'The Trees, Night' is an excerpt from a tripartite poem titled 'Found Poem, Spring'. The titled parts of the poem are 'The Trees, Dawn', 'There Are More Blue Flowers in Spring', and 'The Trees, Night'. The poem in its entire can be read at The Honest Ulsterman , with thanks to Editor Gregory McCartney.
Tree is real silver
I.
Birds tremble there
alighting — (lighting)
its stained glass recedes
and within each
bright ening
light ening
shape
the song of a bird
embeds a garnet—
Each red-feathered song
pewtering
silver
-ground
on lazuli
II.
I see their (a)
-lighting. They
leaf the tree
in the absence of bud,
greening the tree
Envoi: May
Birds embed their gems secretly,
beneath leaf
Copyright 2022 Chris Murray
First published Poetry Ireland Review N°138, "An Eavan Boland Special Issue" Editor, Nessa O'Mahony.
Journals, and:bibliography, and: publication notes https://textworksite.com/journals-bibliography-publication-notes/
i loved a somnambulist we’re like a No(thing), a No(body) two no-bodies equal Somebody, right? (re)-read my words bottle of tequila, all the limes all the girls you have loved, shaken up in this cup i lovingly stirred
you stumble on red oak floors ceiling, a map of london lon-don-ing you illicit, (i)llicit you, i’d like to “I need some tea…eaRl gRey” i never could roll my “r’s” like you Afraid to WAKE you an alarm could ring; a poptart-realization could occur you might realize what’s happening when you hear the 11 o’clock news (world news tonight, it’s good to have you with us!) Present, presently? a gunshot to knee on 4th street
limerence in honeycombs honey-orange sandwiches dissemble my skin i let the honey in just like you so (fool)ish, like a clown face with a red button as a nose Dying out, the bees are dying out, not you; you might be (a)round for (some)(time) brown-amber eyes, did you know that insects are stuck in amber? they cannot escape the stick-i-ness of the sweet sap, i might become one of them, my wings are too fragile to be touched by a nothing like you your fingers, prints, imprints, do you love me?
One Night You Grew Silent
You said you wanted me when you turned to face the lamppost. The snowflakes caught your eyelashes on the last languid Christmas.
Your fingertips braided my hair. Your chilled lips smoothed my legs. Your breath in hot clouds warmed my skin. Maybe I love you a little.
I stand in line at the Drug Store. There are fake Christmas trees. I stand in line with closed eyes.
In the warm bathwater I inhale the exhaust of a cigarette smushed into my mother’s glass bowl. A reflection of my stomach, of what could be below it…
And then I hear the phone line go numb. Lifted the window to devour the snowed and bitten air on a wet, soon to be whaled body.
Ladybug
Upon a mint leaf appeared a beet-red ladybug. Her left wing dilapidated, her black eyes tearing, She whispered into my ear, “My heart feels a-tug; …my love has left me, and thus, I am fearing.”
I inquired as to what had occurred. She turned her gaze towards the dampened ground. “Infidelity,” was the only word. She fluttered a wing, without a sound.
“What is heartbreak?” we asked one another. The male species is so damn unsatisfied. Heartbreak is when a heart no longer flutters; It is faced with a stomping reality: he lied.
Body #19
They called me body #19 when I laid under the half-door of this half-block, depleted of what existed above.
Nineteen, an odd, uneven, unsure number. I observe a deleted city, uneven in its skyline, like a mouth without its biggest teeth to help swallow its food. It coughs and begs for someone to help it, with a flailing tongue. It is one of many mouths.
A number identified me… not my hair, or my skin colour. I would be counted amongst 20. This I did not know until weeks later, when wild newscasters counted the remaining bodies like stars on their fingers.
To count 20 stars in a Manhattan sky would be rare. But bodies? What was rarer?
A waking moment: atop smoky glass and blood burned atop wooden desks, with loose elevator buttons, I counted the people surrounding the rubble. They amassed to more stars than I would ever count, even on a clear night.
Palmer Smith is an emerging writer who began her MFA in September 2020 at Columbia University. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and wrote for the SLC Phoenix newspaper while in college. Her article, 23 Life Lessons was published in Thought Catalog, becoming an Editor’s Pick of the Week in June 2018. She writes about American Southern culture, relationships, childhood, and dreams. She hopes to teach writing and literature at the college level.
I love chipped crayons, they tell me colours can come in different forms: pitch-black darkness can become the reincarnation of red, moonlight can subdue the proud ribbon-like body of the river, wise men need not have a white beard.
I often whisper to the wavelength, ask her to, once, and for all, be flexible if dispersion is an absolute necessity, to tune into madness even if it’s her least-favourite frequency. Sometimes, I even read her poems, so she knows I have word bubbles that don’t blow my way. Similar to the paintballs that she complains are too unruly and wild.
I am a laywoman, with no command on phonetics the shit sounds similar to me, I often tell my husband– take care of calories, the shit, he, being the ultimate Science guy, says, it’s a good fat joke
Once in a while, we’re on the same wavelength.
Nibbling the crayons, I often think, I too can think.
An old woman judges me in a gathering
I find the silhouette of mom against the stunning sunset, tracing my footprints when a 70-year-old woman flaunts her half-tamed cupid’s bow in a majlis.
She looks for a golden ratio; here lies square, oval, rectangle congruent with the door, bar and a crosspiece.
Blinded in a winter’s dread no prophet foresaw. Spring’s new life erupted into a chaos of fear. Desolation replaced the warmth of a hug. Children banished from our everyday lives!
Ahh, the blessings — a swift journey home to the unexpected happiness under one roof. Chatter, laughter — a family enduring dark days come what may….
Time, the pickpocket of memories stood still. Watching, new ways of keeping our spirits alive, to be remembered, cherished. Lost moments recaptured before Summer’s end….
An invisible killer started a war, so much pressure on our frontline. But it would be, ‘Love and Stay at Home’ that had their backs.
Death came at a fast pace. Isolation, the enemy of a treasured last goodbye — grief mourned in silent lockdown.
And now, the road to healing shattered hearts and souls begins!
Family Love
Father. Mother.
Daughters. Sons.
Grandchildren.
Love weaves its magical thread
intricately throughout the ages.
Forging unbreakable bonds.
Out from nowhere,
an unnatural enemy wreaked havoc
on the close-knit unit.
They endured great sadness and turmoil.
Separation with no hugs
to warm the blood, tested their strength…
Generations fought for survival
alongside the mightiest warrior of all — Love.
And the family stood firm.
A force to be reckoned with!
Omen
Common sense flees at the first sign of fear, hostage to an ever sense of madness.
Inception of a foreboding story’s journey! I see; the one eyed child dancing on her grave — the ruins of mankind. I hear; the dark one singing an ancient curse — a prayer not heard. I smell; the rotting of bodies — soul thieves wanton destruction. I touch; the soiling of a pure heart — unholy spirits grasp hold. I taste; the drowning miseries in the afterlife — ripen death.
Saving the dead or killing the living? On a night when the full moon is covered by cloud!
The blackest of holes, the hottest of suns, the craziest captain alive. Surrender to none, be gentle to some, stay tough as the skies collide. The milkiest way is over my head. They’re chasing me mile after mile. This starship is mine, try and catch me, I said. This marvellous starship is mine.
Self-portrait
I’m almost young and comparably civil for someone who nurtures her inner cynic, I have a soft spot for Charles Simic, Nintendo and soda bread.
I’m somewhat Russian and kind of solid for someone who never knows when to call it, I once loved a redhead, I wrote her sonnets, but now the romance is dead.
She wished I had stayed in the capital city, took care of her kitty, who’s bald and unpretty, She said I was deadly at cooking and twitting. my words and my soup turned sour.
I wished she had moved with me to the Ocean, but she couldn’t swim, and I hadn’t a notion. We blew our life jackets out of proportion and labelled each other as cowards.
It’s crazy how even the Arctic winter seems warmer than feelings which soon will wither. I could live without her, but hardly with her. It’s not the winning that counts.
I’m lucky the sun in my garden is blazing, I’m planting my saplings and I will raise them with leaves full of poison and sharp as razors, with crowns that shall pierce the clouds.
Dog I Can’t Keep
First language is a dog I can’t keep anymore barking in the back of my mind. Stay, I command. But it goes wherever it pleases, reminding me who is the real owner here. Its growling is so powerful that all other sounds get lost in it. Your bites leave no scars anymore, I say. I’ll find you a new home, I say. It grins. First find yourself one. Its jaws are closing around my neck.
Tattoo
Homeland is tattooed on my skin, and the picture is changing in real time. Here is my school friend’s fresh grave, here is yesterday’s theatre student in a prison transport vehicle, here are the ashes of Siberian forests, here are the history books being rewritten. And here is the apple tree in my parents’ garden blossoming, just like any other year, and it’s my favorite part of the tattoo. One day I’ll have the rest of it removed.
You are as naked as a shucked oyster so, my breasts are slashed and raining pearls for you, my suckling child. The universe has too many doors. A terrifying flower unfurled overnight to tell me if they took you away or carted you off to die like pink tender veal. I would be prepared to stand on my own mother’s shoulders to push you back up to the surface, to stop you from drowning— and she would want that— because she too must have discovered this feral wisdom in the bloodied wake of birth. Everything is unfastening around me, voluptuously, in ways I cannot understand yet. For now, I must be patient occupy this hinterland and allow the stars to realign.
The Jesus Woman
After James K Baxter
I saw the Jesus Woman milling around the school gates. She wore grey marl track pants, her hair was scooped up into a pineapple bun. her breath smelt of coffee and ginger biscuits. When babies cried, her breasts leaked milk. When she smiled, birds flitted like glitter among the trees. When she screamed tectonic plates shifted. When she laughed everybody got high.
The Jesus Woman sat in a café and selected her twelve disciples.
One was a schoolgirl panicking in an airport toilet soon to be married in an unfamiliar country. One was a waitress who dropped her stillborn child into a storm drain on Good Friday and ran away. One was a grandmother who couldn’t read or write.
One was a freshly-battered office manager whose husband supported a football team that had just lost 99-0; One was a self-harming solicitor who advised clients in an office festooned with original artwork. There were seven others. But their identities have been suppressed to protect the powerful.
The Jesus Woman said, ‘Ladies, from now on, the rain will wash away our worries’. She did no miracles. She sometimes sold old clothes on eBay.
The first day she was arrested for having a backstreet abortion. The second day she was beaten by villagers for accusing a pillar of the community of rape. The third day she was charged with being a woman and given twenty five years in a Magdalen laundry. The fourth day she was sent to an asylum for admitting she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. The fifth day lasted for four years while she worked as a comfort woman constantly within the grasp of soldiers. The sixth day she told her abusive father,
“I am the light of the world. I am the one who brings into being.”
The seventh day she was set on fire:
the flesh of God was burnt to ash.
On the eighth day the earth stopped turning. All of creation began to cry.
Every night these tears are collected into a bottle for reckoning at the end of days.
Intensive Care
it does me no good to pay attention to the shushing
sound of the ventilator or the incessant twinkle of
machine lights, let me pretend to follow
you (like a scuba diver) gliding through lough waters
the passing of the Bann Foot Ferry above us
chugging its cargo of suited and booted brylcreemed boys
girls with shiny evening bags resting on swing-skirted laps
our bodies are clouds now we are wearing crowns
of marsh thistle we want to stay just here
but currents are carrying us away in their eddies
you reach the shore and stretch out on your back
inviting me to place my head on your belly, the weight
of it makes you smile because this is how it once was
me curled up like a nautilus sleeping in your womb
Fiona Perry is the author of Alchemy from Turas Press (October 2020), a book termed as ‘an intriguing and compelling début collection from a poet who is already strikingly in command of her craft. Mingling daily life with the numinous, these poems reflect on love and loss, on the milestones of lived experience. These poems travel through time and space: from the magic of ancient birds in a New Zealand landscape, to the intensive care ward where a loved one lies dying; from the daily round of household tasks, to the dreamworlds where memory, imagination and reality merge’. Fiona has won the Bath Flash Fiction prize for her story, Sea Change. Her work has been published widely in Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Recent work has appeared in Lighthouse, Not Very Quiet, and The Blue Nib. She contributed poetry to the 2019 Label Lit Project for National Poetry Day, Ireland.
The Icelanders have a word that means just that. A murky day that you know is better enjoyed from the comfort of a window seat; soft mizzle cleansing leaves shiny and bright.
When webs become crystal dreamcatchers, or perfect drops form on the telephone lines and slide slowly down like the oil on the wire of the indoor rain lamp,
with Venus in pink marble, her flowing robe revealing perfect curves against the plastic plants. Outside the blackbird puffs himself,
feathers rippling. He dances on the lawn. Drizzle doesn’t bring the worms up but his fancy seven step has the desired effect and he pecks and pecks and pecks;
like the drinking woodpecker did, long ago, on the dentist’s counter, see-sawing, a globe of red liquid dancing, as I looked passed it and through the window,
longing to be outside in the rain.
Spring Bank Holiday
We travelled far from city noise to wide skies, woods, wetland and a lapping lough-shore. Lego birds had been the bribe.
Leaving Minecraft in the boot we time-travelled, from plastic blocks to the kiln, where men had fired clay bricks. Further back, in the Crannog’s rustic roundhouse, we stroked hand-daubed clay walls.
Posed for pictures with brick birds but spent more time feeding the living, adding new naming words, researching migration paths, becoming birders. Pinched your mouth on finding a yolk-stained shell outside the coop.
Drifting off homeward bound with Shovelers, Shelducks, Redshanks flying around your head, Best day out, EVER, you said.
Until the next one…
Dreamchild
These Strangford wetlands and fields, inlets, islets and islands, one for each day of the year, are your haven; curlew’s perfect landscape of mottled wheat and barley camouflage, speckled pointed eggs.
Quaver call carried on the breeze floats through open sash as I drift off to dreamland. Ash thin, plane-grey legs vapour-trailing a cloudless sky over a moonlit low-tide lough,
transforming into my daughter. Feathers curl into auburn hair, down-curved beak becomes a bow poised to shoot fox mid-flight. Quiver strapped breast. She soars towards Scrabo Tower.
Dreamchild returns to loughshore. Wades at water’s edge, where along Monaghan bank, I’m walking with a thatched batch of uni stats. She does not speak, roots under rocks shyly searching for shellfish.
Six Curlews arrive to join her. She shrinks, cane legs and crescent beak reform, feathers return as she outstretches both wings. Seven whistlers take flight. Please – please come home.
Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She came to writing late in life, after finishing her Open University BA(Hons) degree with a creative writing module in 2015. Mainly a writer of poetry, she has had work published in journals and anthologies in the UK, Ireland, and America. In 2018, Hedgehog Poetry Press launched their Stickleback series with her micro-collection Circling the Sun, which is about some of the early women pilots. Gaynor has just released her chapbook Memory Forest, also from Hedgehog Press. That is a thematically tight collection about burial rituals and last wishes. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her debut full collection, after receiving an Arts Council NI grant in 2019, which allowed her writing time and mentoring and editing services.Gaynor is a member of Holywood Writers’ Group, The Irish Writers Centre, and Women Aloud NI. She also volunteers for EastSide Arts during their summer festival and the CS Lewis Festival in November. Gaynor is a keen amateur photographer and has had some of her photography published in journals and anthologies.
Here you cast your dazzling eye through clouds ruptured on surging waters, where in winds on a mission across skies born of voids words were loaded:
let me out;
crowns of heaving leaves spilled trees, turned them upside down, a splay of tangled guts, and spat out the despair of the years in a season:
let me out;
until the decay of the black spell set in, the mulch of slow rot, a creep of violets unfolded:
oh, take me away
where hushed trees mangled in that storm descend to the bend on the old-winding road and fields and dusk woods and torn mills and canals and Lee waters take on every mood and ripple it back.
Father and Earth
Just like everyone else in this city where grey lines blur sky to pavement, you’re an extension of the rain; the incessant drizzle on these streets seeps through clothes, misting words of weather and when, colour coded alerts, storms between showers.
I’d listened as wind gusted every odd night, worrying for a future I might never see, where nobody wants their children to be, and reasoned water never ceases to be water.
You’d become old; the cough caught you.
I think the sun was setting with no great glow; patter of rain every odd hour, grey skies shortening the day.
Your steps faltered, your pulse soared; rough nights in A&E and finally the quarantine ward.
You gave the staff the brunt of your tongue, There’s nothing wrong with me;
I’ll sign myself out.
You didn’t, though you would have. Tough as mountains, old rock. Stubborn as the wind that roars.
Old mountains in clouds, mist of rain, Earth, floods of pain,
will you name yourself out?
Scramble
Don’t you know that deodorant is toxic she says, fanning the air with her fingers. Puts a song in my head. I turn to the messages on my phone. My doctor. Cholesterol is high. Advise a healthy diet and regular exercise. Are you listening? she says. Throw it in the rubbish. It’ll explode in the dustbin truck. Who cares about the bin-men? she says. What about the bin-women? Well, I haven’t seen any of them, she says. Hell, I’m trying to read. What? Letters from the dead? There’s no chlorofluorocarbons in them anymore. I’m not concerned with holes in the ozone, she retorts.
*
The wind was high, she says. All through the dark hours I listened to its protests unaware she was awake beside me. It happens nearly every night, she says, between storms.
It’s a top down issue, I insist, and besides, we notice the elements now.
Our granddaughter lets out a wail from the other room.
Rings out like an alarm.
Slip into The Sea
Curl under the bridge to sleep awhile, bullet-force rain dancing in gutters; pretend you’re the river, the last mile.
Feel tugs of water in your lungs, a vial prescribed to draw down the shutters; curl under the bridge to sleep a while.
In twilight, between poison and bliss beguile, this rain’s furious prance softens to mutters; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
You’re coming to the end of this trial – I’ll give you the sea, the warm water utters; stay under the bridge to sleep a while.
If you let the sea take you, saltwater will file scabs from your soul and offer to suture; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
And if you listen to the waves’ murmuring sail, essence of this transcendent suitor, you’ll break from the bridge to swim a while and find you are beyond the river, the last mile.
In rivers
I see you in rivers,
the swallowing holes and murky beds.
In the water,
dirt blots my eye; I hold my breath,
fly rings dot the surface; a broken bottle’s on the floor.
There’ll be no poppy red, ghastly watercolour spread.
I don’t tread and I don’t flounder for the above,
but sink right in until my breath is algae green.
There’s a moment; in the twilight,
I’m fearful, not knowing what’s to come.
The depth of an empty canvas greets me.
And my dead mother, my brother, you,
whisper at the watery fence.
A ghost life-film runs in my mind.
That’s a fly swatted out.
I struggle with the layers; I hurl against the skin.
There’s nothing I ever gave to sway me from this picture.
What have I ever done of note? Do I want something of note?
Aspiration is for the living; I’m knifing this to death.
There’s the slow river snake,
you whisper, whispering
patchwork reflections on the pool of the water.
Once this was enough; rise and disturb.
Fish playing rings for flies.
The wind snaps my back door shut as I move about the kitchen.
I look over to where you’ve been. Take in the disappointment of your seat.
Taxi
The driver’s words are tumours fat and fibrous, with teeth sure I’ve seen ‘em blacks fightin in our streets. his mouth is a gargoyle spout ink-snaked neck moss on rivered stone young voluptuous women blown across his bones Tell ya girl, soon Cork won’t be our own Soon Cork won’t be our own. Down the bend of the road, he shrinks to small talk his trip up North not noticing the cold tap run inside my tone. Got the cataracts done Got a deal Living in a fog, and me behind the wheel! Fright to god I didn’t get killed. His eyes are clean; they’re clean but there’s no light in them they belong to a child unsurprised by what’s been done to him. By the time I leave, I’m wishing him well. Remembering again what it means this being human
Safer Distances
I’ve seen my city’s private parts, advertised on plywood signs in block-lettered chalk Adult Only Store Used-up girls inside, starting life in another country but still I know them from somewhere I’ve eyed the types, those grey-skinned soggy men, sunken-eyed from watching body-parts unfurling
The ships that line our docks are tough but grieve to watch the washed-up purchased lives they’ve lost Born without footing across slime and muck, slipping up and down inside our harbour walls Freezing to death in backs of trucks, not surfacing long enough to breathe and float and see
black- water swirling menses, spitting ragged blankets up, onto concrete blocks, no longer fit to warm them until summer dries them out, maybe days from now, maybe never, maybe lost in the hacks and splutters The muttered lines about safer distances between us, between me and these girls on scratchy screens
inside stores I’ll never enter
Riverrunafter James JoyceRiverrun
past Eve and Adam
Drip and bubble
on his tongue
River wash through
stone and gravel
Hot traintracks
His schoolbag
Oh River Run
Thank him for the gift
he gave me
to celebrate my newborn son
River protect
the London boy
who praised me
For just
being there
River run
through his black hair
His wings so small
so tightly clipped
Riverrun a song of loss
Forever present on our lips
Riverrun
past Eve and Adam
Thalweg
Land bend
Delta
Flood
Once
upon a time
we left him stranded
but the current’s changing
A change has come
Riverrun, from where
he kissed him
in some
Underpass
Overpass
Armpit
Ledge
Behind a wall
Wedge of stone
River how you’ve
always known
to carry Adam
Carry Eve
Carry every love you see
River run, past Eve and Adam
Past songline
Fault line
Border
Blood
Past tall orders
Boys
born in armour
Tense
Protective
On the run
Riverrun
through tidal waves
Mudflats
Basins
Wider plains
River find the mouths you need
Inside us
Make them speak
of ripples
Oxbows
Currents
Streams
Forever carving
Changing shape
Oh river run
and river make
Build new mountains
His life’s at stake
Chris Murray 