Category: new poetry

“The Middle of April” by Fióna Bolger

May 24th, 2016

The Middle of April

After Robert Hass

i
whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
the droghte of March hath perced to the roote

my grandfather quotes
Chaucer from the vinyl

ii
he knows more now
we will too soon

iii
in the spring
pelmet of green

in the summer
scarf of orange

in the autumn
shawl of white

iv
bamboos knock out a tune
until disturbed by elephants
grazing, discarding as they go

v
The dangers lie in the jugular. No one really likes the smell of elephant poo but it makes paper of a high quality. Words written on digested bamboo. Nothing is lost between page and palm. That is mystery: pen, ink, paper, thread, card, dream, word. A memory clings like the smell of dung. And there are always fibres

vi
let there be peace between us
let us learn together
om santhi santhi santhi

vi
there’s no shit like
your own shit

vii
And instead of entering the reserve forest we wandered through the village. The tea shop sold weak milky tea. We heard them, small black cows with bells around their necks. People warned us an elephant herd was nearby. We found their still steaming dung. This was all free and unreserved.

viii
the green mango is sour
best eaten karam with vellum

Nagpur loose jackets are rare now
orange trees cut to grow apartments

the iron red soil of Niyamgiri
woven into the shawl

ix
Here are some things to eat from a banana leaf: idli, dhosa, uttapam, appam, idiappam, sambhar, rasam, chutney, chutney podi, kozhikattai, thair saddam, thokku, chappatti, parratta, puri, anna saru, chakra pongal, ven pongal. Ungaishtam sapdingo… Eat your desire.

x
still searching
for the man in the cafe

xi
silk saree

xii
she said: ask them
and he said: no
she said: why is it
like this?
he said: nothing
she said: no
he said:

xiii
theyn kuricha nari
the fox who has drunk honey

xiv
and from vinyl I learned
He loves you, yeah, yeah…
Did you happen to see….
myself in those songs?

xv
agni nakshetram –
water tastes sweet
as mango juice trickles
from finger tip to hand
to elbow and bathed every veyne
in swich licour, of which vertu
engendered is the flour

The Middle of April is © Fióna Bolger

Fióna Bolger’s work has appeared in Southword, The Brown Critique, Can Can, Boyne Berries, Poetry Bus, The Chattahoochee Review, Bare Hands Poetry Anthology, The Indian Muse and others. Her poems first appeared in print 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 in 2013. Her work has been translated into Irish, Tamil and Polish reflecting the journey her life has taken.

She is a facilitator at Dublin Writers’ Forum and a member of Airfield Writers. She works as a creative mentor with Uversity MA in Creative Process. She lives between Dublin and Chennai.

from The Geometry of Love Between the Elements (Poethead)

Excerpts from ‘The Muddy Banks’ by Michael S. Begnal

May 19th, 2016

Uptown

1.

Yellow and crimson leaves, the sidewalks and streets,
leaves of vines clinging to tree trunks
and brick buildings, concrete staircases overgrown
with weeds and roots—

vines cling on tree trunks, brick buildings are
concrete things, dwellings of a dead mind,
dwelling-places of a vanished mind
that stained such things as this—

dwellings of a vanished mind, saw someone,
saw things, broken windows, crimson leaves,
mansards, toilets whose porcelain is stained
and rough, whose water ran—

broken windows saw the concrete staircase below,
its iron handrail rust like leaves,
its steps buckled and cracked with roots and weeds,
hacking coughs—

window broken to the cold, saw someone hacking
over the porcelain stained rough like leaves,
a mind vanishes, someone vanishes
in a cold apartment where the toilet runs—

a dwelling-place is empty but of concrete things,
broken panes, a toilet’s porcelain dry and rough,
a mind has vanished down a concrete staircase,
across the highway, to the cold river

Uptown

3.

Snow on one of the two
blue steel arches
of the Birmingham Bridge
blue-green, white, and splattered
with rust, the snow sour curdled milk

sheets of broken ice
floating in the Monongahela,
pieces accrued together
in frozen geometries
of white-grey on grey-green

empty trees de-veiled,
the South Side hills in snow, and
from beyond that distance,
from beyond the hills,
from beyond other ridges,

announcement, an announcement:

I bring news,
a stag lows,
winter snows,
summer has died

high wind cold,
sun is low,
short its track,
river a riptide

the ferns all red,
a shape concealed,
a goose rises,
ancient its voice

cold takes hold
of birds’ wings:
a time of ice
is my news

These excerpts from The Muddy Banks (Ghost City Press, 2016) are © Michael S. Begnal,

Note: “Uptown” section 3, lines 17-32 (beginning with the line “I bring news” and continuing through “is my news”), is my translation of an anonymous 9th-century Irish poem beginning “Scél lemm duib. . .” (which also appears on a t-shirt made by An Spailpín Fánach).

⊕ Purchase Link for The Muddy Banks by Michael S. Begnal

Michael S. Begnal has published the collections Future Blues (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), as well as the chapbook Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery Press, 2005). Formerly editor of The Burning Bush literary magazine and formerly longtime Galway resident, Begnal’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Contacts for Michael S. Begnal:

‘I wanted to tell you, but there was no time’ and other poems by Csilla Toldy

May 10th, 2016

Kitchen

With hot chilli in my eyes
I read between the lines,
a coded message of noises:
A child’s scream sheathed in wind blasts,

gashes through the cracks.
The mandalay porcelain clock, riveting,
ticks between my shoulder blades.
I carry my life like a snail.

The fridge sighs,
a boiler roars into motion,
it broils the oil of the seas and heats
– my place, the kitchen at dawn.

Clouds scrub the stratosphere with desert sand;
a mad dog, stuck in fear, just shrills.
The river at the bottom of our glen,
shushing its song, cushions our senses.

In my body’s kitchen
the heart spins unrelenting.
Organs send impulses talking to each other.
“Thanks for the parcel, we enjoyed the food.”

The universe of enzymes awakens,
matter is transformed, vibrations vocalise.
My body is gauze, from Gaza, letting through the particles
of light – staunch at covering the wounds, so absorbent.

Beyond its wonders I remember
last night’s cosmic dance at this table,
our conversation about intelligence and order
and that we are bacteria in God’s body.

First appeared in Red Roots-Orange Sky, Lapwing Publications, Belfast edited by Dennis Greig

Danube – Duel

Is that a boat or a coffin
bobbing up and down on the river
framed by the intricate lace of the parliament?

The country taught me hate
the tightness of place, sometimes echoed
when the gales gather and attack this island.

No escape, lie low, let the winds blow overhead,
wait, even if you are sitting on a hot spring
even if you fume vitriol.

Remembering the river’s bank
ragged lines of men and women, shot
after they were told to slip off their shoes.

Boney bare trees reach up into the sky
grab the pain – hanging on
pulling it down, draw it deep into the soil.

The Danube splits the land. From the crack
incredible amounts of fresh water, hot and clear
bubble up with the smell of rotten eggs.

Healing waters – they say –
good for the bones and joints,
the ailments that plague the core of the nation.

The Jews that never got buried
float away into the sky – in the spas soaking
people play chess in sulphuric silence.

First appeared on Poetry24 edited by Martin Hodges

I wanted to tell you, but there was no time

In my dream I had to take the key to your flat and leave it there
It was very hard to do
I had to balance on steep rocks and loosened iron hoops
In my thoughts I tousled your hair and something lifted me up
A force – and my stomach jumped into my throat.
I was laughing, for this was what I wanted.
Then it was over – (some new dream, new convolutions began about
a girl who dived into the awesome blue of the sea –
Cassandra – I was glad that she left me alone
Like a sunset, her blonde locks sunk into the sea)

I was thinking about symbols on my way to you near the southern railways
And my stomach was in my throat.
Arriving, I felt the usual little pain, you said I was beautiful
and I believed you. There was no doubt about it – I could love
You as it was good for me. We were standing at the glass panels
In front of us the space
I did not tousle your hair, there was no embrace, although desired
I left, I was in a street again and a force lifted me up –
the one that was leaving dragged me with itself.
I was a weak woman then, tiny and the struggle with my own power
Seemed ridiculous. I let it fall into the void.

First appeared in A New Ulster edited by Amos Greig

Broken – Winged

The first time I heard your voice on the line
defensively bored, I thought my pleading
rendered me powerless. But surprising:
It was the key to your poor, broken heart.

I admired the splinters: Twisted sky,
land, barbed wire manifold reflected,
Medusa eyes flash, piercing the sadness,
but whirls of winds carry us to new heights.

I believed in me being your healer –
making you whole a possibility.
Wanted to be the cohesive matter,

Superwoman with the magical torch,
blind to your pain’s artful prosperity –
to the cage of guilt and cunning reproach.

First appeared in Red Roots-Orange Sky, Lapwing Publications, Belfast edited by Dennis Greig

Csilla Toldy was born in Budapest. After a long odyssey in Europe she entered the UK with a writer’s visa to work on films and ended up living in Northern Ireland in 1998. Her prose appeared in Southword, Black Mountain Review and anthology, Fortnight, The Incubator Journal, Strictly Writing and Cutalongstory. Her poetry was published online and in print literary magazines, such as Snakeskin and Poetry24, Savitri, Lagan Online, Headstuff, Visible Verse, A New Ulster and in two chapbooks published by Lapwing Belfast: Red Roots – Orange Sky and The Emigrant Woman’s Tale. Csilla makes videopoems, available on her website: www.csillatoldy.co.uk & https://soundcloud.com/ctoldy

‘Sonnet From A Derelict House’ and other poems by Daniel Marshall

May 3rd, 2016

metamorphosis

gulls bathe & fish in temporary rock pools
near the recycling spot in ongpo village. i wonder
if the dead mermaids of old jeju are reincarnate as gulls?
whether they thank the wind for bringing morsels of food to them?

have they returned to the place they liked to forage abalone,
where they taught their children how to recite the poems of the sea
& laced a 1000 soups with shell fish & sea weed?
in the translucent pools objects that don’t belong to the sea

but the sea has made ornate on its potter’s wheel
lie like artifacts waiting to be raised from the dead.
you can hardly recognize shards of green bottles,
broken, budget china plates, the flutes & spouts of blue vases

& their bases with the artists name erased by the currents.
but a saucepan lid, the nipple of its handle.
a rusty tobacco tin with mushed up cigarettes inside.
a bottle of washing up liquid. a cement bag collecting shells & kelp

go unchanged. no matter
the hours the mad sea potter clocks in.

the pacific

we walk 1 km or so,
pass through gangjeong village,
away from where ajummas
who look like permed mussolinis,
gut & flense red porgy & barter
at the pitch of cash registers, on the street corner.
beyond the outskirts
where the abandoned banners of protest
against the construction of a naval base is stationed,
to where the pacific ocean is being itself.
the land emptied. the roads emptied. people emptied.
the ocean here moves the mood to its own way.
& we are moved with it too.
because we are people.

jeju church

the telegraph cables wobble like plucked harp strings.
i follow them to a church: the modem of god.
the fastest router to his love & law.

i doubt they get a decent signal there;
therefore anxiety’s doppleganger cowers behind the plastic pews,
in a church, without nave or apse; persistent

their’s is a church suitable for gaggling wants to god.
the neon crucifix where the lightning rod should be picking petals of dark
to save the air conditioned congregation from the godless element.

the don’t see that the weather is god, their livelihood.
they don’t see out there is all god can be
& the only place he might find comfort from the grind of his silence.

눈 = snow & eye

this blizzard two days deep is an anomaly
: it hasn’t snowed like this for 35 years.
the island’s comatose yet comfortably delivered from
the common arrangements of any old day
: farmers off the hook with needy furrows;
disheartened tourists hop scotch 4 dimensions a-z;
the restaurants full of happy people getting drunk;
biyang island’s buggered off all afternoon,
a graphite smudge in the corner of a child’s sketch.
i feel a perfect ease in this seraglio of snow,
furnished with moving tapestries of conifer & crow.
litters of onion & cabbage, the brown flame
of decay like the edges of old manuscripts
spreading to the whorls & cores.
the harem wenches shaped like soil who swaddled them,
who with familiar cuddles warmed
their spindly legs until the autumn harvest,
look bored without their motherly duties.
there isn’t a soul & if there was
a barrier of snow rushes between us.
flocks of sparrows navigate the drift,
the traffic of currents & pockets of gale
quiff the snow on the ridge ahead.
i hope i never find time to return to the world.

sonnet from a derelict house

the village houses dumb with old age. blind & windowless of their worth.
their pipe-orifices blow off excess steam. asbestos hunkered in their heads.
a few roof tiles absent : old storms popped them off like champagne corks.
cut short like children who are seen but never heard. downcast & diffident.
they mime their rantings at a generation that admires but does not fix.
they had an idiolect arrested by indifference & so they do not croak
objections to invasive mainlanders with café aspirations.
they’ve busied themselves like a mouth chock full of ginseng sweets
so long, they forgot the peal of beauty poking from their grout,
the saturating mold that sticks them together. you’ve not decided you have value yet.
when the aesthetic nuances of apartments lie in tatters: when the weathered marks,
the petroleum foot prints & ichor rust begin to tell on iron bones & fiber glass skin
they’ll hurry back to you with a lick of paint, stucco & warm sibilant love,
their guests will write on post-it notes they are too guilty to compose themselves.

fish lady

the jeju grandma who squats outside the chiropractor
sells gold bream, kelp & mackerel piled in little blue baskets.
the lamppost is her backrest, the pavement is her chair.
her back’s bent like an oreum. she must be in a lot of pain.
most of the day she naps with the fishes. i never saw her sell a thing
& i can’t cook fish in the café : it makes a dreadful stink.

the air in hallim town is thick with salt & brine.
it comes from the sea hidden in netted hauls of jeju cuttlefish
-red freckled tentacles like broken fingers & heads like bone china vases.
her bones are rusty as a trawlers’ nuts & bolts.
her knuckles have been bleached with salt & cold.
she’s wrapped up in a microfiber blanket, she has no gore-tex clothes.

her veins bulge out of tissue flesh, like highways on a map,
the luggage of her grueling years drags under her eyes.
after working seven days a week, outdoors in the fields,
or on the wet street, since she was a teenager,
the elements have buffeted her geography’s shape inside & out.
we can travel her hardships without a compass needle.

there is no son or daughter to help her lug the stock.
she has mothered. be sure of that. suckled & smacked them into citizens.
they’ve been consumed with seoul’s nightly attractions: pork & soju.
disfigured by charts & indexes, the etiquette of the salary man
: the boss says drink! we say how much? the boss says jump! we say from where!
if only she’d not shamed their island roots they’d be less corpulent.

on sunday all the shops & vendors on the street stop trade.
she goes to church & tends the spirit then goes home to tend the soil.
she has a little garden behind her little house beside the sea.
she grows a row of cabbages, spring onions & garlic
: in autumn for the umpteenth time she’ll make kimchi for the year ahead
: the fuel for her to endure one more ring of seasons in the harbour town.

one day, i’ll go to the chiropractor & she won’t be outside
& her fish will not have been caught & birth prodigious shoals.

Daniel Marshall is a poet from England who now lives in Jeju Island, Korea, where he runs a café & guesthouse, which he built with his wife from the soil up. He is an emerging writer who, when he manages his time well, writes & blogs. You can read several of his ongoing projects here & a number of articles he wrote on dream psychology & analysis whilst he lived in the mountains of mainland Korea. Feel free to contact him anytime through his blog:

https://danielpaulmarshall.wordpress.com/
or at danielpaulmarshall85@gmail.com

Sonnet From A Derelict House and other poems are © Daniel Marshall

“Fintona” and other poems by Aine MacAodha

April 30th, 2016

Windowless church

My church has no windows
in fact it has no doors either
and to be fair no altar
it has no ordained minister
or priest or gospels.
Its in my heart, in
the starry sky
the moon shining over the land
its the planets in our solar system
the sun when it shines or not
its the foods god/creator
left us, berries, leaves, nuts
my church has winter winds that
cut to the bone and to enlighten
I have the sweet smell of roses
as I follow the seasons.
It is bog cotton waving on an
early Autumn evening as the
sun bids farewell.
On nights like these
dark and Irish wintery
the familiar trees and hills
become ancient septs
ready for battle with the ether.
Fields caped in winter fog
appear as crafted cities of the dead
souls roam among the rushes
in search of utopia or a home.
Trees scan the darkened horizon
the wind calls out names too and
winter hangs around like a threat.
This is my church.

Distractions

It’s the end of April.
Spring late this year
begins its infinite ascent
to the tips of the cherry tree
birds come by often
a come-all-ye in the front garden
their songs reach an inner place
like listening to Franz Haydn
his strings reaching out
from centuries past making clear
contact in a podcast
channelling his toils and efforts
an artist whose initial struggles
with mind, soul, pocket
rise and fall with each
strike of the bow
altering my thoughts on outer things
a distraction, like the bird song often
heard in my childhood estate longing
for far flung horizons.

Stone circle alignments

They invite soul connection
invoke an energy of some sort
long past histories underfoot.
Early man was quite the architect
aligning the stones in such a way
that at equinox and solstices
sun rises to light up the passageway.
A seeking brings people here
an ancient longing that needs met.
Creevykeel court tomb is a full tomb
the largest in Ireland.
Tievebaun Mountain seems to guard it
shadows come and go with the sunsets.
we don’t give ancient man enough credit
for the science they carved into the landscape.

Fintona

Or to give it its’ town-land meaning
A fairly coloured field.
A small country town, familiar, friendly.
one can see the whole shopping street
from left to right without shifting a foot.
There is a jewel though
a hidden forested area
where a raised fairy fort stands
once druids conferred their words
in praise of nature.

There too I find the remains of a
burnt out wreckage of a car
perhaps stolen years ago left now for
mother nature to clear up which she did
wrapping her briars in and through the doors
designing the broken glass with her leaves.

Awakening

Sun slants in through the venetian blinds
dust particles float in the narrow space
books, a pen, Sundays newspapers
and a mobile phone cling on the quilt cover.

Its 9.30am Spring has come, crisp April air
drifts in from the ajar window, it will soon be
Summer again, warmth of the sun rejuvenates.

I wander the halls of my mind on wakening
sieve through last nights dream
catching broken pieces of a story or place
and wondering all day if it meant something.

Fintona and other poems © Aine MacAodha
These poems have been published in the online journal Episteme, Vol. 4(1), June 2015 under the section IRISH POETRY | Web address | http://www.episteme.net.in/

Aine MacAodha (1964-2021) was from Omagh North of Ireland, her works have appeared in Doghouse Anthology of Irish haiku titled, Bamboo Dreams, Poethead Blog, Glasgow Review, Enniscorthy Echo, poems translated into Italian and Turkish, honorable mention in Diogen winter Haiku contest, Shamrock Haiku, Irish Haiku, thefirscut issues #6 and #7, Outburst magazine, A New Ulster issues,2 ,4, 27. Pirene’s Fountain Japanese Short Form Issue, DIOGEN Poetry, Argotist Online, The Best of Pirene’s Fountain ‘First Water’ Revival and Boyne Berries. She self published two volumes of poetry, Where the Three rivers Meet and Guth An Anam (voice of the soul). Argotist online recently published ‘Where the Three rivers Meet’ as an E book. Her latest collection Landscape of Self was published by Lapwing Press Belfast.

https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/aine-macaodha
http://ainemacaodha.webs.com/index.htm

“The Pathologist’s Wife” and other poems by Natalia Spenser

April 23rd, 2016

For Sylvia-Down in Adoration

You were Fulbright a seismic enigma
the fleet foot hare rising in pastel dusk.
It stalked like crows in the breast of a man
who sold your head for hapless wanderlust.
Your damage was like splintering of glass.
Could he not understand what it is to be
a milk jug, wasted lipstick, the outcast
shadow hung from a star-struck hemlock tree.
But a quiet voice is so more loquacious
than a risen phoenix roaring through air.
Maybe now is the time for tempered hush
time to weave your bridal crown through red hair.
He brought Devon sea shells to your headstone
you were his lotus his night passage glow.

For Jane Kenyon

Ten years on, while storm buffets glass and juniper,
snowflake tiers inside my porch
finger an army of miniature baubles.

The plastic robins perch lopsided. Even
that new star, a rushed afterthought, curtseys
on its axis where a black one legged doll should be.

Dear Jane I never met you. But I guess your mother
was at the station with pasteboard suitcases—ready
to sew broken limbs together again.

Now as I make end to season,
with more than a single strand of tinsel,
I nest plywood angels and churches

for a woman who breathed cypress and pondered why
only nightjars or silver fish
knew how to take shadowless flight.

The Pathologist’s Wife

Taken as a whole she is like any other woman 
one heart four chambers one brain eight lobes
 
If I place them in your gloved hands	her weight
is less than a pre-term infant

this woman	mute monkey on one shoulder
zealous cat on the other

At the edge of night she wears a cowl of thorns 
the spines draw blood if I forget to soften my touch

Whatever moves between bright thought & Tahitian body
Gauguin’s veneer is noted	full mouth
 
broad nose	hair above her lip	the nest
of a bird humming at her wishbone		& if

you crystallise sadness	look close 
under a microscope	you find
deep sea brittle stars	in that one rare tear

Natalia Spencer B.A lived in North Africa at the start of her life & now inhabits a quiet niche of South West England. Like most writers she knows, she has family, cats, many books. Her flash fiction has appeared in Kissing Frankenstein and other Stories, & Flash Frontier. In 2015 she won The MSF Silver Award for Best Poem from Visual Stimulus. More recently she has poems published in The Poetry Shed & various magazines. She is working towards her first collection.

An Excerpt from “Delicate” at MarsPoetica (HiRISE), Single Poems

March 29th, 2016

Delicate

A sea snail, most precious egg, as if
it had touched the ruby feather of a
bluebird. A most precious thing,
bird-egg-shattered, dust in my pores.

This excerpt from “Delicate” is © Christine-Elizabeth Murray.

When we widen the lens, the bigger picture can be divorced from the reality that we think we may have momentarily grasped. The above poem is an excerpt from “Delicate” which is being submitted to an Irish Journal at the present time. I expect I will publish the poem in its entire at some later point. BUT here the poem is performing an imagistic collaborative function and I am very grateful to Ari who notified me of the #BeautifulMars and #MarsPoetica project via the Poethead Contact form. I hope to have more news on #MarsPoetica for readers and contributors to the blog soon !

About HiRISE (HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGING SCIENCE EXPERIMENT): The HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the most powerful one of its kind ever sent to another planet. Its high resolution allows us to see Mars like never before, and helps other missions choose a safe spot to land for future exploration.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and is operated by the University of Arizona.

♥Delicate at MarsPoetica

“Mother’s Cradle” and other poems by Maria Wallace

March 15th, 2016

On the Great Blasket

The wild rose briar scorns
the garden rose,
and jutted from the deep,
this island scorns, defies life
from sunrise to the midnight moon.

Certain of approaching
endings, in a lamp-lit room
bean a’ tí Peig voices island stories.

I sit alone
on a sun-warmed stone, hear,
entangled in the west wind,
the whirl of her spirit
hug this grassy hillside,
those bleached dwellings below,

and below that,
rock-battering ocean waves
ride off
with particles of that past.

Under the shadow of birds

Black birds,
she thinks they are ravens,
hover over her
for the past eighteen years.
Their coarse croaking cries
drown all other sounds;
dark plumage shines
as they circle around
ready to destroy
the little she still has:
a neat house for two. Neat.
For two. Even under attack.
Not a speck of dust –
the aroma of fresh baking
rejoicing through the house,
though, the birds’ shadows stab,
their long bills tear her innards.

One May afternoon in the cul-de-sac.
Her toddler son in a group
playing Simon Says,
and Hop, Skip and Jump
a few feet from them.

A screech of tyres always tells a story.

Her doctor said
another baby would help the healing.
The first flock of black birds swooped down
when her husband said:
Another baby?
No way! You couldn’t look after
the one you had!

Morning sounds

My waking is not
to electric saw sounds,
hammering, voices and timber clatter.

In absence of the familiar,
I hear seagulls’ noisy squall
from opposite ridge-tiled terracotta roofs.

Sunlight chinks filter through
the window shutters’ wooden lattice.
I remember a shaft on mounds
of delicate wood shaving curls,
a man talking about grain, knots,
plywood, ash, pine, sawdust under
finger nails, caught in eyelashes.

I open the window.
Faint sobbing from room below tells
his tree of life has taken the final blow.

On wrought-iron rail
last night’s raindrops tremble,
begin to dry under sunlight.

The seagulls fly away.
I face the day,
reluctant.

No death in the afternoon

i.m E. Hemingway. Sunday, July the 2nd 1961

You woke before the sun
showed over the mountains
east of Ketchum, before it had time to touch
a greeting on your window.

With bathrobe and slippers, ghostly silent
walking by your wife’s bedroom door.
In the storeroom familiar gun oil and leather smells
reaffirming your decision.

Were you, that day, the old man of the sea trailing behind
nothing but fish bones, a defeated carcass unable to feel
the unloving contact of cold metal? Or, in that padlocked
plaza de toros, did you battle with,
run away from the beast? Heat like embers,
hot even the sand under your feet, faced
with a raging bull, black back glistening with blood
that would be repaid with blood. No spectators
to applaud last faena for bull and matador.

No death in the afternoon. Crisp dawn,
and the bells toll for you.

The Meenybradden Bog Woman

(from the late medieval period,
uncovered in 1978 in county Donegal)

Peat brown hours
turned to centuries,
toughened
your skin with the soft touch
of nature’s forgatherings.
A lullaby the drip and squelch
of wet leavings,
the gossip of grasses,
the winnowing wind
and occasional bird song
rippling over you
like the deepest, final note
of a cello.
And you listening
to all that muted music,
stilled in the hold of roots,
under the brown-veined roof
of your dark sky,

hating the silent tongue
of time.

Mother’s cradle

She gathered our days
in her strong apron
the way she gathered autumn
apples in it,
a scoop of maize to scatter
among clucking hens,
fresh mint in flower,
stolen from burbling bees,
her fragrance for days.

She would sit to pod
an apron full of peas, peel
a bowl of potatoes,
rest darning a pile of socks,
knitting to pale winter chills.

Her pockets always bulged
with mysteries.
The sound of a few coins
promised toffee sweets,
a strip of liquorice.

In her lap rainbows were held,
and moon slivers and stars.
Twice held a dead child.

Maria Wallace (Maria Teresa Mir Ros) was born in Catalonia, but lived her teenage years in Chile. She later came to Ireland where she has now settled. She has a BA in English and Spanish Literature, 2004, an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature, 2005. She won the Hennessy Literary Awards, Poetry Section, 2006. Her work has been published widely in Ireland, England, Italy, Australia and Catalonia. Winner of The Scottish International Poetry Competition, The Oliver Goldsmith Competition, Cecil Day Lewis Awards, Moore Literary Convention, Cavan Crystal Awards, William Allingham Festival. She participated in the ISLA Festival (Ireland, Spain and Latin America), 2015, and has published Second Shadow, 2010, and The blue of distance, 2014, two bilingual collections (English – Catalan), a third one to come out within the year. She has taught Spanish, French, Art and Creative Writing. She facilitates Virginia House Creative Writers, a group she founded in 1996, and has edited three volumes of their work.

Canto 1 of Dante’s Inferno, a transversion by Peter O’Neill

February 10th, 2016

Canto 1 of Dante’s Inferno

In middle-age I found myself
in an obscure wood,
for the straight road had long since been lost.

Christ, how hard it is for me now
to even contemplate how harsh and savage
a place it was, without renewing my old fears!

It is a place so bitter that death might come as a relief;
But to speak of the good
I will tell of the other things too that I found.

I don’t know how I can begin to describe how I entered,
having been so drugged in a kind of sleep
that I had long since abandoned the straight way.

But, when I reached the foot of the hill,
there where the valley ends,
and where my heart had been seized with such anguish,

I looked up, and I saw its shoulders
dressed in the rays of the planet
which directs us all to where we need to go.

Then the fear was a little quieted,
which had endured well into the night
in the lake of my heart.

And like someone trying to find his breath
on the bank after surfacing from the depths,
looking back over the perilous waters;

So my soul, still reeling,
looked back at the pass,
which had never before let anyone through alive.

Then, after I had rested my weary body,
I looked up once again on the deserted hill,
my left foot treading heavily behind me.

Almost as soon as I had started
a stealthy and light moving leopard appeared,
his fur covered by those distinctive spots.

It did not depart on seeing me,
but instead impeded my movements, blocking my way.
So I had to beat a retreat, over and over again.

It was early in the morning,
the sun was rising with the stars still out,
a sight which still evokes the divine

and that almost mythic time before the big bang;
so I no longer feared the beast as much,
with all it signs of debilitating luxury,

from that hour onto the sweet season.
But, not so much that I didn’t fear
the lion, which next appeared.

He approached me, coming towards me
with his head held high. He had a hungry look,
so much so that the very air about him seemed affected.

Next a she-wolf with all its ravenousness,
seeming to eat into its own need,
and the cause of much misery for so many on earth.

So much heaviness and fear did I feel,
at the sight of her, that I seemed to lose all hope
of ever reaching the summit.

And so, like one just on the brink,
yet time catches up causing them to lose heart,
so who in all thoughts weep, and becomes even more wretched.

So she made me, this restless wolf,
who kept approaching me, little by little,
forcing me back to where the sun sinks,

and while I descended to a very low place,
it was then that my eyes were offered the sight of one
who, as if originating from a great silence, appeared hoarse to me!

When I saw him in that great wilderness
I cried out, ‘ O for Pity’s sake, HELP ME!
Whatever you might be; shade or certain man!’

And he responded: ‘ Not man, but man once
was I. My parents were from Lombardy,
Mantuans both by birth.

I was born sub Julio, though it was late,
and so I also saw Rome during the good Augustus’ reign;
a time of both false and dying gods.

A poet was I, telling principally of that man who was
known as Aeneas, and who came from Troy,
from where the great Iliad come to us.

But why do you turn your back so?
Why don’t you climb that mountain
which is the reason and cause for all possible joy?

‘Are you really the same Virgil who created
that fountain of discourse which flows out like a river?’
I asked, with sudden shame upon hearing my own words.

‘All honour and light to other poets, yet loving
study, and great love, had me searching
through your volumes…

You are my Master, my author.
You alone are to be credited with the
beautiful style, which has brought me great honour and fame.

But, do you see this beast which has been forcing me back?
Please help me, great sage,
for she makes the very blood in my veins tremble.’

‘Ah, you must take another road,’
he replied, when he saw my tears,
‘If you want to escape from this savage place.

For this beast which makes you cry out
will never let you pass by this way,
such is its force that it would murder you in the end.

She has such an evil and malignant nature,
so that when her greed and desire are momentarily
appeased, her fierce appetites are once again renewed.

Many are the animals which she further mates with,
and many more, no doubt, will come. Until, finally
the grey hound will come and put an end to her.

This hound doesn’t feed on anything else found upon the earth
but love, wisdom and virtue;
her estate being built on human emotions.

It alone can be the salvation of the humble Italy
for whom the virgin Camilla died,
Euryatus, Turmus and Nisus, among others…

Only it can chase this ravenous beast out of every town,
until it has been sent back to hell,
where envy alone spawned it.

So, I think it best that you should
follow me, I will be your guide,
taking you far from here to an eternal place

where you will hear desperate shrieking,
coming from the ancient spirits in pain,
and who always cry out, at their second death.

And you will see also those happy to be in the flames
because they believe that hope will still come,
whenever it is the moment to be, to those beatified.

And then, in your own time you will rise up,
a soul more worthy than I,
and with her I shall leave you, taking my leave.

For the Emperor who so reigns, where I will take you,
was unknown to me, my mere birth being an act of rebellion.
So that he doesn’t wish for my kind to be even seen in his city.

In every place there he reigns, and he alone.
There in his city he sits on his high throne,
And happy are they who are chosen.’

And I said to him: ‘ Poet, I beg you.
In the name of the God whom you did not know,
so that I may flee this evil, and worse.

That you might take me to where you spoke of,
so that I may see the gates of Saint Peter,
and all who are assembled there.’

And than he moved, and I followed him.

This transversion is © Peter O’Neill

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 is the author of five collections of poetry, most notably the Dublin Trilogy: The Dark Pool (mgv2>publishing, France, 2015), Dublin Gothic (Kilmog Press, New Zealand, 2015) and The Enemy, Transversions from Charles Baudelaire (Lapwing Press, Northern Ireland, 2015). In his review of The Dark Pool, the critically acclaimed American poet David Rigsbee wrote: Peter O’ Neill is a poet who works the mythical city of Modernism in ways we do not often see enough.’ (A New Ulster )

He holds a degree in Philosophy and a Masters in Comparative Literature, both awarded by Dublin City University. In 2015 he edited And Agamemnon Dead, An Anthology of Early Twenty First Century Irish Poetry with Walter Ruhlmann for mgv2>publishing, and mg 81 Transverser. He also organised Donkey Shots; Skerries First International Avant Garde Poetry Fest in May, this year. He is currently hosting The Gladstone Readings once a month in his home town of Skerries.

Janus- His Mistress Responds and other poems by Peter O’Neill from Dublin Gothic (Kilmog Press, 2015)
“The Elm Tree” by Peter O’Neill
“The Elm of the Aeneid” and “Spadework” by Peter O’Neill.

Poems from “Strange Country” by Kimberly Campanello

February 5th, 2016

Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana. She now lives in Dublin and London. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press in 2011 . Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including nthposition , Burning Bush II, Abridged , and The Irish Left Review . Her books are Consent published by Doire Press, and Strange Country Published by Penny Dreadful (2015) ZimZalla will publish MOTHERBABYHOME, a book of conceptual poetry in 2016.

Strange Country can be bought from Penny Dreadful Publications
Sanctus by Kimberly Campanello
We Protect The Weak by Kimberly Campanello