   These poems were first published by Tears in The Fence and are © Kimberly Campanello |
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Kimberly
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Campanello
Strange Country can be bought from Penny Dreadful Publications |
Category: Art
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I very rarely add petitions on Poethead, but in the case of The Abbey Theatre’s baffling exclusion of women artists from the 1916-2016 Centenary I am willing to make an exception for a number of days. The issue of authority in the literary arts has always been problematic in Ireland. In poetry, in literature, and now in theatre it is usual for exclusions to occur. That exclusion is hurtful, demeaning and abusive is too much for me. That I saw my heroine Olwen Fouéré holding up a bit of paper calling for parity of esteem this morning has really angered me. They should be throwing roses at her feet. The idea that a skewed exclusionary narrative represents the intellectual and creative development of the idea of ‘State’ is not on. It is not acceptable. Eavan Boland referred to the absence of women artists in the canon as a ‘suppressed narrative’, there are too many fine Irish women artists for this type of exclusion to manifest at critical junctures in state celebratory events, in this instance a centenary event.
Petitioning The Board of The Abbey Theatre, #WakingTheFeminists – Equality for women in Irish theatre
Background: On Wednesday 28 October, the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s National Theatre, launched its programme to mark the centenary of the 1916 Rising – an event that ultimately led to the founding of the Irish State. The Abbey Theatre and its members were actively involved in both the Rising itself and the debates around the founding of the Republic.
1 out of the 10 plays programmed in the 2016 programme are written by a woman – 3 out of 10 are directed by women. #WakingtheFeminists is a campaign by Irish artists to demand change of the systems that allow for such chronic under-representation of the work of women artists at the Abbey Theatre, and in Irish theatre generally.
From : Sign the Petition
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Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, by Diego Velasquez (1617-1618)
For Máire Holmes
Through the serving hatch, or silent butler,
The Christ is seen at the moment of revelation,
While the maid, in the foreground, averts her eyes
From the immediate task at hand.The bowl, which is falling from the table,
Like a globe, and which has just startled her
Is certainly for mixing the ingredients;
As the garlic lying temptingly to her side would testify.With it, no doubt, the contents of the mortar;
Pepper and the ‘fine spice’ to add to her
Dobladura De Carnero – Hercules being
Mythologised in the toasted hazelnuts.Circumnavigating the room, bread breaks to thunder clap,
And the bowl erupts at the announcement of the returning of the lamb.Dies Solis…
An unseen yellow dwarf, over one million KMs
In diameter, transforming 620 million mega tons
Of hydrogen into helium per second, in a process
Of thermo nuclear fusion, generates luminance,
Which is transported upon solar winds,
Taking eight minutes and sixteen seconds to touch
The earth.Such are the scientific facts behind revelation.
And, such is how a particular convent in Seville
Was illuminated for the painter Diego Velasquez,
When he painted the Moorish model la mulata in his depiction
Of the events at Emmaus, in the early seventeenth century.Although these astonishing figures only in part explain
The accident which is about to happen.Janus- His Mistress Responds
“O man magicked Evil with the first pelvic thrusts,
His Juju Daemon damning up my hulls, with bull lust.
And the dawn shall have even more repugnant abominations
To daily chide us our births, beavers flailed and strung
Up alive, all screaming in Pythagorean mode, orchestrated
By Saint Saëns, though handless, on one of Cliquot’s organs-
The lacerated tongues of Siberian Cossack, the voice makers
To windpipe his Te deum. While, in Saint James Gate,
Minos is housed, his dark spirit fermenting, anticipating
The precious imperial measure, when he too will be poured only
To lie like Mercury on the glass floor for the sons and daughters
Fore-score, to raise and cheer before the storm blows out the old year.
And there, in table-breaking, earth momentum pound,
Rupture, shag, break the hell hound’s round.”And Agamemnon Dead
The ovarian arms is the true embrace of all
Horizontal extension; Fuck elevation –
The systematic bureaucratisation
Of all phallocentric concentration !Plato is truly the author to be despised,
The cunt of cunts ! I seek to undermine
Your perfect calibration, decode or unravel
The genetic-social cuntstruck.Around the two burn the Herakleteon fire,
Which we both step into, lost among
The panorama of Ephesus.Through the equalling stratagem of the walk,
With you, muse, finally off your pedestal,
We can perhaps begin to walk together into our future.Janus- His Mistress Responds and other poems are © Peter O’Neill from Dublin Gothic (Kilmog Press, 2015)
Peter O’ Neill (1967) was born in Cork where he grew up before moving to live in France in the nineties. He returned to Dublin in 1998, where he has been living ever since. He has been writing poetry since the eighties, and has been published in reviews in Ireland, USA, UK and France. His debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry, 2013) was critically acclaimed: ‘certainly a voice to be reckoned with.’ Dr Brigitte Le Juez (Dublin City University). With over six collections behind him, he is currently translating Les Fleurs Du Mal. His second collection ‘The Elm Tree’ was published by Lapwing Press in 2014.
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Testudo
A bone-hard carapace,
a shell cast on a hot shore,
emptied by the labour
of leaving the nurturing
sea, scraping broad ribbons
up the sand’s glassy slope .
Gasping, digging a damp hole,
she lays round, sticky eggs,
a hundred leathery balls.
Then spent, noon-dried,
she dies, picked clean
by quick scavengers.
Her hatchlings flail
and scuttle towards
the sea, led by the
gazing moon, their plates
small patterned
purses, hardened
in the rich sea-soup
into a vaulted chamber
built to the blueprints
of this old architecture.
Published in Visual Verse
Blackbird
The blackbird sits, a smudge
in the prickly hedge, stooped,
wings and tail all downward.
I want to touch him, to feel
the quick, warm shape
in a cage of bare branches.
What does a bird fluffed
against the cold see
in his crouched stillness?
If I could grasp him by
his ashy back, hold his whole
breathing body in my hand
what would the soft bones
tell me, the barbed primaries
and the mite-infested down?
The bird stirs, and now
shows a bead, a pinhead eye,
a beak ripening to yellow.
Then the sudden thrust
out of the damp bush,
the perfect trajectory.
This was his first lesson,
the enactment of his ease.
Submitted to The Rialto Poetry competition, February 2015
Dancer, after Yinka Shonibare, ‘Girl Ballerina’
I am tailored, buttoned, piped,
the colonist’s clothes a tight fit
round my slim child’s waist.
Net and frills, my costume’s
a good girl’s best party dress.
But am I a welcome guest
or a blackface clown?
Headless, I say nothing.
I am a dancer’s body
in a pair of cotton shoes.
I am a sister to Marie, the wax
and bronze work of M Degas,
shiny, moulded on a frame
of pipes and paintbrushes.
Called monkey, Aztec,
a medical specimen,
the flower of depravity.
I am ten, to her fourteen, and so,
you could say, innocent.
My neat bodice of East India
Batiks is the bright stuff
of conquest, traded from
Batavia to Benin and now
spread across south London stalls.
My Brixton market wardrobe,
my new flags, my hopeful anthems.
Hands behind my back,
my finger resting on the trigger.
Submitted to Faber New Poets competition, January 2015
Imogen Forster is a freelance translator, mainly of art history, from French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan. She translated one of the French volumes for the new edition of Vincent van Gogh’s Letters published by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, in 2009. She has published poems on-line, and in a number of magazines. -
L’Heure Bleu
a dwell in the night a, sigh. a dervish dislodged a textile, sigh
it is the night it is a night on earth the hedges prematurely in
bloom with almost lightning, flowers so, white and optic so,opioid
a scent as some people sit on a bench and conspicuous leaves on
the forestrial floor. oak moss and waterlily release pungent smells
as pungent as sexual. it is the blue hour between love and war,
dark mosses vessels almost for some astral war, the trail of laurel
and pittosporum the navigational mappology by which we float as in,
an unseen jar a headspace placed on the venezolan roraima to catch
this petite star orchids’ unbelievable strong pineapplescent. as
the classic perfumes however stay true to a private royaume along
forgotten paths in venezuela, brazil, malaysia and italy, guerlain’s
famous perfume l’heure bleue stays true to its 1912 formula…..L’Heure Bleue is © Aad de Gids
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*L’Heure Bleue or ‘the bluish hour’ was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912. The fragrance is velvety soft and romantic, it is a fragrance of bluish dusk and anticipation of night, before the first stars appear in the sky. The top notes are opening with spicy-sweet aniseed and fresh bergamot that gently lead to the heart of rose, carnation, tuberose, violet, and neroli. The soft and powdery floral notes are resting on a base of vanilla, Tonka bean, iris and benzoin. The perfume is mysterious, elegant and timeless. It was created by Raymond Guerlain. The bottle is shaped like the one of Mitsouko and the stopper is shaped like a hollow heart that alludes to romantic pre-war years. [fragrantica]Famine Ship at Murrisk Abbey *
‘L’heure bleue’ for Aad de Gids
That almost night
at Murrisk Abbey.
Darkness begins to drop
its black capillaries, its ink blots.
Rorschach animals ink sky’s ultramarine
seeping their blue tones into the sea.
The reek looms above Murrisk Abbey.
Altared, a blown bouquet
tissues its stem toward
the famine ship,
bone-souldered
its graven skeletons
knit ‘ship’
it baulks the dark,
blacker than the fallen sky,
the fairylight houses.
Blacker still than stone.
by C. Murray
* The National Famine Memorial by John Behan RHA at Murrisk, Co Mayo
Aad de Gids is from Schiedam, Netherlands. He works as a psychiatric nurse. trance the ibisworld by Aad de Gids is available on Poethead. He has co-authored Machinations (KFS Press) an ekphrastic collaboration with Michael McAloran soon to be reissued via Oneiros Books , and a text collaboration Code #4 Texts (Oneiros Books, 2014). His chapbook acryl lacquer lost in the forest was published by Bone Orchard Press in 2014.Books by Aad de Gids
acryl lacquer lost in the forest
Code #4 Texts 
Machinations -
Sequences — (After Francis Bacon)
2…meat unto collapse/ stead lapse/ the lung’s abort in headless barrage the head is/ traces the/ meat’s sarcophagus is the light surrounding/ the forms that bind the subject-object/being in this from onset’s claim/ the stripping down of/ in gradual of irreversible/ meat does not climb it cannot/ it/ blind limit of/ in/ in conflict there its sense fed to the/ nausea all in the face of/ the sunken eye divulged of meat/ the meat that is the figure’s construct/ gallowing from bone/ opulent the sickness-pity for/from unsung/ carved out of/movement through nothing the flesh/ clamouring/ cascading yet inward and then yet none/ the laughter of the meat is silent/ the its’ cajole/ meat’s blood spills out of vacuum presence/ meat is not void the head is void in conflict there the meat devoid of/ un-sound…
3…the piss/ cum/ shit of celebratory nothing/ the ruptured meat weeps from the skin’s bind/ bound upon as if it/ or/ in that/ celebratory excavations before the foot of none/ meat’s saving graces in ejaculative/ voidal/ or the introspect of needle/ cunt penetrate/ rectal/ the mutilation of/ meat is the worst possible beginning-ending/ it/ other than/ the head lopped off sings to the solar anus of the eye’s mind percept/ though of or or/ not from the give or the taking from of flesh/ is it/ the head is bone the body boned yet/ unto the sky there is no end it perceives the flesh null and void/ yet in the meat of the percept/ even the fault of which applies/ the whole is not correct merely because it is of the exist/ it does not burn unless it is set to/ light…
4…object of/ scar tissue silences/ yet/ meat stings of the echo-wound/ the bound devour of in/ meat has forgotten/ the head as object desires the other it/ all stripped/ sung from the broken amulets of memory’s shades of silent wasteland/ yet the meat/ still scarred/ collapses under the weight of/ consumption/ because it be/ it can yet be other/ it cannot be other than without choice/ the meat sings blood and sense yet it does not sing of final/ meat is arbitrary/ it sings in pleasure yet it does not sing aloft/ but in the expulsion of desire/ in which none is known/ terms wishes granted it/ dragging out the carcass of it into the light flaying the spectral knowledge/ the meat suffers/ it is a rabid dog in the midst of silence/ seeking to be annihilate/ yet…
5…fleshed on in-step/ bled from/ what is it/ this/ in this is felt yet no/ not of/ in animus of collective taste/ the bleed of asking yet/ bound to/ the face’s demolition/ the smearing of/ hence it lacking identic/ special all as if reverberating sound in cylindrical/ yet meat’s taste is of the flesh it/ sombre ash in the guts/ in the defecate of that already final/ as for the mock bind of sex the interchange and shift of parameter/ meat still yet entwined in the tint of desire’s persistent edge/ all spun together between the animal and the/ obscenely bound to the nothing that is/ if/ where from yet in grip of marrow beneath the flesh’s desertion in/ else never truly penetrating/ the cock lacking the hyenic bone will/ legs splayed/ a cunt exposed/ a rectum/ skinned the purpose of in the thrust of meat and the beckoning void/ of it…
6…the escape from flesh/ momentarily through flesh the loss of being in/ subtle cataract of none/ escapade of/ the blood coming to the eyes the cum coming to the fore/ blind-sighted/ then/ yes or no/ base flesh and the blood-red passage through night/ in machinate of/over again as if to/ yet never the escape from/ not conscious deliverance nor conscious bite/ having bitten the wick between anguish and desire/ chased by the none of exigency and lack/ of final edge and of/ red raw yet no/ of the blood no unless asked of/ the flayed will reduced to ashen/ scar a long the indent of emblem bitten dredge/ the frenzy of/…/all the while the meat slowly erased/ in definite stead/ the sense of final and over and again/ until/ bled out from circus tint of blood/ bone lack…
Sequences — (After Francis Bacon) is © Michael McAloran
Image is © Michael McAloranMichael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His work has appeared in various zines and magazines, including ditch, Gobbet Magazine, Ygdrasil, Establishment, Unlikely Stories, Stride Magazine, Underground Books, InterPoetry, etc. He has authored a number of chapbooks, including The Gathered Bones, (Calliope Nerve Media), Final Fragments, (Calliope Nerve Media) & Unto Naught, (Erbacce-Press). A full length collection of poems, Attributes, was published by Desperanto in 2011. Lapwing Publications, (Ireland), released a collection of his poems, The Non Herein in 2012. The Knives, Forks & Spoons Press, (U.K), also released an ekphrastic book of text/ art, Machinations & Oneiros Books released In Damage Seasons and All Stepped/ Undone in 2013. A further collection Of Dead Silences, was published by Lapwing Publications. His most recent publications are The Zero Eye and Of the Nothing Of (Oneiros Books). He is the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Zine and he edits for Oneiros Books. -
The House of Altogether Nothing
The countryside in which it stands
Is broken with large jagged rocks.
Its trees are dark, from northern lands,
Whose branches scratch the sky; boney bough knocks
One against the other. Cold winds finger through
Odd strands of captured human hair,
Torn newspaper strips look as if they grew
Amongst the leaves to bleakly declare
Of violence and despair. Black groves smell
Of damp decay. They display white fungoid growth
Through which black insects grope, explore a shell
Deserted by a snail that caps its glowing trail. One is loathe
To venture near this place of threats
But winding through dead leaves, broken rubble
Is the path where stumble those, full of regrets,
Replete with fears, burdened with trouble,
Pass to reach the house. Its peaks and walls
Assault the sky like a cataclysmic scream,
Intertwined grotesqueries that captures and enthralls
Those destined to drop into its dream.
The weary travelers approach in single file, one by one,
Trudge to the door which swings open wide.
They know their journey’s almost done.
They tremulously step inside.
Halfway down the long bare hall
Their head is seen to wobble, shake.
Comes now a groan, a gasp. Then the fall.
It thumps and rolls. The arms quake
And drop as well. The torso tumbles,
Then the legs topple like loose lumber.
The parts now chute in sliding jumbles
Through a hole in the floor. Nothing left to encumber
The next traveler. The house re-opens its front door.
The upper stories flicker, luminesce.
Moonlight glistens. Something rises to soar
From out a square chimney – glaucus, incandesce
To dissipate like spectral steam.
Something wakens from a dream.The House of Altogether Nothing is © Jan Sand
These images are © Jan Sand 
Rains
There are rains that drag fog skirts
Across the country-side in stealthy hiss,
That, gently, in determination
Dampens down the grass with sodden kiss
Of sky to earth as caring as a mother
Calms her resting child.
There are rains of panicked horses’ hooves
That illuminate their stampede
With angry lightning flashing on black roofs
While trees sway and shudder in dismay
And water demons pound on window panes.
But some rains come and merely sit
And drum in steady patient siege,
Work soft hammers on the dents and wrinkles of the day
Smoothing anger and distress to flat peace,
Tempt shy dreams to peek from hidden thoughts
And welcome in safe surrender to sleep’s releaseRains is © Jan Sand
2 Am
The early black
Is still unstirred
By yawning morning.
The ceiling fills
With predatory thoughts,
Like quiet children
Come to play
Their silent games,
Poking sticks into
Dark passages
Of forgotten memories;
Memories like frightened mice
That scurry off in panic.
The sadly moaning bell
Sixty years ago on a lonely buoy
Shrugging its shoulders
In a choppy sea.
A special purple
Strangely found on both
An apron and a stub of clay
In kindergarten.
The round eyed stare
Frozen to my mother’s face
As cancer pain
Prodded her to certain death.
A pet white rat curled in snoozeOn my pillow by my cheek.
The falling crescent moon
Smiles in my window
Like my long gone mother
Soothing me
Back to the peace of sleep.2 am is © Jan Sand
Jan Sand is originally a New Yorker. Currently a resident of Helsinki, Finland. Having read and enjoyed his poetry at Open Salon, I requested some work for Poethead.Bio: I am a former industrial designer formerly a New Yorker, now retired and living in Helsinki, Finland. I have been writing poetry for several decades but am more or less unpublished except at a couple of web sites run by acquaintances met on the web. I know no other poets but take up my time with graphics and poetry and innovative cooking and baking and learning Finnish and relating to the wild animals in my area.
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Cut Neck by Zarina Zabrisky CUT NECK
HE (standing with a razor in one hand, a photograph in the other)
This neck connects
Her head to her body.
Her true self
To the garden of her delight
I should have married
A real woman
A woman
Who acts like a wife
Whose head belongs to me
Just like her body
A woman
Made of my rib
A woman
Out of whose rib
I was made
A mother
My mother
Not a phantom of a woman
With curves as lovely
As love itself
But with the eyes
Of a statue
Looking inside
Not outside
Not at me.
Fragmented reality.
Snatches of dreams.
Swimming in light
Silvery outlines shimmer
Close yet elusive
To catch them
I slash on her neck
With my razor
Dividing her head from her body
Photographic blood
Bursts
Burns my fingers.
I kill her
To make her mine
SHE (enters, he doesn’t see her)
You slashed at my neck
With your razor
You wanted my body dead, obedient,
Only yours,
Still desired by everyone,
Yet your toy
Your property.
My dear,
My neck is a living bean-stalk
It shoots for the sky
A rail-track for the train of my song
A beam of light
A telescopic snake
One thousand burning giraffes
Up and up only,
Away from you,
Away from any man.
So high
That all you can see
Are parts of me only:
Lips. Eyes. Tears.
Neck. Breasts. Hips.
Fragmented reality
Floating in violet sky
Oblivious to your lust.
No knife will help you.
I am not to be butchered.
I am not to be owned.
HE (looks out the window)
It is not the sun in the skies
It is lust.
Spread over the horizon
Like a snake,
Like a trap
Waiting to open,
These lips will devour you.
You think it is love
But it is death.
You think it is lovely
But it is evil.
I observe it
My photographic lens
Opens and shuts
The only way to survive
Is art.
SHE
In your fantasy
These lips are for kisses
For flaming touches
Flesh to flesh
Feeling flushed
Fiery
Full
Dear, my lips will devour you
Drink you
Drain you
Dry you
To the last drop
To your death
But not with love.
My lips are not for loving
Not for feasts
Nor for flesh
Nor for you
Nor for any other man
To own
My lips are for singing
For sounds so sinful
So strong so scary
They singe you
With music
Seal you
Steal you
Slice you
Scar you
Kill you
HE
Some women
Are songs
Not bodies
Screams
Not lovers
Sirens
SHE (laughing)
Tie yourself
To the mast
Blind yourself
Flee for your life,
Brave hero
My body is me
But I am not my body
Do not deconstruct me
Do not serve me on your plate
Do not attempt to consume me
Do not enter me as a mirror
Look into me first
Do not look at me
Listen to me, hear me, know me
For when you know me
You know you
HE (looks into the mirror)
When I try to go though your mirror
All I do
Is cut my hands
Your beauty was created to ruin the world
but the world will ruin your beauty
One thousand ships launched by you
Into the space of eternity
Never return
You send them to death
SHE
yet without me
you are never alive
THE VOICE OF SPACE
Like empty hangers
These lovers’ story never unfolds
It doesn’t exist anymore
yet it is here
Suspended in the air
Swinging in the draft
In the indeterminate place
The fur on the imaginary fur coats
ripples like waves
Heaves like breasts of sleeping beasts
This transparent narrative
Is magic carpet rich.
Invisible threads of him and her
Create the pattern
of eternity
RED RAIN AND RAZORS
this window is so dim
the garden outside looks wet
as if it is raining
it is not
i can see streams of water
pouring down the empty yard
and down the alley,
yet the asphalt is dry
light grey
pigeon grey
the asphalt is cracking
like a desert
yet what are those torrents in the yard
I’m calm
nothing hurts inside or outside
the yard is empty
the gate is swinging
and the water is flowing
yet it’s dry, so dry
but the trees are crying
I see roses and some flowers i don’t know
swaying and crying
the invisible rain keeps pounding on my head now
how loud is this rain
I look at the dry coffee table outside
at two empty cups
filling with the invisible rain
here comes the fire engine
the siren is deafening
I can’t hear it
but I see it
it is red
it is fire
the fire engine is here
to put out the rain
this red rain
here comes the police car
to arrest the red rain
here is the ambulance
they say it’s for me
I’m not in pain
yes this is a razor
but there is no blood
you must be blind
doctor
there is no rain
there is no fire
there is no blood
there is no love
and I’m not dying
I’m dead
I feel nothing
red rain and razors, cut neck and the voice of space are © Zarina Zabrisky
Author’s note :
I am attaching my poems from the series “Cut Neck” inspired by Man Ray and Lee Miller and first performed at the SF Legion of Honour Museum at the exhibition Man Ray/Lee Miller-Partners in Surrealism.I was lucky enough to read next to Man Ray’s “Lips” but that performance was not taped, unfortunately. It was my favorite reading setting. I attach the images that have inspired the “Cut Neck” and “The Voice of Space” by Man Ray and the photographs of performing next to them. It was a very special moment in my artistic life.
There is a video of these poems performed in the Upper Gallery of the Museum. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gC4kjPh5Mc
If this video is too long, there is also a performance of “Cut Neck” only, by Simon Rogghe and myself to the music from a surrealist film “L’Etoile De Mer.” (also performed at the exhibit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2PEAKmE_VcZabrina Zabrisky -
of the nothing of.
Paperback: 182 Pages
Oneiros Books 2014
Cover is © Tadhg Murray
…I genuflect to nothing, in a vacancy of shit..
(from of the none exposed)
Michael McAloran’s of the nothing of is subtly related to another of his works with Oneiros Books All Stepped/Undone. While both collections have a loosely tripartite structure, in of the nothing of McAloran is pushing into the realm of the psyche, and attempting its full expression.
In essence of the nothing of moves from a griefscape like in All Stepped/Undone toward expressing the disembodied voice. It is a work largely sited in the telling of the physical memory. McAloran’s control and direction is achieved through the work under three major headings, of which more anon. of the nothing of has a dystopian expressiveness of some magnitude which he achieves and maintains through voice.
Voice is spoken through pulse-beat, through an imagined interior such as a corridor or a room with a naked bulb, indeed through the voice unaccommodated. Here, a Beckettian mouth through which an ancient howl emerges. Whitman’s Howl meets Not I, but without the celebratory tone. This is not to say that there is no humour here, there is, it is self-deprecating.
of the nothing of is divided into of subtle butchery, of the none exposed, and pulse beats. The larger part of the book is contained in of subtle butchery which is divided into poetry alternating with prose segments. of the none exposed is poetic prose all through, here and there glints of humour are evident. pulse beats are precisely that, short bursts of poetry in four sections merging with and into prose segments. pulse beats structuring is poetry/prose/poetry/prose. it is the shortest section of the book, with the final prose section contained in one and a half pages.Although the narrative voice, or anti-voice in of the nothing of lacks physicality, lacks a geography, it is clearly (or was) an embodied voice. Voice’s physical experience is one of violence,
…[pulse beat]…
…(oh, how I remember it all, as if, as if in the going on or the getting on were of the nobility of eyes/ stillness-cadaverine/stone mockery/ashes drifting away from an open palm…)…
…[pulse beat]…from pulse beats
…All said of the what of it, spoken again, as if to spite, till the
dread of which, no not once, vapours of stagnant bleeding, skull
in a vice of empty desolate , winds throughout hollow, as of dead,
yet else, breathing all the while of circus pageantry, where the
hands fall stripped of flesh, having gathered the briars of nothing
else…..I’ll yet stay, I’ll yet go…
…The hours are very long…
#15 of the none exposed
of the nothing of is not a unified work. There are three divisions within the book. These divisions are arbitrary. I do not think the book should be perceived or understood as a unity. McAloran delights in the non-narrative, and in creating cognitive dissonance. Thus the reader can pick or choose which part of the work suits them to read, without the problem of finding progression/theme/unity /or purpose. Reading the book is somehow equivalent to peering into an anthill of busy piracy and casual marauding, it slips between the fingers and rejects the readers attempt to garner a safe place to pause, to rest,
the flash of a match head/dreaming all the while of the living
and the dead and of the what might be to become of this nothing
that is/ (stunted/ ever-glowing) /ask of the asp the pathway
through tall grasses/from of subtle butchery
What underpins and creates a sense of unity in of the nothing of is the voice of the poet. The lamenting and anguished voice underpins the entire book. Movement and structure in the book are subverted by voice, making them largely irrelevant. McAloran chose a loose structuring which is sufficient to carry the reader along the black waves of exile and lament.
It is as if voice finds him/self in a degraded and vicious reality. He sings what he sees and dreams, his memory of wholeness. The reading of of the nothing of is difficult, but worth it.
10-
a droplet of blood
.turning lest the light expires
speaking the language
.of the veins
unto the none else/
.fragrance offrom pulse beats
from of subtle butchery. .
Chime unto closeRot/
Strike aloud till
Stillness bears the
ice of bloodless night
In a roomscape
\of final emptiness
Here/absent traces
Mocking the stitch of the wound
Shroud-bound by
Vapours/
…..colours emptied
.
Ever to mock the
violent silence
With gritted teeth
…Till spark extinguished
Cold weight of naught
A palm closing over final eye
from of subtle butchery
-
Caught in the Cross Hairs
I bury my face in the thickness of your hair
the darkness, the softness, the smell
raw brain sweat, your innermost thoughts
desire become scent
beneath the softness
the hard skull skin
a barrier you need
and I want to penetrate
to enter see the wiring
observe my image
upside down in the back of your head
then turn and peer through your eyes
I’d see the world as you
You’ve stolen my tongue
I thought I had the power
in dreams I knelt at the chopping board
an awkward sacrificial lamb
I brought the cleaver down
silencing my babble
but you held the knife
and while I slept you forced
my lips apart and cut
at the roots
ever the skilled operator
you stitched me up
needling the thread
to connect the severed ends
I can still make sounds
some almost words
they think they understand
but my tongue is in your hands
‘Blue’ by Vani Vemparala From The Geometry of Love Between the Elements by Fióna Bolger. A Grimoire published by Poetry Bus Magazine.
cure for a sharp shock
it’s that moment
when you trust
let go the balloon
your hope floats
up into the air
it’s beautiful and red
it bursts
empty rubber pieces
a shade darker
float to earth
I read somewhere
if you take these shreds
put them between broken
pieces of pottery
and blow
they’ll sound beautiful
I’m not sure
I read it
somewhere
cure poem for the lovelorn
a woman sits alone
her eyes are on the swan feathers
dropped by the moon upon the sea
she sees no-one on the horizon
but who can walk on water
dance on down
by day she weaves her stinging sadness
into nettle shirts, by night she waits
for her lover – the one who needs
to wear those painful clothes
to be fully human again
no longer trapped
on a cold moon
dropping feathers
on the sea
Cure Poems are © Fióna Bolger
Fiona Bolger’s work has appeared in Headspace, Southword, The Brown Critique, Can Can, Boyne Berries, Poetry Bus, The Chattahoochee Review, Bare Hands Poetry Anthology and others. Her poems first appeared in print on placards tied to lamp posts (UpStart 2011 General Election Campaign). They’ve also been on coffee cups (The Ash Sessions). Her grimoire, The Geometry of Love between the Elements, was published by Poetry Bus Press. She is of Dublin and Chennai and is a member of Dublin Writers’ Forum and Airfield Writers.
From Poetry Bus A Grimoire is a book of magic and what is more magical than poetry? So instead of producing a series of chapbooks we’ve opted to create something a bit more special. Our first poet is Fíona Bolger and her Grimoire is called ‘The Geometry of Love between the Elements’
A beautiful book of poems illustrated by Vani Vemparala and featuring translations into Irish, Polish and Tamil by Antain Mac Lochlainn, Aleksandra Kubiak and R.Vatsala respectively.
Chris Murray 