Category: How Words Play

‘At the door’ and other poems by Eva Griffin

March 20th, 2018

Are you feeling this?

My desire is holding you in its mouth
shaking like a dog toy
amputated to fit my mould.
Regularly, I confuse excitement for affection
in a slow, crowded elevator
where a whisper of white buttoned shirts
is the scream of a night sky in my head,
close as a shoulder brush.

Something to work with

For the work, he says.
Square panels of it
lighting up my screen:
tarp-painted abstractions
punctuated by self-capturing,
sun-faced with grey crown
but not old.
Never old.
A father’s age perhaps.
Yet, I open the message;
orange brimming notification
tells me that he’s thinking
of my shivering in bed
on the other side of the island.
Says that he’ll be good
if he gets the chance.
Good for me.
Good for his ego.
Small slip of a thing waiting
for a night visit, the hot
shower of another body
sliding under covers.
Strong tattooed grasp
on waist; leathered, but
not old.
Light breath in my ear
catches hair like a summer
breeze in his stubble.
As if we’re not in October.
As if we’ll ever be here again.
He whispers, for the work.
It’s all this is.
I am for the work.

Candle

Eyes into the fire he tells me
that he sees it,
the next painting:
chrome yellow,
petals on the floor like ash
by our feet,
heads drooping close
like ours could
be
if I hadn’t left my heart
in the dregs of a pint
soaked through, too wet to carry.
I hold it, cold glass
little sanctuary while my legs burn
bright against the flame shadow.
He notices
I keep stretching it away,
a short press against
the slick stone and back
in again to see the orange
flicker on white,
to feel the pain of stolen heat
and I wonder
will my thin calf be the painting;
warmer in his eyes,
burning under the weight of him,
untouched.

Leftovers

A jug of milk in the fridge
is what he left me;
half of his own litre
brought from town.
For the tea, we imagine, but
standing in the kitchen
brewing it strong
he feels more like ground coffee;
ember smell of him
from lighting the fire,
rough-handed from work.
Outside, rusted mountains
crease along the skyline
like his eyes, laughing now;
almost disappearing but so full,
I want to believe, of me,
and the clouds of Kerry
in that moment
they look like cream.

At the door

Now, watch as I hang in the air
tempting as a sunset
and just as long.
Storms are not inclined to wait;
better to spill my secret wilderness
as I leave this love,
sucking light out of your blue.

At the door and other poems are © Eva Griffin.

Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a UCD graduate. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tales From the Forest, All the Sins, ImageOut Write, Three Fates, The Ogham Stone, HeadStuff, and New Binary Press.

A Celebration of Women’s Poetry for International Women’s Day 2018

March 4th, 2018

‘A History of Love Letters’ by Seanín Hughes

Miss said every time I told a lie,
Baby Jesus had a nail hammered
into his hand.
She said I had a sad mouth,
corners downturned, pointing
to hell.

Stephen with the p-h had a mouth
like sunshine. I gave him a token:
a tiny toy dinosaur egg, pale blue and gold.
I wrote his name on my hand
and hoped the egg would hatch.

My body grew and Granny said, never
shave your legs, so I did. Better bald
spring chicken; better descaled
and plucked bare for boys
to touch with their nervous fingers,
and work me open.

The one who wrote love letters
spilled his entrails in black Bic biro,
telling me in no particular order
the parts of me he liked best —
some illustrated.

When Napoleon begged his Josephine
to lay herself bare, he meant
for her flaws to fold her
into neat and precious squares —
for her to be less than
his clenched-fist heart could hold.

In place of a filigree pen,
my hands hold pistachios
peeping from the lips
of yawning oatmeal shells,
ripe and given up easily
for a hungry mouth
that isn’t my own.

A History of Love Letters is © Seanín Hughes

Seanín Hughes is an emerging poet from County Tyrone who will shortly commence study of BA Hons English with Ulster University as a mature student.
Seanín was first published on Poethead in July 2017 and was selected for the Crescent Arts Centre’s Poetry Jukebox, launched in October 2017. She has work published or forthcoming both online and in print, including Banshee: A Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, A New Ulster and NI Community Arts Partnership’s Poetry In Motion anthology. Seanín is a longlistee for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, 2018.

'Love' by Müesser Yeniay

I have another body
outside 
               of me

they call it
love

[but this is pain]

if I had carried you in my body
only then I would have felt your existence 
                                       this much

Love is © Müesser Yeniay

MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; she graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She took her M.A on Turkish Literature at Bilkent University. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Muse Pie Press in USA. Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second poetry book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia as Requiem to Tulips. She has translated the Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated the Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published a Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She also translated the poetry of Israeli poet Ronny Someck (2014) and Hungarian poet Attila F. Balazs (2015). She has published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul. Her poems were published in Hungarian by AB-Art Press by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa(2015).

Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: Actualitatea Literară (Romania), The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA & England); Kritya, Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci, I poeti di Europe in Versi e il lago di Como (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Tema (Croatia); Dargah (Persia).

Her poetry has appeared in With Our Eyes Wide Open; Aspiring to Inspire, 2014 Women Writers Anthology; 2014 Poetry Anthology- Words of Fire and Ice (USA) Poesia Contemporanea de la Republica de Turquie (Spain); Voix Vives de Mediterranee en Mediterranee, Anthologie Sete 2013 ve Poetique Insurrection 2015 (France); One Yet Many- The Cadence of Diversity ve ayrıca Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Come Cerchi Sull’acqua (Italy).

Her poems have been translated into Vietnamese, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Persian, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. Her book in Hungarian was published in 2015 by AB-Art Publishing by the name “A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa” She has participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia); 2nd Asia Pacific Poetry Festival 2015 (Vietnam). Müesser is the editor of the literary magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey.

‘where the lost things go’ by Anne Casey

we sat upon a golden bow
my little bird and i
indivisibly apart
we dived into the sky
and to the purple-hearted dark
an ocean we did cry
for all the lost things
gathered there
in rooms beyond the eye
the aie, the I, the eye

where the lost things go is © Anne Casey

(First published in ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of ‘Other Terrain’ and ‘Backstory’ literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne).

‘If I Had Known’ by Marie Curran

If I had known what I know now,
I wouldn’t have been silent,
If I had known the counting clock,
I’d have asked more questions,
If I had known I’d lose your face,
I’d have taken more pictures,
If I had known the little left,
I’d never have let you go,
If I had known what I know now,
Would it really be any different?

If I had Known is © Marie Curran

(Previously published Poems from Conflicted Hearts, An Anthology 2014)

To date, more than 70 of Marie Hanna Curran’s poems have been published in journals, magazines and anthologies including Juxtaprose Magazine, ROPES 2015, Literature Today (Volume 2), Scarlet Leaf Review, and her own collection Observant Observings which was published in 2014 (Tayen Lane Publishing). Journalistic pieces featuring Marie Hanna’s varying viewpoints have appeared in newsprint and her regular column can be read in the magazine Athenry News and Views.

For more see www.mariehcurran.com

‘Haft Seen’ by Shakila Azizzada

If it weren’t for the clouds,
I could
pick the stars
one by one
from this brief sky,
hang them
in your ever ruffled hair
and hear
you saying:

‘I’m like a silk rug –
the older it gets,
the lovelier it grows,
even if
two or three naughty kids
did pee on it.’

Am I finally here?

Then let me spread
the Haft Seen tablecloth
in the middle of Dam Platz.

Even if it rains,
The Unknown Soldier
and a flock of pigeons
will be my guests.

Haft Seen is © Shakila Azizzada.The literal translation of this poem was made by Zuzanna Olszewska.
The final translated version of the poem is by Mimi Khalvati.

Shakila Azizzada is a poet from Afghanistan who writes in Dari. Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely addressed by women poets writing in Dari.

After studying Law at Kabul University, Shakila read Oriental Languages and Cultures at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, where she now lives. She regularly publishes tales, short stories, plays and poems. Her first collection of poems, Herinnering aan niets (Memories About Nothing), was published in Dutch and Dari and her second collection was published in 2012. Several of her plays have been both published and performed, including De geur van verlangen (The Scent of Desire). She frequently performs her poems at well-established forums in The Netherlands and abroad.

‘The Salt Escape’ by Jude Cowan Montague

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘You never will find him again.’
She walked out onto the sodium plain
where sour gusts scour the crags.

She found a groove in the ground.
Her body fit inside the crack.
I lay down on top, pressed my face in her back
wrapping my feelers around

The snowlace winds whipped our flesh
to ribbons, though swaddled in fur.
I folded my legs close and breathed in her hair.
I dreamed we were eggs in our nest.

Stiffened to stone in the night
and humming to underground forces
we heard the dark whisper of runaway horses
shuddering into the light.

The Salt Escape is © Jude Cowan Montague

Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. Her album ‘The Leidenfrost Effect’ (Folkwit Records 2015) reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She produces ‘The News Agents’ on Resonance 104.4 FM. Her most recent book is The Originals (Hesterglock Press, 2017).


'It was I' by Dolonchampa Chakraborty

The girl who was burnt for dowry today
        It was I 
The girl foetus inside her body which was burnt too
	It was I 
The new-born girl who was abandoned in a trash bag 
        It was I  
They were nobody’s daughter 


The girl who was not paid her daily wage 
       It was I 
The girl who was paid less than her husband 
       It was I 
The girl who was not allowed to join a job
As her husband’s boss
	It was I 
They were nobody’s sister


The girl who was raped by colleagues 
	It was I 
The girl who was molested by an auto driver 
	It was I 
The girl who was pushed to bed by a filmmaker 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s lover 


The girl who wasn’t privileged by her right to education 
	It was I 
The girl who never got the privacy of a healthy sanitation 
	It was I 
The girl who went from one kitchen to the other 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s pride 


The girl who couldn’t practise her right to marry 
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t practise her right to separate   
	It was I 
The girl who suffered a fruitless marriage 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s wife 


The girl who was sold by one
	It was I 
The girl who was bought by thousands 
	It was I 
The girl who made herself a sex-slave 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s friend 


The girl who sold her womb 
	It was I 
The girl who sold her baby 
	It was I 
The girl who made her baby an orphan 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s shelter 


The girl who was tortured in custody 
	It was I 
The girl who was beaten by a homemaker 
	It was I 
The girl who danced in a strip club 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s armour 


The girl who gulped her tears
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t shed one 
	It was I 
The girl who got a slap on her tears
	It was I 
They were nobody’s precious  


The girl who slept on a footpath
	It was I 
The girl who slept in old-age home 
	It was I 
The girl who was kept hungry by her son 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s world 


Still, the girl who refuses to lose
	It is I 
The girl who refuses to drown or burn
	It is I 
The girl who fights back to victory
	It is I 
The girl who wants to float and fly 
	It is I 
The girl who is the lover of a gnome
	It is I 
The girl who forgets the obscure junctions 
	It is I 
The girl who pushes the darkness back into oblivion 
	It is I 
It is me who takes your hand and walks with you 
We make a destiny through the late night dew.
.
It was I is © Dolonchampa Chakraborty

Dolonchampa Chakraborty graduated in Calcutta and now studies Human Resources in Cornell University, Ithaca. She writes poetry in Bengali and has published two books of poetry. She is a freelance translator and editor working for the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and several other organisations. Her poems have been published in prestigious Indian Literature, a bi-monthly journal by the Sahitya Akademi of India among others. She has been a panelist in the Samanvay Lit Fest. For two years, she has edited The Nilgiri Wagon, a literary journal that focuses on translating literature of Indian and other languages into English. She is passionate about languages. Currently, she is learning Kashmiri and leading a translation project of Syrian Poetry into Bengali.

Image detail from ‘Making Den of Sibyl Wren’ by Salma Ahmad Caller

‘Reluctant Oration’ and other poems by Fiona King

February 28th, 2018

BIRTH

The last point of the quadrant remains to be drawn,
Out on the fringe of a shadowy dawn.
The air is still, devoid of all sound,
The raven encircles the battleground.
The troops are assembled, their swords held with poise,
To face the enemy engulfing his choice.
He arrives with his foe, emits a loud cry,
The prophetic bird falls dead from the sky.
Morning’s mist begins to fade,
The child is here, no longer afraid.

CHILD’S PLAY

The couple play a childish game,
Their toys are guilt, betrayal, shame.
They scatter them across the floor,
Expose insecurities raw and sore.
Their song is angry, well-rehearsed,
A tune of sadness, bitterly versed.
Their painting, an unfinished mess,
Made in haste, under duress.
They dance a dance of hideous precision,
Wrong is right, final decision.
Nothing to lose and less to gain,
Familiar role play, hate and pain.
Their child looks on, he takes the blame,
Discarded toy in an adult game.

WOODEN SPOON

Deed is done, misdemeanour little,
Anger rises, no acquittal.
Shriek is sharp, the echo rings,
Room spins, skin stings.
Hot tears, salty lip,
‘Water please, just one sip,’
Words strangled, sound drowned,
Face of inequity gloriously crowned.
Door slams, key turns,
Legs weak, stomach churns.
Patterned flowers on the wall,
Footsteps thud and stab the hall.
Captive now in my own space,
Prisoner in this sacred place.
Fear abates, the edge is gone,
Acquiesce to what is wrong.
No apology required,
Guilty conscience long expired.

RELUCTANT ORATION

Faces staring, pressure loaded,
She fears she will be taunted, goaded.
Hands moist, mouth dry,
Self-expectation running high.
She takes a stand, she’s on display,
Composure falls to disarray.
Blood pumps, breath claimed,
The sound emerges, wounded, maimed.
She perseveres, an uphill battle,
Spectators whisper, chairs rattle.
Her colour deepens, voice shakes,
Seeks perfection, makes mistakes.
They cast their judgement, mark their score,
Perverse entertainment, wanting more.
Silence falls, she concedes,
Last remnant of strength, fades, recedes.
Emotions naked, reserve depleted,
Feigned applause, occasion defeated.

Reluctant Oration and other poems are © Fiona King

Fiona King is a married mother of four from East Cork. She is currently on career break from her job as a primary school teacher, to care for her youngest son, Adam (in picture). Adam is 3 years old, and has a genetic condition called Osteogenesis imperfecta, a brittle bone condition. In recent months, She has begun to reflect on the arrival of her precious boy into this world and has found the best way to express her thoughts and feelings through verse. From this, she wrote the poem ‘Birth’. After this creative expression, deeper reflections from my past inspired her to write further, on experiences with emotions of such gravity that they stay with her.

Irish Times report on Fiona King

‘The Music of Stones’ and other poems by Colette Colfer

February 10th, 2018

Stepping Stones

Here are my hands, outstretched for your bare feet
so that each step of your path through darkness
and gravel bits splintered with thorns will meet
uncalloused palms of moccasin softness.

This is your extraordinary journey
beyond mapped landscape and into unknowns
but my knuckles will jigsaw rocks like keys
filling locks to smooth roughness for your soles.

My hands will be luminous with love light
anticipating your transformation,
pulsating warmth for this your longest night
when each footstep is a destination.

Although you are alone you’re not alone,
I’m reaching out my hands as stepping-stones.

Anchors

I search shorelines at low tide
for portals that open time
to the pip of it.

Fingers like a blind man’s
on stones, periwinkles, chainies,
and drops of smooth blue-glass on sand.

I trace cat-gut through seaweed
to hidden hooks on feathers,
German baits, spoons and spinners.

Each rock a prayer bead
in the litany of belonging.
Pock-air, Connigeer, Shollister, Claim.

Worms

The graveyard was January grey and cold.
Dad was crying. I’d never seen him cry before.

Strangers spilled over mounds and dips,
around jaded headstones that tilted towards sleep.

Grandad was lying in a fresh coffin
with brassy handles that glinted like baubles.

I stood in my little girl knees at the frontline
by the open hole that gasped for closure.

A priest’s ragged voice led the chorus of mourners
in prayers that lifted up into the sky like birds.

Men used ropes to slowly lower the coffin
till it was anchored deep and still on the black.

Some one of them broke the shadowy silence
with the thud of a shovelful of clay on wood.

Nanna turned her back, took broken steps away,
my two sisters at her sides like crutches.

There would be worms now on Grandad’s face and clothes,
wriggling over his eyelids, into his ears, up his nose.

Afterwards, in a carful of adults who laughed and told stories,
I stared at the hedges so the whole world blurred green.

The Music of Stones

We tuned ourselves to skylark song and searched
the skies all summer for their high hovering spots
where birds trilled like semi-quavers
in the unlined stave of a hot blue sky.

We paused to stare, enthralled by dives that spliced
our days. Then satisfied we’d amble on
through sunburnt fields beside the sea towards
the lighthouse, stopping at the next birdsong.

All summer that summer we spied on skylarks,
climbed cliffs, found caves, swam skinny dips
and lay naked on reclusive sandy beaches
where you taught me that even stones can sing.

No Looking Back

Sometimes you’ve got to leave behind a place
you’ve loved since tumbling into time and go
for good, that is forever, go goodbye
without a looking back like Lot’s wife did
and died from turning, turning into salt
still standing, white dissolving in the rain

The Music of Stones and other poems are © Colette Colfer

Colette Colfer works as a part-time lecturer in world religions at Waterford Institute of Technology. She has also worked for many years in journalism and is an award winning radio documentary maker. She has had poems published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Caterpillar (for kids), Skylight 47, The Poets’ Republic, Three Drops From a Cauldron and Algebra of Owls.

Image: Sea shells (mainly the whirl shell, Zethalia zelandica) in a rock pool at Te Arai Point, Auckland, New Zealand. CC-By-ND: Avenue

Further excerpts from Paul Celan’s ‘microliths’

February 6th, 2018

16 He who transforms himself wants, being the same, to become someone else.

Shape = semblance

17 There is no such thing as the Ibolithic, you say! Well, where would we wind up if we agreed with that? For then the Lithic wouldn’t exist either, the basic Lithic, this idiom worked up with such great pains. And Paleo, Mezzo and Neo, so excellent, they too would then be as if extinguished — and — do I dare ask — where in this case would we be at? We, so proud to have managed to put the ice age behind us… Why, I heard it asked — and I hear resentment roiling in that question, yes indeed, resentment! —, Why? Was that necessary? We stand pretty now, we, those of today… Gone, our past, gone… And our future? Our future-bearing future? I’m asking, I’m not answering. Let the others, the anti-iboliths, answers. But, isn’t it so, Rumpelstiltskin, we two, you and I, we want into the Open once again, into the forest, and crossing the swath that leads to the nuclear reactor, and where the honeysuckle, so beguiling, rambles, we, despite the danger of falling into discredit, even here, we want to sing

18 Verbier, 6.25.57.

18.1 We were one flesh with the night.

18.2 In the gaze you throw at it, the looked at awakens.

19 10.26.57.

Poems are passageways. A toi de passer, Vie! [Your turn to pass through, Life!]

A paradise was indeed promised us, but to no one among us, not even to the fiercest believers, a vehicle with tail flukes, so as not to remain unnoticed on the roads up there, when the driver chauffeurs us to the confectioner’s.

21 For so much anguish, so much symbolism!

22 Hermeticism—

Certain “citizens” and the poem: They buy the surprise bag; one knows vaguely what’s in it, it won’t be much, but then it doesn’t cost much either, and if one happens to visit the fair and one has enjoyed the lady without lower- but with upper body, one’s amusement also demands this. And when what’s in it turns out — but here too the buyer’s superior humor can prove itself — to be even cheaper than cheap, there still remains the fun that all of that was “too” /[“zu” “closed”]

23 9.9.59.

…. and sounded off against his God.

these translations are © Pierre Joris

Paul Celan
Extracts from Microliths
translated by Pierre Joris
forthcoming from attem press in 2018

‘No Cure’ and other poems by Jean O’Brien

January 24th, 2018

The Dreaming

In my Dreamtime I was the lizard,
skin smooth, yet scaled
the contradictions of the Chameleon
without the colour,
for I had the colour of the rock
grey, green warm and dry as the sand.
My dance was the dance
of perfect stillness.
Reposed amongst the rocks
only my darting tongue
would betray my presence.
In the dry hot wind
the smell of raw loneliness
coming off me was like a skin
that would not form.
The desert sun is too harsh,
the hot sand like pumice
strips off the grace notes
while my skin shifts to encompass
the loss.

First published in Working the Flow, Lapwing Publications (1992)
Eds: Dennis and Rene Greig.

Smoke and Mirrors

The magnifying mirror frames her face
holds tight its reflection, throws it back at her
bright and big. The lens takes her in,
rearranges her face. It is insistent;
a moon drowned in a lake.
It has no point of view, no alchemy except a true
reverse of what it sees. Words fly from her.
The lines on her forehead and at her eyes
are granite. Ogham notched on the sharp edge,
she has become her own memorial stone.

She sees the drowned young girl,
sees that terrible fish swimming towards her.
She steps back past the tideline
her face flips over, a rush of vertigo,
a different point of view flicks into place.
Above the silver arched interior
displaced air is too thin. She has passed
the concave mirror’s focal point.
Bell, book and candle cannot hold her.
Suddenly she is Alice, topsy turvy
vanished into a land of smoke and mirrors.

*Ogham, ancient Irish script consisting of 20 characters,mainly
of lines almost like a number symbol.

First Published in Reach Lapwing Publications(2004)
Eds: Dennis and Rene Greig.

Before

This is a girl of seventeen, a side view,
seated on a swing
hung from a chestnut tree
her dress hitched by the wind

This is a picture of my mother
before I was her daughter
before her father disowned her
before she married my father
before she had six children

This was all before the swinging sixties
that could not free her
before the doctors
before the hospital stays grew longer
and longer,

before they fed the electricity
into her poor head that failed to help her
before the priest offered prayer as a cure
before the shock of her own mother’s death
hit home

This is my mother before I saw her
dead in the bed, her cold hands
clutching at air,
before life swung full circle
and could no longer hold her

This is her on that green day
skirt askew, hair streaming out,
holding the ropes of the swing taut
rushing to meet her future
arcing in the air before her.

First Published in Lovely Legs, Salmon Publishing (2009)
Ed. Jessie Lendennie

Watching for the Comet

“…for the path of comets is the path of poets:
they burn without warning…” Marina Tsvetaeva.

Towards the west a small celestial trail
spirals the sky and nets me, Jubilant
stars in its wake so pinprick bright
I could trace them with my fingertips,

Their old, cold light clusters like a chorus
chanting for the dead, all my kith and kin,
known and unknown tailing their light for me
to read in the night sky.

My head heavy like a newborn as I
stargaze. I see venus, earth’s sister
and I see the lemon moon’s
pale slice. Then I feel earth’s grip

slip from me, I am unhitched, no longer bound,
I lose my bearing in a sea of fiery stars.
Floating in the firmament I have become
an adumbrated body of falling light.

First broadcast on Sunday Miscellany, RTE Radio 1.
Producer Cliodhna Ni Anluain.

No Cure

On some far beach where earth and shoreline meet
just as the last echo of the vespers bell sounds,
a woman silhouetted in evening light,
naked but for her silver skin
slips into the water with verve.
We watch like souls waiting
to be saved

Nearby a golden Balarmy, bird of fable, flies
to where the earth and sky and water meet.
The dipping sun streaks the clouds vermilion
as his broad wings flap and gather in the slipstream
of a star, Venus or evening star.
It shines like a sinecure, useless
and with no hope for souls.

The Sargasso sea deep with floating weed
weighs the woman down. See the knobbled vertebrae
of her back as she thrashes through its clinging mess,
its seaweed dreams. The golden bird flares
above her, the curve of its beak follows
the line of her back till the bird
and the woman are one.

First Published in Lovely Legs, Salmon Publishing (2009)
Ed. Jessie Lendennie.

The Stubble Field

A tawny fox stands exposed
in the same stubble field
that last year I walked through
as ears of wheat waved and lifted
waist-high about me. Leaving me
stranded half-woman, half swaying
wheat. He trots alert in the reaped
field that stretches hugely away,
sunlight sets the rough tufted stalks
a-sparkle, he turns flailing
at an imaginary crossroad
as if the shorn wheat still billowed
around him. He pauses, sniffs the air
adjusting to the slow accumulation of loss.

We gun the car down the empty early morning
road, tarmac not yet warmed up.
The fox with nowhere to hide shelters
in studied indifference, betrayed by the rise
of fur bristling at his neck. And I recall
pushing through the fluid wheat, ripping
sticky cobwebs from my bare knees,
unable to see my feet in the dense growth:
yet sensing something, some unease
lifting my hair at the nape. We speed by,
leaving the limitations and losses
of the landscape in the mirror
as the fox zig zags across the stippled
field and we all high tail it out of there.

First Published in Merman, Salmon Publishing (2012)
Ed. Jessie Lendennie.
No Cure and other poems are © Jean O’Brien

Jean O’Brien’s New & Selected, Fish on a Bicycle is her fifth collection and was published by Salmon Poetry in 2016. She is an award-winning poet, having won, amongst others, The Arvon International Poetry Award and the Fish International, most recently she was Highly Commended for the Forward Prize. She is one of the 2018 recipients of the Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowships. Her work is widely published and anthologised. She holds an M.Phil for Trinity College, Dublin and tutors in Creative Writing.

‘It Was I’ and other poems by Dolonchampa Chakraborty

January 16th, 2018


Perfect Storm

I look at my palm 
It’s full of scars, crosses and half-lines
        Neither money nor the life line is full
        Index finger bends a lot 
Which means I’m not rigid enough

Fingers of my feet are not feminine
A desirable bride would have 
Different set of feet. 

These are my favourite though
    They ran through the paddy fields
    Bent over the pond and picked lotus
    Danced in the rain 
To collect rhythm 
That would later become baskets 
Of rose and gardenia,
I now share with monsoon 

I hold them in the palm of my hands 
Doors of the seashore-huts open 
Children run out 

They come running towards me, 
The water and salt
The wooden boat 
And the grey bundle of clouds

They come running towards a perfect storm
 
The storm that will destroy the lines of nothingness
From every little palm


Lighthouse
 
I saw you beside the ocean, 
counting steps
Found you inside the lighthouse, 
Seasoning waves
 
Watched you through the storm, 
floating off the shore
 
In my silent cry 
I became the moonlight mirror 
And touched you—pining for more


Obituary 

It’s easy to write an obituary 
Of someone you left unheard
On a footbridge 

The story of an unfinished tree
Brewed with pain of freshly broken leaves
Untold

Drops of rain on your shoes and tie
Half dried by an oblivious bite 
Of a half-eaten moon 
Unseen

It’s easy to write off somebody 
With an obituary 
A death that happened 
By some careless notes of time


Summer 

A well is built beside a temple 
	Between straw houses 

Footsteps are born and erased 
Like daughters 
	And wild flowers
 
Moon-shaped souls 
	Serene, yet dry 
Walk behind their shadows 
Along the fishermen’s cry


It was I 

The girl who was burnt for dowry today
        It was I 
The girl foetus inside her body which was burnt too
	It was I 
The new-born girl who was abandoned in a trash bag 
        It was I  
They were nobody’s daughter 


The girl who was not paid her daily wage 
       It was I 
The girl who was paid less than her husband 
       It was I 
The girl who was not allowed to join a job
As her husband’s boss
	It was I 
They were nobody’s sister


The girl who was raped by colleagues 
	It was I 
The girl who was molested by an auto driver 
	It was I 
The girl who was pushed to bed by a filmmaker 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s lover 


The girl who wasn’t privileged by her right to education 
	It was I 
The girl who never got the privacy of a healthy sanitation 
	It was I 
The girl who went from one kitchen to the other 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s pride 


The girl who couldn’t practise her right to marry 
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t practise her right to separate   
	It was I 
The girl who suffered a fruitless marriage 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s wife 


The girl who was sold by one
	It was I 
The girl who was bought by thousands 
	It was I 
The girl who made herself a sex-slave 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s friend 


The girl who sold her womb 
	It was I 
The girl who sold her baby 
	It was I 
The girl who made her baby an orphan 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s shelter 


The girl who was tortured in custody 
	It was I 
The girl who was beaten by a homemaker 
	It was I 
The girl who danced in a strip club 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s armour 


The girl who gulped her tears
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t shed one 
	It was I 
The girl who got a slap on her tears
	It was I 
They were nobody’s precious  


The girl who slept on a footpath
	It was I 
The girl who slept in old-age home 
	It was I 
The girl who was kept hungry by her son 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s world 


Still, the girl who refuses to lose
	It is I 
The girl who refuses to drown or burn
	It is I 
The girl who fights back to victory
	It is I 
The girl who wants to float and fly 
	It is I 
The girl who is the lover of a gnome
	It is I 
The girl who forgets the obscure junctions 
	It is I 
The girl who pushes the darkness back into oblivion 
	It is I 
It is me who takes your hand and walks with you 
We make a destiny through the late night dew.

It was I and other poems are © Dolonchampa Chakraborty

Dolonchampa Chakraborty graduated in Calcutta and now studies Human Resources in Cornell University, Ithaca. She writes poetry in Bengali and has published two books of poetry. She is a freelance translator and editor working for United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and several other organisations. Her poems have been published in prestigious Indian Literature, a bi-monthly journal by the Sahitya Akademi of India among others. She has been a panelist in the Samanvay Lit Fest. For two years, she has edited The Nilgiri Wagon, a literary journal that focuses on translating literature of Indian and other languages into English. She is passionate about languages. Currently, she is learning Kashmiri and leading a translation project of Syrian Poetry into Bengali.

‘Briar Notes’ and other poems by Marian Kilcoyne

January 9th, 2018

Spectre

When I saw you, the earth went silent
and the chattering birds sawed off their
beaks. The breeze hushed and gulped into
itself. If there was a cicada, it choked on a
stone. The trees donned black tie and
straightened up while the mouse, mole, and hedgehog
died in their sleep. The fox darted further into the
amaranthine garden, nose quivering, inhaling fright.
When I saw you, the moon strangled the sun, then
spat upon the stars. Now, see what you have done.

First published in The Frogmore Papers (ed. Jeremy Page).

Girl

Since I saw the girl who does not eat,
or trade in food currency, to keep the
breath even, or the gaze straight. Since
then. Since then ago to now, I cannot
bear to watch a robin hopping nervously
on skinny legs, or jaunting around the
patio, perilously balanced.
Averting my eyes from the bird, I think
of her. No part of her was right. I wondered
if when she crossed her clanking legs, she felt
her skeletal reality, but there was no room in
her for thoughts. None. Her spider web being
flushed all joy from me that day. How heavy her
head must be, I thought.

First published in Cyphers (ed. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Macdara Woods).

Briar Notes

Faster than light or sound
the night star slinked, arced
and shot to a spot in the
clayground, festooned with
spiky plant.
When my time comes, I want
to slink, arc and shoot to bog
and botanist paradise. My only
witness, the white line of the
shore and the visitor fox holding
his breath.

First published in Prelude, NY (ed. Robert C.L. Crawford,
Stu Watson).

Liebeslied *

Marsh brown fields clutch bog cotton
in fairy clusters, while the Heron lands.
Its harsh ‘kaark’ a battle cry, shaving
peace from a hazy afternoon. In a moment, you
are born over and over again to this Atlantic
refuge with its teeming silver hues; safe place & padlock.
Close the eyes now to sounds of breaking waves
on the shore. The smell of it, the teasing umami taste
of it on lips forming words. The commotion.

*Love song. From the German
First published in Prelude, NY (ed. Robert C.L. Crawford,
Stu Watson)

The Heart Uncut

It’s strange how you sleep well now,
twice removed from land and self.
Strange how the prairie of your face
eludes me. Lately I wish you well, or
as well as mint beetles are liked by
many. With detached regard.
Stranger still, the way time holds you
and carries you alive through owlish
afternoons, your breath a lattice flung
upon a thousand vistas. Strange how a
fearful ego can remain intact, the
heart uncut. But listen, I want to know
if your spirit has healed? Have you
aligned peace with being, and have
I made myself clear? Finally.

First published in Right Hand Pointing, US (ed. Dale Wisely).

Briar Notes and other poems © Marian Kilcoyne

Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer based on the west coast of Ireland. She has, in the past, been a teacher at senior level, worked professionally in education and management for an Aids Organization, and reviewed fiction and non-fiction for the Sunday Business Post, Ireland. She attended the Seamus Heaney Centre summer school at Queens University Belfast in 2013. She has been published or is forthcoming at Prelude (US), The Louisville Review (US), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Crannog (IRL), Ofi Press (Mexico), Frogmore Papers (UK), Cyphers( IRL), Apalachee Review (US), Foliate Oak Literary Magazine (US,) New Contrast (Cape Town), Quiddity (US), Right Hand Pointing (US), Grey Sparrow Journal (US), Off The Coast (US), The Galway Review (IRL), The Liner (US), Into The Void (IRL), Roanoke Literary Journal (US), The Rockhurst Review (US), Banshee Literature (IRL), The Catamaran Literary Reader (US), The Worcester Review (US), The Stonecoast review (US), The Main St Rag, (US), Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, (US), and others. She was short listed for the 2017 Dermot Healy International prize for poetry.

Marian Kilcoyne’s website

Merry Christmas 2017 Dear Poethead Readers!

December 22nd, 2017

Poethead will return in January 2018, moving into its tenth year platforming women poets, their editors and their translators. I will be reading and responding to your submissions in the intervening period. Thank you for your emails, your queries, your support and responses over these 9 years. It is heartening and wonderful to have such engaged and friendly people along for the ride.

Read Women Poets

and then some

‘Invisible Insane’ and other poems by Afric McGlinchey

December 20th, 2017

Traces

You can’t decide, you keep glancing
between two lines of thought
the whole length of the tree-hung street;
and you recognise someone saying your name,
and you go right up to the moment,
right up to the third person within you,
but they’re a different shape
in some essential way,
and you re-read your traces,
like a tree, stroking
its silver leaves against the wind
a tree in the cold,
a tree its own breath.

First published in Tears in the Fence (Ed. David Caddy)

On the Road to Westport

I’m trying to shift
focus to the brain, but my heart’s driven
all the blood to my gut, which is churning.
Didn’t know that I’d lost it, till I found
myself halfway to Westport, following you,
a BLT in my lap, cappuccino
in the console, cats’ eyes leering. On the stereo,
Oblivion.
You knew all about the racing start
of the heart, then the skidding halt at the trespass.
I race onward, into the dark,
letting my terror be for the bends I’m going round.
It feels like some sort of countdown.
Eleven years ago, I thought about the lesson
I’d learnt from you. Had it at the start
of the journey, alongside this pot
of gladioli, flashing their bravado.
Sit tight, I tell them. We’re taking off.
You knew all about hitting the road
in a rage. The time you rocked
up at our student digs, surprising me and the lads–
and you didn’t bat an eye when you found
I was sharing a room with one. The fellas
adored you, the way you flirted, sitting on the counter
top, impressing them with your rugby know-how.
Praising Robbie for his cooking.
Four long days of liberation,
swimming in the sea
with a boogie board, margaritas
on the roof. Then, you tucked
tail for home. Ah, mum.
I only know that it’s Westport I’m going to,
because I passed the signs three weeks ago.
How long have I been on auto?
See the shovel in the footwell? It’s to honour
a runaway rebel. I’m going to plant
these brazen beings on your grave.
Then follow through.

Invisible insane

‘It was always the other way round’
– Margaret Atwood

Not merging
with your reflection in a shop window,
or your shadow up against a wall,
or three-legged jaywalking
across the city’s
huddled roundabouts –
but no matter where,
there’s no getting you out
of my mind.
After all, our planet’s just a snowglobe
for the angels.
Are you google earthing me?
Is that you I can hear,
between bells, faintly?

(‘Invisible insane’ is Google Translate’s Japanese version of the English proverb: ‘out of sight, out of mind.’)

Storm, passing

All kinds of things are happening to me.
Skin’s becoming scaly, forehead a terrain of anthills,
and my feet are stiffening as though belonging to a corpse!
Hair’s falling out of course. And there’s my vision.
I try to read, but words swirl
in little whirlwinds on the page;
even when they’re behaving, I feel
I’m gazing at some complicated log of random numbers.
Enough of this I say aloud, take to the beach –
perhaps it’s distance my eyes are seeking.

But there I find fish tumbling from the sky,
myself face up in a clump of seaweed
foamy wavelets eddying about me.
Almost blinding,
the light is different from what I’m used to.
and I wonder if I’m dreaming,
back in the southern hemisphere,
if this sinking will have a rising too.
The next cat out the bag’s
a girl, fifteen or so,

standing, mouth ajar,
saying nothing.
A mackerel on my belly, flapping.
I see her stare,
want to reach a hand, see if I can touch her
but suddenly she’s not there, and I come to,
still lying in damp sand like a heavy log.
There’s nothing for it but to roll over,
watch the water gouge a groove
where my body’s been.

Back home, I make a cup of tea.
The kettle boils. I lift a green mug from a hook
pour, and squeeze a lemon in.
So far, so good. I wash pots and plates, utensils.
Stare out at laundry, ponder.
The light is dimming and a rush of heat comes over me.
A massive bank of thunderclouds controls the sky.
I put on headphones, turn up the volume,
dance until my body feels fifteen. Rain pounds against the window.
I close the blinds, keep dancing.

(First published in the Italian journal, Inkroci. Ed. Sara Sagroti)

In an instant of refraction and shadow

A plane floats overhead,
lethargically as feathers.
Egyptian cotton billows.
A train somewhere whistles.
You aren’t happy, he tells me,
until you consider yourself
happy.

The afternoon light is falling
in a diagonal the length of the floor.
An arrowed line
of black gun powder.
I follow it, feel him
brace for it, my familiar cry…
and then I’m migrating, I’m gone
and there’s only grief here.

(First published in Poetry Ireland Review, ed. Eavan Boland)

Imprint

i

it overwhelms me, an instant of ocean,
delayed grief for the lost years

ii

i dream you back into existence
i dream you back into
i dream you back
I dream you
I dream

iii

i follow you to an unknowable past, mama
each detail of the journey becoming a magnified ignorance
it’s taken this long to find that a solitary walk can result in a headful of light;
returning, i step into my footprints, a kind of retrieval …
cradled in a closed palm, the ring of plaited light

iv

i write until my fingers bleed, i write out my sorrow,
i write into the terror of forgetting

v

listening to leaves settle, like the drift of a gown on ceramic tiles,
telling you: i think of you, sometimes,
and the sky is infinite, maybe.

First published in Southword (ed. Leanne O’Sullivan)

Afric McGlinchey is a multi-award winning West Cork poet, freelance book editor, reviewer and workshop facilitator. She has published two collections, The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon, 2012) and Ghost of the Fisher Cat (Salmon, 2016), the former of which was also translated into Italian by Lorenzo Mari and published by L’Arcolaio. McGlinchey’s work has been widely anthologized and translated, and recent poems have been published in The Stinging Fly, Otra Iglesia Es Imposible, The Same, New Contrast, Numéro Cinq, Poetry Ireland Review, Incroci, The Rochford Street Journal and Prelude. In 2016 McGlinchey was commissioned to write a poem for the Breast Check Clinic in Cork and also for the Irish Composers Collective, whose interpretations were performed at the Architectural Archive in Dublin. Her work has been broadcast on RTE’s Poetry Programme, Arena, Live FM and on The Poetry Jukebox in Belfast. McGlinchey has been awarded an Arts Council bursary to research her next project, a prose-poetry auto-fictional account of a peripatetic upbringing.

Invisible Insane and other poems are © Afric McGlinchey

Website: www.africmcglinchey.com
Ghost of the Fisher Cat: http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=380&a=221