hewed words from the stone tower,
the planets completed their orbit.
Ice cracked & froze.

Our glass walls gazed on the circus below.
Cars sailed through smog.
Buses creaked their way to work.

As we sat secluded in our icy fortress,
the firmaments lit the horizons
that translated our union into words.

I watched you stare into the abyss.
I watched the passage of
the lives we could have lived.

I watched our fates diverge,
& our shadows merge.
I watched the images

from our quarry twist & turn,
then melt like snowflakes
in the crisp morning snow.

Isfahan

When we recited poetry in Isfahan,
the Bridge of Thirty-Three Arcs
stretched to embrace the firmament.

The songs you brought to life
were meteorites, detonating
in the sockets of our eyes.

If time had been reversed,
the poet’s tomb would have
been our pilgrimage.

Water would have flowed
from the Ziyandeh’s shores,
& every point on the bridge

would have echoed
the sky’s demand
for release from the earth.

But time had no time—
& eternity no purpose—
for our meandering.

So I took the book
you left for me,
without saying goodbye.

Damascus

There is no straight man in the world
said starry eyed Rima, as we returned
from the Damascus book fair where,
for the hundredth time, I fell in love.

No straight man in the world—
only cheaters, pimps, addicts, & bores.
Rima passed her days on the rooftop
watching the world unfurl,

watching her rivals fall in love.
She once had a man more beautiful
than herself, she said.
She didn’t want children.

She wanted just a touch, a hand,
to grant release from
her celestial observatory,
to aim arrows at her stars.

Damascus in the month of Ramadan
is an affliction that multiplies hourly
the hunger inside, the longing to be touched,
until prayer brings roof banging at dawn.

I thought I had bested Rima’s forecasts.
Until the plane landed. I tried
to remember the name of the book fair man
whose smile had stolen my heart.

His syllables merged with others’ words.
His nomadic soul hitched onto Rima’s stars.

Marrakesh

The neon eyes of black
Moroccan cats light
the dusky souk where
two strangers chat.

The strangers pass
in heated conversation
using this land as a map
for exploring their futures

& their pasts. Marrakesh:
a frame that questions why
one would live
with a body more fragile

than the sultan’s ruined tombs,
with memories that oppress
more than patterned arabesques,
with questions God cannot address.

Cats travel alone.
They do not feel the pull
that turns our coffees
into hours, or the hunger

that keeps us walking forward,
feasting on our wounds.
They do not know why
we interrupt each other.

Least of all do they understand
why we stare at the neon signs
in their eyes & then
at each other. Bemused, intent,

friends headed in opposite directions,
shaking each others’ hands,
moving at different paces,
steadily, to the same end.

A Pagan in Islamic Egypt

Like two woman’s breasts, Giza’s pyramids rise
above these scorching sands. I tighten my belt
& bow to the unknown god, remembering my
companions in the south, where the sun does not set.

Though they call me pagan, I’m just hedging
my bets, playing like Pascal,
looking out for the long term, bidding
for immortality before the wager is called.

Dear river god, please stop swelling
the Nile as if there were no tomorrow.
Stop demanding the sacred cow.
The revelation has come. Sacrifices are done.

God has won. The Crusades are over.
Allah rules Jerusalem.
Universities churn out doctorates on every subject
known since the Prophet’s Hijra.

Time moves slower than the caravans.
My skin is roughened by the sand
that sheltered me as I awaited revelation,
& forgot to prostrate before the pyramids.

The pilgrim who, on his way to Mecca,
heeds not the wonders he passes
on his journey across the desert,
finds no paradise at the end of his road.

Author’s Note

Damascus, Isfahan and Yerevan were originally published in Empty Mirror. Also Helen: A Literary Magazine originally published A Pagan in Islamic Egypt, and Milestones published Marrakesh.

Rebecca Ruth Gould’s poems and translations have appeared in Nimrod, Kenyon Review, Tin House, The Hudson Review, Salt Hill, and The Atlantic Review. She translates from Persian, Russian, and Georgian, and has translated books such as After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (Northwestern University Press, 2016) and The Death of Bagrat Zakharych and other Stories by Vazha-Pshavela (Paper & Ink, 2019). Her poem Grocery Shopping was a finalist for the Luminaire Award for Best Poetry in 2017, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

“Child’s Celestial Chime” by Deirdre Gallagher

April 13th, 2019

Child’s Celestial Chime

Buttery chiffon taffeta folds
of an early evening
Hedge rustling sways
to softening breeze
Dalliant twitterings nestle
into hummingbird tillage.

Amidst the lazy din,
a pristine crystal chime –
Unfettered, it’s inflection
pierced through the clouds.

This ascension
Reaching the supreme octave –
Vibrations of purity rang out.

Labours of Love

Palms upward
cupped in symmetry
An open book
of forgotten scripture

Etched into frail translucent papery flesh
and gnarled knuckles
Lines and scars trace a stoic history
Discarded chronicles of toil, forbearance, silent sacrifice
The forsaken testament
of unsung heroines.

By the graft of
these now
rendered distorted
arthritic joints
were carved
Labours of love.

“Child’s Celestial Chime” and another poem are @ 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

“The House of Childhood” and other poems by Ute Carson

April 7th, 2019

The House of Childhood

We return to the place
where we first heard voices,
smelled the air and tasted nourishment,
where hands caressed or frightened us,
where comfort was our cocoon
or neglect made us shiver.
The tears of harm are cold,
the tears of joy warm as a lagoon.
We carry the house of childhood within us,
and spying through its translucent walls
we keep life at a distance-or embrace it.

Ode to Water

I am a nymph,
I inhabit the rivers, lakes and streams,
sing to the brooks, the ocean,
dance to life starting within.
I rise as a mermaid
an aquatic creature,
drown fires,
quell the thirst of the earth,
mix with the air.
The moon is my lover,
together we balance
the rhythm of the tides.

Crying is a Gift

I dislike sentimentality
and have always thought
that tears should be shed sparingly
until our 8 year-old grandson complained,
“I don’t like my friends to laugh when I cry.
How can I be happy again if I don’t cry?”
Tears are our release
from joy and sorrow
and like a stream
they gurgle over small stones
or gush over ravines,
all ending in the universal maelstrom
of lament and comfort.

BREAKING AWAY

Years ago at bedtime
my grandson’s chubby arms
squeezed my neck like a boa.
Now that he is growing up
my arms encircle him.
He squirms at my affection
and wriggles free from my embrace.
Then as his long legs stride out
he glances back,
tossing me a smile back.

OLD LOVERS

They are folded together like a blanket,
desire strong as ever
though the flesh is weak.
They sink into each other’s warmth,
savoring the tenderness welling up
from a life well-lived together.

A writer from youth and an M.A. graduate in comparative literature from the University of Rochester, German-born Ute Carson published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Carson’s story The Fall won Outrider Press’s Grand Prize and appeared in its short story and poetry anthology A Walk Through My Garden, 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines in the US and abroad. Carson’s poetry was featured on the televised Spoken Word Showcase 2009, 2010 and 2011, Channel Austin, Texas. A poetry collection, Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem “A Tangled Nest of Moments” placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook Folding Washing was published in 2013 and her collection of poems My Gift to Life was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Award Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Her new poetry collection Reflections was out in 2018. She received the Ovidiu-Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Multicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018 she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Award Prize by the

Ute Carson resides in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren, a horse and a clowder of cats.

Visit Ute’s website at www.utecarson.com

“Thin Places” and other poems by Eithne Lannon

April 7th, 2019

Thin Places 

The wild meadow weave, the strand, 
         places of late summer, autumn,
 
a stone skimming water, suspended 
        in air, its slow motion glide punctuated 

by the drop, touch, rise of a ghostly presence,
          this wary hesitation between water 

and stone, mysterious as the rift between 
     music notes in air, unsettling the familiar light 

which shudders again with tiny rainbow bubbles 
   holding air-drops in. And then the final slide over 

gravity’s edge, into polished bottomless depths, 
        beyond the belly-aching threshold⎯

dropping, ever dropping, into the quiet 
     whispering, the unspeakable tenderness.

Binn Éadair

I have waited through the long winter grey
for the slow clean curve of spring,

the sun a warm breath on my neck,
its lips glossed with a damp breeze.

Far below, the murmurings of wind and water
weave a familiar braid of intimacy,

the whole of the blue sky is stretched wide,
light falls on us, a lovers’ blanket spread on sand.

This moment is already time’s fugitive;
sweet rain pooled in a dockweed’s leafy

pocket, the soft unwrapping of downy buds,
moss gathered in a hollowed bowl of earth—

like a container that holds and pours,
we are filled and emptied.

To be lifted then into the loose
hem of the breeze, cast out

over the spooling cliff, to drop
like a bird, free-fall into the wind.

Earth Music

I will lead you by the hand to the hushed hum
of the gentle oak, an evening breeze sounding

shivers into leaves, quiet turbulence in the air
and the gravity of sound settling on mossed stone.

I hear its tongue-lick in ivy the way a bat hears
the silhouette of trees, or a whale the shape of its home,

touching the skin like sound braille, tiny neck hairs
startled to its presence; earth music in the trees

and in the stony wind, atoms of light trembling in tiny
dust particles where body-bones separate, flesh disappears.

Between heart-pulse and light’s shadow-touch,
I will lead you to the quiet abundance of silence,

the wide emptying of voiceless things; earth’s pulse,
seamless and somewhere beyond absence.

Translation

Early evening, the sea all silk and copper-clad,
russet seams threading air, holding nothing

but lingering light. Poised on the glazed edge
of the estuary, a heron; stem-like and spectral, folded

into the soft grey petals of his shadow. Overhead,
dark-bellied geese fly in low wavering lines,

flock to the beginning of memories they don’t recall
from a place they reclaim without guidance—

here, clouds are porous with light, lisping vowels
and tongue-flickers lapping twilight—while westward,

through the woods, a wash of starlings erupts
from the trees, sweeping murmurations,

the chorus of bodies dips and dissolves, rises
into dust formations. Now the heron loosens

unwieldy wings, lifts like vapour,
like stillness taking flight.

It’s hard not to believe in this; birdsound and birdshape,
two seagulls wing-surfing the ragged cliff-spine,

entirely consistent, faithfully articulate—
what we don’t have words for may still exist.

In the cool breath of evening, tidal swamp-sands
swell over stones, shadows slide out of things.

Motionless again, the heron
is zen master,

a hanging bell holding through the dusk
of the estuary,

the slow unravelling of this moment
every other moment fits inside.

Moon

Take the river’s curl, the ocean’s wave, 
      the never-ending trees, the sway of a meadow,
        the roll of the sun, the scattered stepping stars.

And take last month’s silver bud of moon
    now come full to the sky, her mouth is wide and open,
      white lips brimming with a soft wet light,

month by month, she gives her widening
    emptiness to the earth, holds the planet in her orbit,
       washes ocean after ocean over sand: 

I stretch out my arms and reach for her,
    hold hands with her rhythm, climb into her open
      wound, my blood is lapping at her perpetual pull,

I sleep in the mantle of her tidal pulse, slip
   the ring of her light onto my finger. At the last hour
     of fullness, I wade inside her alluvial silt,

feel desire awash in my gut. Lost inside
    her wholeness, carved into her darkening spine,
      I am swallowed into goddess light.

Thin Places and other poems are © Eithne Lannon

Eithne Lannon is a native of Dublin. Her poems have been included in various publications such as The North, Skylight 47, The Ogham Stone, The Lea-Green Down Anthology and Boyne Berries. On-line in Ireland, the UK, US and Canada, she has work published on Headstuff, Artis Natura, Sheila-na-Gig, Barehands and Punch Drunk Press among others.

Her work has been listed in various competitions such as the Bray Literary Festival, the Dermot Healy competition and Galway University Hospital Poems for Patience. She was winner in 2018 of the Ballyroan Poetry Day Competition and Runner-up in Against the Grain this year. Her work was also Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Winter/Spring Chapbook 2018 and commended in the Jonathan Swift Awards.

Eithne’s first poetry collection Earth Music was published by Turas Press in April 2019.