Category: new poetry

“The Women Who Loved Me & The Women Who Couldn’t” by Clodagh Mooney Duggan

February 22nd, 2020

R.

There is a guilt attached to needing,
You were trusting and deceived.
Coins that were used to cover eyes, lie broken,
And trampled upon.

Uncovered scars lie dripping
And untended to.
Five men travel across the deserts for you.
You breathe in life,
And I took it.

Children beside a fire see something in the future,
A smile upon lips that was never passed.
There was a contract I never signed or intended to.

What can we say if sorry isn’t sorry enough?
Glass, and water dripping on the coffee cups.
Unread letters in shoe boxes.

Do you think there was ever a music in silence?
Tunes that hit upon our ears as we danced,
Unassuming and undressed
In the tiled kitchen.

I never did.
Not really.
I wanted to
Desperately.
To fall into something that wasn’t my own
Striking distance from a championship.

The words fall from our lips and out the window.
I left.
I think I always intended to.

Unwanted villains sneaking into the wanted mundane.
Coffee and two sugars
Black only on one side.
What can we say if sorry isn’t sorry enough?

A.

Never be,
Never be sorry or fearful.
The faint sounds of birds and school children outside your window.
As I press my body against the glass.
You behind.

I am crumbs,
The sun that hits the back of your neck
Lie in me.
Bathe in me.
You are the presumed safety net.

The walker never sees,
Just trusts.
And in the moments of falling,
Prays to a deaf god.

But on you, was a need hope.
A safety bridge,
A maturity.
Love is thing with imposed memories.

You are a heartbeat.
A thing I wish I could drive from my chest.
I thing I wish I didn’t need
But live without.

Smiles happen without
Impulse.
Bare
And happy

The pause will resume and she will wake
I did
I was
And cannot be

M.

Crumpled flags are upheaved from the ground.
Mud and grit,
Red fog fills the air as footsteps are retraced.

Young children holding near gold awards.
Broken ankles and legs
From running without the knowledge of how.

The stands have forgotten our names now.
There are new uniforms.

New teams.

The blues and the pinks fade.
And distance noises are muffled under the shroud of years,
With faded scars and scratches.

We have
Did
Win
I remember.

From the growing pains and memories lost
An untouched wrist
Kisses faded on necks
Sprouting from our backs.

The clouds burst
And maybe we will find each other beneath one.

M.

Heavy. And Moving.

The first sprinklings of green,
With it
The faintest
Feeling of something being unearthed.

There was something there years ago,
A life of something longing,
Trailing behind a mouth that never moved
And words that were never rasped

How do we portray the thing we having being fearing.
A fearlust of sprinklings from a fractured podium.
How do we list the pain that is buried beneath the skin
Coming out in small intervals
Barely voiced but shaking in the body

I was stronger before
Hidden behind snapshots of sensitivity
There is a faithfulness in an unknown truth.

I give you a flower,
As if the cliché of the manner will be renewed
For only us.
Smiling with the innocence of a child running from their mother.

Possession presents a conundrum,
Withering in hands unsure of the level of comfort.
Fragile
And shattered glass.

A glistening bead of sweat rolling down the nose of a rearing horse.
A guard,
Broken down for a moment of stillness
Only to be rebuilt more so.

The bedframe creaks and moves under
The heaviness of a light-hearted laugh.
I draw a map on your skin.

Noting the moles and freckles like consolations
To find home by.
The nape of your neck a sort of memory
Or creation of such.

What do you say to the person that saved your life?
As old flowers decay on the mantle piece
Dusts of pollen linger like fingerprints.

Reaching for a taut rope,
Based purely on an unspoken promise
Love bursts on our lips,
A question unasked.

I will follow you.

S.

The segments of memories are strewn on a plush carpet
Pink and oranges
Bursting behind a low section of glass.

I give you a lie.
It’s all I can offer without plunging from my chest
I am
Lost
In the cemented memory of a child reaching for a hand that wasn’t there.

What do you think is the lifespan of heartbreak?

A crumbling brick
A grandfather clock unticking in the hall.
I fix myself in an image.
Adjust the lipstick to a smile that was there before
You remember that song, don’t you.

That chest tightening
Notes being added to a pile

What books did they burn in Germany?

The Women Who Loved Me & The Women Who Couldn’t © Clodagh Mooney Duggan

Clodagh Mooney Duggan is an emerging poet. She originally trained as an actor, graduating from The Gaiety School of Acting in 2013. Since then, she has begun writing for the stage and is currently writing Made from Paper, which will premiere in Dublin 2020 in The Scene and Heard Festival. The Women Who Loved Me & The Women Who Couldn’t will be her first published collection.

“Reincarnation of tired beings” and other poems by Katrina Dybzynska

February 8th, 2020

Secrets of a cartographer’s wife

The cartographer’s wife never told him
about her contributions to his maps.
A few tiny islands hidden in the middle
of an archipelago in the name of symmetry.
Some borderline moved to resemble
a face shape. The territory of England shortened
slightly, in personal revenge.

One time, she renamed an insignificant river
in Bangladesh after her lover. She felt pity
for the cartographer that he was more furious
about the affair than about her intervention
in the world order. She knew that romances
were ephemeral, while naming things
was changing them forever.

Reincarnation of tired beings

In my next life I want to become a German
couple in their retirement, in a fitted camper.
Him, steering confidently through the round
-abouts and telling the same jokes for the last 30 years.

Her, reading paper maps and navigating
the playlist, suggesting a small parallel road
as they will believe themselves adventurous,
trying local dishes, carrying beer from home.

I used to think that I aimed to be a hacker,
but in fact, I strove to be a virus –
a threat beyond miscommunication,
ever-transforming, so closest to survival.

Or, I would settle on the life of a solar panel,
reduced to basic energies, dutifully
absorbing light, left in the middle
of the desert, shining hope for the future.

Development

Our child would have uneven
teeth and a birthmark on the right
hip. The rest would be a fight
for domination: eyes that change

color, like mine, when I am happy,
or yours so black that it is impossible
to distinguish them from pupils?
Yours curly or mine straight?

Maybe, it would love spicy food
after me, or have a pepper-allergy
like its father. I wonder if it could
still choose its food.

Would it inherit your pure as seagull’s
laughter or the one with a hidden question
mark like mine? Would there still
be seagulls for reference? Most importantly:
would it have lots of reasons to laugh?

Hopefully, it would get skin
after you as it is more resistant
to heat. But you disagree as my skin
color is more resistant to humans.

You think that it would see connections
and that we would teach it to protect
nature. Before I leave, I respond
that by then there might not be much left
to protect.

Love Emergence

How do you know that you are in love?
My little sister asked our grandmother,
because she remembers to respects elders
even if their idea of a “date” is to watch
the same soap opera for the past 30 years,
still arguing about that 6754th episode
where Ridge nearly cheats on Brooke.
– If you have grandkids with him, probably
it is love, grandma replied, which I did not find
particularly helpful for a 17 y.o.

How do you know that you are in love?
My sister demanded from our mother
because l had taught her to always look for a second
opinion. I also told her to choose her experts
carefully and our mother, three divorces
and each child with a different father,
might not be the perfect pick for the subject.
– Does he make you laugh, my mum asked.
Because that is the only way to go through
hardships. Yet, I do not believe in the existence of
the Joke that would save my parents’ marriage.

How do you know that you are in love?
My sister, that I never called half-sister
as there is nothing half, nor genetic.
About love came to me finally. She is clever
saving the best for last. And all I was able to advise her
was to talk to him about climate break-down.
If he makes you feel safe even when he says he is scared,
Not in the “everything will be alright” meaningless way,
but in seeing more connections than one heart
could ever love, if he makes you feel at home,
even when the home is on fire,
this must be it.

The tipping point

Two human pregnancies, or one of an elephant,
white rhino, orca or a killer whale.

The time that takes for bamboo to grow 498 meters,
or for your hair to be 22.5 centimeters longer.

The period needed to write The Jungle Book,
or to cross the Sahara by camel, and return.

If it was a baby, by then it would learn to refer to itself
by name, echo what people say, and – what is comforting –
understand 10 times more than it can put into words.

18 months.
Can we transform the whole world of interwoven links
in a time it takes to decompose a cigarette?

Katrina Dybzynska poet, shortlisted for Red Line Poetry Prize 2019. Author of „Dzień, w którym decydujesz się wyjechać” (The Day When You Decide To Leave), Grand Prix of Rozewicz Open Contest 2017. Laureate of national competitions in Poland. She has been publishing short stories, concept book, science fiction, reportage, and poetry, but feels most attracted to genre hybrids. Polish Non-Fiction Institute graduate. Activist. Currently a member of Extinction Rebellion Ireland.

“Reasons” by Anora Mansour

January 30th, 2020

Reasons 

Here silver fingered strings  
trembling with two Russian rings.
Recalling it all.

The reasons why we reared
   yardbirds long disappeared
   yet a cotton crop always reappears.

If sleep is a dotted dress
 then we wear this zero life.
And we are also a false bird’s chirp.
 
And never more deadly when 
we are chanting in time
 To that choral venomous rhyme. 

With those we gazed through gauze on the pew
 Those we once believed loved us too
incarnated us with gathered snowdrops anew.


BY ANORA MANSOUR
Copyright 2020

Dying Lover

Trace my lips
In low whispers
As I once wept psalms
over my dying lover.

Threaten that man
You will murder for me –
For my heart
is a cadence of silence.

I can only love you
if you creep through this life
dangling dangerously
as a ravenous red kite.

When we both
become one lonesome night.
And rub up to love up as a fight.

Oh, how I might love you,
bitter citron basket on my lap
Slumberly trusting me as a child.
I would open my thighs to you – a snap trap.

Perhaps then you could open the universe for me.

BY ANORA MANSOUR
Copyright 2020

Anora Mansour is a graduate of the University of Oxford. She lives between Oxford and Dublin. She has been published in a collection of Jazz Poems, various online sites, and has her own published collection of poetry and blog. She is African-American and Irish.

“Curlew” and other poems by Rosalin Blue

December 8th, 2019

Lonesome Occupation

Up – up and away
in my little studio
under the sky
drawn back alone
– to write

That loneliness
is the room for concentration
bears the space for inspiration
strikes the key of motivation
to create origination
with insane illumination
and a wild determination,
the poetic flow in motion
— oh that cosmic emanation
for the sake of word-elation

Yet, it requires segregation
and at times I miss emotion
wishing for some conversation
and a mutual revelation.
So I leave my elevation
seeking true communication
and some closer stimulation
—far beyond my meditation
of obsessive rhyme-creation

And when that space inside
of emphatic animation
and ecstatic evocation
with the strange amalgamation
of expansion and sensation,
that poetic incantation
that orgasmic culmination
fills me up to saturation,
then I get the urgent notion
to fulfill my true vocation

And again I draw back
to my lonesome destination
up – up and away
in my little studio
under the sky

— to write

Under the Silvermoon

And how often am I looking up with longing gaze
to your window high above under the silvermoon
where your sweet body lies already in the warm duvets
when inside me with desire now the night awakes

In many hours when the moonlight travels through the dark
and the muse of poems binds me in a writing trance
my tender feeler-cells are all consumed
in longing for the touch from your gentle hands

And my senses wander further down along your flanks
until with yearning quiver – when my night is done
I quietly can nestle to your supple curves at last
and disappear in bliss to sleep under the silvermoon

— And my desire is waiting for another night.

Unterm Silbermond

Und wie oft sehe ich mit sehnsuchtsvollem Blick
hinauf zu Deinem Fenster unterm Silbermond,
wo schon Dein süßer Körper warm in Kissen ruht,
wenn voll Verlangen erst in mir die Nacht erwacht.

Zu mancher Stunde, wenn das Mondlicht durch das Dunkel zieht
und mich die Dichtermuse in den Schreibwahn bannt,
verzehren meine zarten Fühlerzellen sich
vor Sehnsucht nach Berührung Deiner sanften Hand

Und meine Sinne wandern weiter Deine Flanken lang
bis mit ersehntem Beben ich – wenn meine Nacht getan,
mich leis an Deine weichen Kurven schmiegen kann
und selig unterm Silbermond in Schlaf entschwinde –

— Und mein Verlangen wartet auf die nächste Nacht.

Curlew

You tell me
of the call of the curlew
Its curling cry haunting
through the bogland
How it weaved through
the mornings of your childhood
How it echoed through
the darkness of your nights

The curlew’s call has fallen silent
over the years gone by
The mottled messenger stolen
as the numbers of birds
migrating the wetlands
drained now and laid dry
have from hundreds plunged
sheer into near extinction

The curlew’s trilling song
the melody of coastlines
harmony of the island
has gone quiet with the winds
The seeker of the sand
leaves behind a land
void of music luring
the boy in the evening sun

You mourn the echoless silence
in the mornings of your prime
No slender legs stalking the plains
or stoking mud with curving bill
No curlew calling evermore
the empty coastline still
Nothing more than a memory
left behind at the end of dusk

Metal

After we invented the wheel
we learned how to melt the metals
from the rock, and the gold-rush
began, as we dug and drained
all the gleaming precious treasures
from the veins of the Earth,
forging jewels, coins and wealth,
hoarding them like magpies.

Red hot, like liquid fire flowing,
a crimson burning river glowing,
molten copper, iron, silver
slither smoothly through the grooves,
pouring into casting cauldrons,
shooting into foundry molds,
smouldering, steaming – zosh
the streaming gold is cast to form.

We made tools from the new metals
and axes for slaughtering trees
and arrowheads for felling animals.
We made ploughs to sow the seeds
and blades to cut the deeds
and steal the riches from the land
and rightful owners, and we cast
our wildest dreams into reality.

Then we made dooming cannonballs
to cast on human enemies
and iron bars to capture freedom.
Our bullets pierce through history,
reeling round the golden throne,
our babel titans slice the skies
and we’ve made drills to bore
the very bedrock of our waters.

Now hard and cold our steel-towns
gleam in the sunlight like blue ice.
The shimmery promise of gold
holds the core to precious pride.
But the price of power was high
and now the golden calf is sold!
And our hearts like bloody swords
from wealth and greed are growing cold

Beyond compare we hoard and kill
like magpies – merciless as steel.
And the glowing stream of gold
from liquid fire freezes cold
and our hearts become the stone
that once we dug out of the ground
from the gleaming veins of Earth –
blinded by the promise from Her core.

We are Receivers

Staring into the night
eyes fixed hard
on the bridge in the dim light
until the mind cannot understand
the image any longer

Repeating a word – repeat repeat
so often that to the ear
it loses its meaning
becoming a mantra
of higher consciousness

Chanting the Om
until we rise from lightless night
benighted mind filling
until aglow with the potential
that is the eternal light

Seeing the Ocean of love
and the breath halts
the heart spreads its wings
and the tongue
knows no words

We are receivers
of a brighter light
than our eye can ever see
nor our mind can ever conceive
But our hearts can feel

Quiet I stand
in the stillness of the Divine
the brightness of love
the silence of awe

Curlew and other poems © Rosalin Blue

Rosalin Blue is a cultural scientist, translator, and poet who began performing in 1995 in Hildesheim, Germany. Linked to the literary scene in Ireland since 2000, her poetic home is O Bhéal in Cork. She has performed in Cork City and County, Limerick, Galway, and Dublin, and at festivals like the Electric Picnic and the LINGO Spoken Word Festival. Blue’s poems have been published in Southword and the Five Words Volumes in Cork, Revival Poetry, Stanzas in Limerick, and in Crannóg Magazine, Galway. She has been included in two Cork Anthologies, On the Banks (2016) and A Journey Called Home (2018). Her poetry collection In the Consciousness of Earth was published by Lapwing, Belfast in 2012, and her translation of love-poetry by the German Expressionist August Stramm You. Lovepoems & Posthumous Love Poems came out in 2015. Find her on Youtube and facebook.

“A Life Unanswered” and other poems by Susan Kelly

November 10th, 2019

The Bittersweet

Her passion was historical biscuit tins
or so he’d tell visitors
who marvelled at the growing stacks of embossed lids
that glinting with landscapes, landmarks
locations she hadn’t seen,
he thought it best if the world came to her.
He liked her to display these gifts he brought back
from places he visited with work,
that was what he called her.

He’d produce a new one
the morning after his return
assuming her quietness over breakfast
had been due to the non-presentation of a tin,
she accepted them
but never the treats
that she bagged in black
where they grew crumbly and green
and sweated in the confines of their own wrappings.

No tins came for some months
work no longer needed him
so he dozed his days away in front of the box
until he breathed his last,
the remote control limp in his hand.
She scattered the tins around the living room
and took a hammer to the shiny lids
that remembered everywhere she had never been
until they didn’t shine anymore.

The Bittersweet – Poetry Ireland Review, editor Eavan Boland

Skinny Jeans

His quiff came undone in the night
to fall about an acned face
that contorts in an afternoon yawn.
He shifts his body about the bed
to untwist the studded belt
that pockmarked him as he slept,
the impressions red against his gothic skin.
The seams of his skinny jeans draw lines
up and down his tall boy legs,
revealed as he inches them off
with pink-heeled persistence
before they’re dumped on the floor
in a dark, denimous pile.
The day looks in on him
through not-quite-drawn curtains,
the gap, the width of an ice-lolly stick,
the day, bright as July.

Skinny Jeans – The Stony Thursday Book, editor Paddy Bushe

A Life Unanswered

Dust smothered hat boxes stacked, empty,
blue and white Switzers stripes dulled by years.
Flapper dressers and bridge club receipts idle in drawers
lined with the Letters page from a 1920’s Irish Times,
fragments of lily of the valley talcum powder tangible.

I have your eyes but I don’t see what you saw
history witnessed, decades endured,
did they roar, were they hungry, did they swing,
did scarcity wage a local war to leave you wanting,
did world events impact, always make contact?

Did you mind leaving Achill to settle in Westport,
urbanity on your new doorstep,
did faith and prayers of two Roman-collared sons
ease untimely widowhood?
Clacking rosary beads, murmuring novenas your mantra.

Was my mother an appreciated ally
righting the balance, nurturing anima
or did she steal your mantle as lady of the house,
did you mind or was your arched-eyebrow sternness
an act of survival in a male domain?

November evening your pen ran dry
and expired batteries silenced your radio
yet you needed no replacements,
you knew that night
that you would also go.

A Life Unanswered – Abridged, editor Maria Campbell

Lapsing

He files his thumb nail on a match box
softened by pockets,
the swatch almost worn by forty strikes.
A neighbour walks by,
he nods to the al fresco attendees
who religiously avoid a pew,
preferring to stand the hour.
A speaker nailed to the buttressed porch
bugles across the hedges
crackling its master’s voice.
It spouts prayers for the faithful
who respond en mass
in a monotone breathless recitation,
pausing on cue by rote.
He drops the smoothed box
and squashes it into the green
joins his hands and breathes deep
the flinted air.
He rests his head on the pebbledash
his weekly penance
meted out in pointy pastels.
A couple arrive too late to creak open the door,
they angle for wall space
budging him from his idling spot,
the flock thickens in the noonday sun.

Lasping – The Weary Blues, editor Emily Cullen

Room 41

Bath-freshness beckons
but she chooses to accept
the week-old grime
and the specks of kamikaze talc
that land on her lashes
as she powders her oily hair,
the ash-brown lank.

She doesn’t care,
there’ll be no neighbours calling
like the news-hungry vultures
they pretend not to be,
no postman delivering a daily chat,
nobody knows how committed she is
to being alone.

A large orange pill
wrestles its way down,
eased by tepid water
from a polystyrene cup
and condescending words
from a woman in white
who locks the door as she leaves.

Room 41 – Boyne Berries, editor Michael Farry

A Life Unanswered and other poems are © Susan Kelly

Susan Kelly is from Westport, Co Mayo. Her work has appeared in Cyphers, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Crannóg, Revival, Abridged, The London Magazine, Boyne Berries, The Weary Blues, Burning Bush 2, wordlegs.com and was short-listed for the Writing Spirit Award 2010. She was a featured reader at Over the Edge in Galway 2011, shortlisted for the New Writer of the Year 2013 and longlisted for the 2014 WOW award.

“This Connection” and other poems by Shanta Acharya

October 13th, 2019

BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST

(After the painting by Rembrandt in the National Gallery, London)

In the Dutch room amid Rembrandt’s paintings,
I sit sharing my reflections with myself –
my woollen jacket no comparison with Belshazzar’s
mantle of ermine studded with jewels,
his silk turban, white and resplendent,
crowning his distracted gaze.

The room acquires the aura of a court in session,
members of the jury appear unmoved,
floating like creatures treading on the moon.
The wooden bench, the murmuring crowd,
the parched sensation in my throat,
deeper rumblings in my stomach,
tired eyes and cold feet, a bone-marrow fatigue
alienates me from the artistic feat.

The haloed hand, the writing on the wall,
offer unexpected food for thought.
Mene Tekal Upharsin: You have been
weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Belshazzar’s face aghast with such revelation!
Do not despair, one was saved; do not presume, one was damned.

I close my eyes thinking of god mercifully
adjusting the divine scales in my favour –
myself poised on one side, insubstantial;
my burden of sins on the other, weighing down
heavy, leaving me quite unbalanced.

So god kept adding extra weights of suffering
to help me overcome my unbearable lightness of being
like an ingenious doctor shrewdly intent
on restoring me to life by increasing daily
the bitter pills of my life in self-exile.

I had a vision of grace reconciling me
to myself, to see me poised and not wanting.

You may have mistaken my strength, dear God
to emerge from your gift of suffering balanced.

From Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017)

NOT ONE OF THE MYTHS

Not one of the myths we make
will outlast the muting of our breath.

What comes and goes in silence
represents time’s landscape of self.

So long estranged from myself,
I have created an illusion –

carefully camouflaged
to welcome our re-entrance.

It is like passing from the object
to its unredeemable shadow.

Like leaping off the canvas of a painting
into the gallery of free spectators –

only to dread that moment of return
to another image that would recapture us.

A plastic version of all that passed among us
or others who unknowingly resembled us.

The imageless wind is the appropriate conception,
projecting the naked self, the final relation.

There arrives a time when the fiction is a mirror
image of itself, a thing final in itself.

Unable to discern between illusion and creation,
we have stopped revolving in self-abnegation.

After the wind has gathered its unique composure
and we breathe deeply the pure, fulfilling air,

our halcyon gestures resurrect words from silence
like conjurors revelling in tricks and games.

The myths dissolve in the silence that guts
our ineffectual, self-mutilating words.

From Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017)

MY GOOD LUCK HOME

You presented me with two scarabs,
hieroglyphs etched on their lapis-lazuli backs,
from the gift-shop of the British Museum.
It’s for good luck, you said.

I survey the pieces, their sacredness
treasured in the hollow of my palm,
imagine them alive, pushing the setting sun
along the sky, entreating my heart to be pure and light.

They nestle beside a coral stone and a pearl
framed in rings of beaten gold on my fingers,
charms given by my family to protect me from evil.

I find the Egyptian scarab couple their own home
away from the crowded open-house of my Indian gods,
transforming each corner of my living room
with gifts of fetishes from around the world.

Two Chinese cats guard my speculative angle of vision.
Even Ganesha travels with me in my handbag
to help me overcome obstacles in my adopted homeland.

The seven gods of luck from Japan smile on
as you eye my marble turtle god with its fine chiselled look,
its beady eyes, hand-crafted, appraising your secret nook –

leaving us with the legacy of an understanding –
the knowledge of what it means
to carry a whole household in oneself,
to be so perfectly self-contained, poised
at the centre of all manner of creatures unsheltered.

From Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017)

THIS CONNECTION

Clusters of pods from branches of hornbeam
hang like Chinese lanterns pregnant with dream –

tales of transformation witnessed collectively
is theatre, experienced solo becomes prayer,

the journey from chrysalis to butterfly,
waking with desire, an aviator defying gravity,

a mountaineer scaling peaks drawn
out from the core of a changing world,
spinning, tiptoeing on a slippery slope

like trust in the face of uncertainties,
luck when the chapter of life is coming to a close,
alchemy turning the worst in us to our best,

unafraid of failure, taking risks, following our dreams,
seeing for the first time, eyes and mouth

opening wide with wonder, lovers swirling
in ecstasy on the dance floor, walking

on top of the world, bottom of the sea together
like earth moulded by wind, water, ice and fire,

knowing time will change all we cherish in our globe
taut as a belly with foetus becoming human

where we like gods are defined by what we are not
except Love that is everything and excludes nought.

From Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017)

AMONG THE IMMORTALS

I dream my painting and I paint my dream.
Vincent van Gogh

Reflecting on life’s many false starts –
art dealer, teacher, lover, preacher – always the outsider,
fearful of failure, loss of face, faith, family,
except for brother Theo providing a reason for living
in sorrow yet ever joyful.

In the depths of darkness,
moments of clarity bridge the gap between art and reality.
Dwelling in possibility, awareness of the one true God
gives way to insight – quest for the light within all beings.

The idea at first vague until the initial impulse,
a scribble, takes form, becomes a sketch
and the sketch a painting – mastery of the thing
promising an unexpected flowering.

Brushstrokes come alive in a rapture of aseity,
crying out with creations of flesh and blood –
self-portraits breathing, original in their view of the infinite,
touch the heart of humanity, open a door to eternity,
walk among the immortals, communing with the light.

From Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017)

“This Connection” and other poems © Shanta Acharya

Shanta Acharya - (c) Dr Sanjay Acharya.jpg Shanta Acharya won a scholarship to Oxford, where she was among the first batch of women admitted to Worcester College. A recipient of the Violet Vaughan Morgan Fellowship, she was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy for her work on Ralph Waldo Emerson prior to her appointment as a visiting scholar in the Department of English and American Literature and Languages at Harvard University. The author of eleven books, her latest poetry collection is Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017). Her poems, articles and reviews have appeared in major publications including Poetry Review, PN Review, The Spectator, Guardian Poem of the Week, Oxford Today, Agenda, Acumen, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Philosophy Now, Stand, Ariel, Asia Literary Review, HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (2012), Fulcrum, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (Norton).

www.shantaacharya.com

“Fireflies” and other poems by Christine A. Brooks

October 6th, 2019


house of beauty

just three houses down 
from my 
pale green house
a magnificent dark red house
sat 
regally
on a throne of both beauty &
possibility
on a street that never quite
fit in
with the rest of the city

it was a dead end, 
in a time & place undefined by class 
middle, less than that,
but 
all otherwise, the same
—more or less

except #44

it was the only house on the street
with a fence around the front

how rich they must be, I thought
to be able to have a fence
in the front

a small white sign with
black writing hung & 
swung from a black post
behind that fence
with scrolled letters

Willie Mae’s
House of Beauty

my mother would send me
if I was lucky, with 2 quarters
to buy us each a candy bar
that Willie Mae
would stock on a small shelf
in her makeshift waiting room
in her basement

I would look at myself in her big
mirror that sat in front of her 2
chairs,
that spun around

soaking in the smells of hair products, so different than my
own & listen to the women
talk about their lives
that somehow existed
outside
the House of Beauty

their hair so curly & beautiful
made my own
brown, flat hair feel lifeless
and 
vanilla

she would explain to me why
she could not make mine, look
like theirs,
but still,
every time I walked down her
backstairs
quarters in hand
I dreamed that she could make
my hair kinky & shiny
while I talked & twirled 

because
in the House of Beauty
anything was possible

or so I wanted to believe.


nothingness

I was drunk when they came
for me,
to keep me safe from myself,
he said 
but that was a goddam
lie & everyone knew it

broken knuckles, bruised 
beaten, wrapped tightly but
the silicone pink bracelet twisted
and rubbed under my cast

pushed, taunted & reminded
that I was no one
no one that could fight
no one that could win
and
no one that mattered much
to anyone 

neighbors peeked out, 
porch lights flicked on
I could see them 
from my place, 
face down on the hood of the
dirty police car
click click
went the handcuffs

it was summer not so long ago
really, but a lifetime for
her and many
but that didn’t matter either

nothing did 
or ever would again
not in any way that mattered
anymore


Newbury Street


my Papa smoked a pipe &
 watched hockey with the sound
off, in another
room
from where I played    quietly
with my Lincoln Logs

Nana, who was supposed to die
long before I came around,
had the doctors been right about
her throat cancer

sat in the corner, surrounded by various
clocks 
that ticked on

knitting & clucking trying to keep her
mouth moist somehow since her body
stopped making saliva 

she made gawumpki’s
he gave butterfly kisses &

we lived with them one
summer, so very long
ago 

most days I had a bellyache

nervous, she’s just nervous
my mother would say

    dismissing my pain, probably
to dismiss her own

it didn’t matter though &
eventually we moved, but my
bellyache stayed


A Date with the Lord   
  
the morning I met the 
Lord was exactly as I 
imagined
it would
be. 
 
the air,
    both, briny & candied
plump with salt from the
Irish Sea & 
sweet from the
River Liffey
tickled as I inhaled
but that did not stop me from
breathing in
    life.
 
 
some, even most,
— maybe,
would not find it
pleasant or pleasing, but
for me it was
perfection,
on an early summer Dublin morning,
before businesses opened, but not before business
happened, 
 
    with horse drawn carriages & guitar players
& those offering blessings of good fortune,
wishing me well,
after several donations. 
 
I paid the price,
   I owed
maybe even, a little more than that
which pleased us both
  —equally. 
 
God bless you said more than money could buy
   maybe
I’m hungry, she said, although
she looked neither the kind
 of person to offer a blessing that had the chance of
sticking, or someone whose dinner plate was
empty often
 
but, I had seen her before,
believed her then, that blessing 
so, I dropped another heavy coin into her
   cup, clanging
& shuffled along Dawson Street
because,
     it mattered not
 
I had a date with the Lord after-all & had no time to
 wonder
if the woman I never thought I would see again
—but did
could grant the wish offered up to
Eire.
 
finally, I had come upon the Mansion House
more than what
it seemed, initially
set back without the warmth
& cool of thick mossy blades
of emerald patchwork
 
still though, warm enough
welcoming enough, although no
mat said so, and the giant
brass, doorbell that rang to the
unknown, still, did
not dissuade me from my
date with the Lord. 
 
I had an appointment
    after all. 
 
my clothes, comfortable but
not my finest, reminded 
me, without knowledge or
preconceived notions that
   I was,
home
in a place that accepted me
as is. 
 
and in that moment,
those moments, 
as we sipped tea
& the outside came to life 
I was
     —happy.



Fireflies

I recall them, 
as beacons of hope & faith 
 from my childhood

buzzing and banging,
gently
 against the glass walls of my
Nana’s mason jar
lighting the way, selflessly
 just for a moment, a heartbeat 
 tick between the tock
contained. 

I unscrew the lid,
 set them free, and 
watch
them blink into the hush
of the late summer’s night. 

I recall them,
these memories 

  not as the embers
they were - hovering, clanking
 against the mental box I
 put them in, 
 As they feverishly try to burn
  down 
  my construction paper 
childhood. 
 

I recall them, as 
 — fireflies


"Fireflies" and other poems are © Christine A. Brooks

Christine A. Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature and her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. A series of poems, The Ugly Five, are in the 2018 summer issue of Door Is A Jar Magazine and her poem, The Writer, is in the June, 2018 issue of The Cabinet of Heed Literary Magazine. Three poems, Puff, Sister and Grapes are in the 5th issue of The Mystic Blue Review. Her vignette, Finding God, is in in the December 2018 issue of Riggwelter Press, and her series of vignettes, Small Packages, was named a semifinalist at Gazing Grain Press in August 2018. Her essay, What I Learned from Being Accidentally Celibate for Five Years was recently featured in HuffPost, MSN, Yahoo and Daily Mail UK. Her book of poems, The Cigar Box Poems, is due out in late 2019.

Christine A. Brooks links

“Animals are in Communion” and other poems by Polly Roberts

September 20th, 2019

Animals are in Communion

I came home

to find him

doing nothing.

Limp armed.

Could do nothing.

Sat on the sofa

lost to the world.

I have some bad news

I’ve been seeing ghosts. Birds on water.

The day before I received the news, two swans flew low over my head. Their
wings thrummed like a helicopter.

Eyes turned to watch the rescue vehicle, and instead saw white bellies.
The sound travelled, nothing like their usual flapping, as they soared over and onto water.

Returning to my boat, a shadow shifted on the river bank. A furry creature – small, sleek – edged
its way through the grass, took a moment to drink, then slop, slipped in.

Animals are in communion for you.

As are we,

nosing each other’s armpits

as we bed in

for warm companionship.

Because you went cold.

Though the civility of civilisation frightens me, I visit somewhere populated.
A graveyard made squirrel territory. One squirrel for every gravestone.
They mount lichen-covered peaks and keep lookout.
They claim the trees, the abandoned church.
Nobody will make them leave.

That night, I dreamt the answer to the universe.
It was blue,
inside a conch shell. Spiraling
in and out of crystal moments.
Eggshell blue.
In and out of images of the hospital bed,
and these dreams.

Polly Roberts grew up in Devon. Three years studying Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia left her with an inextricable link to the landscape, compelling her to continue to write about the creatures and habitats encountered there.

Observations of both the non-human and human world continued whilst living on a houseboat on the River Avon near Bristol while completing her MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Polly has run creative writing workshops for refugees, detainees, and young people and curated two exhibitions in response to her writing, both displayed at the Norwich Arts Centre.

In 2018, the British Council awarded Polly a Writers by Nature scholarship, during which she wrote this debut poetry collection, Grieving with the Animals.( 2019, Dempsey and Windle)

“You Really think I wanted him” and other poems by Melvina King

September 8th, 2019

You really think I wanted him

You’ve heard the American accent slip from
my tongue and I can bet I know what you want to talk about
before you ask why I wanted Trump,
so you can bask in your
feelings of politically superiority
take a look at me don’t just focus on my
accent and use it as your entrance for your
political inquisition or bashing of me,

Take a deep look at me and ask yourself
should I ask her why she wanted Trump,
should I ignore the obvious answer or
ask?

You are probably confused as to what I’m egging at
and what I want to say since you may not
have figured out it out yet–

I am a black person,
you may be aware
of my history in America and
if you’re not, I suggest you do your own work,
educate yourself on it, people like me have been
marginalized since before the founding of America
and to this present day.

So, I don’t think it’s wise nor intelligent to let
our first conversation be about
why I supported someone
who supports marginalizing me–

I know many people who, like me, didn’t vote for
this maniacal, KKK-endorsed, GOP-endorsed, phobia-spewing-psycho
but unfortunately, there were
a few, like very few, coon black people who are in a sunken place,
like Kanye West who voted for and support him.

But, I didn’t choose him
due to knowing that my chances of being treated like garbage by the police,
being called racial slurs, being given poor medical treatment,
looked down upon because of
my skin color, dealing with defending my west African immigrant family,
seeing/being on the receiving end of Institutional racism is going to continue
till God knows when.

So when you ask me that question
you’re wasting my time assuming that I wanted
continuity of the same battle I’ve fought since day one.

Also, do not look down on me because Trump was elected
I get looked down upon enough
Which I don’t need any more of and you’re
pretty much showing me that you’re ignorant
you’re generalizing an entire
country off of MAGA fools
MAGA meaning the “Make America Great Again”
racist, bigoted, phobia ridden deplorables
or sunken place sellouts.

Your annoying ignorant question
forces me to deal with mental trauma/frustration
that I’d rather not deal with
the trauma that occurs every time
a news story pops into my feed that’s
riddled with cases of hate crimes or actions
plus legislative changes that seek to
continually disenfranchise people
these stories leave me pissed
And even more annoyed/scared of white Americans

Because overt white supremacy is back in style and no longer in hiding
In the good ole USA and its from all different angles
whether it be from conservatives or so-called liberals.

I know you may have been misled by the funneled American news that you get
but really, my black skin wasn’t a clue that I didn’t vote for him nor support him?
Instead,
ask that question to the over 60% of white American men and 52% of white American women
(small percentage for the women but still over 50%)
Cause, in case you didn’t know, or you forgot, White Americans still are carrying around that trunk of racism no matter how liberal or progressive they may say they are, or aren’t, checking their racist family and friends to not be continually swallowed up by racism.
Btw, 94% of black women in America tried to save y’all.

Belief

I no longer believe in the truths of men
they’re the over made-up friend who you
think is flawless, then see her real
face in the morning and it’s like, oh girl.
They’re the couch that you think is so
perfect then when you sit on it the spring
pops you in the butt.
They’re the table you think is so stable,
then it crashes after you stand on it to hang
some decorations.
They’re the beach umbrella that you
thought was so secure in the sand
that blows to the wind as you sunbathe.
They’re the 50 cent lemonade that
the kids assured you is so good,
but tastes tart and watery as hell.
They’re the shining star that
you realize is
actually an airplane.
They’re the $1,000 you think you won,
but is actually a promo for buying
windows.
They’re the movie that you’ve been waiting
a year for then, after watching you’re
like wtf I waited for that?
They’re the $20 cover club that you’re friend told
you was gonna be bumping,
that ends up being full of crickets.
They’re the shirt that looked so good in the ad,
then when you try it on,
You look bad in it.
They’re basically the hypes that we fall for,
That lead us to irritating annoying disappointments.

Spill your Mind

Open your Mind tell me what’s inside
tell me your everything
don’t worry nothing’s too obscure or weird,
let me see the dreamy, hopeful, happiest, darkest, deepest, wildest and saddest parts
tell me what you can’t tell others, you know the things that you bury deep inside
let me see your mind in its most vulnerable state,
spill all its contents into my lap so I can look at it more closely and sifter through it
so I can find aches, pains, worries, confusions, likes, dislikes, and most of all gems,
I promise I won’t move anything around or out of place
I’ll put them back where they belong,
I’ll handle with care your knowledge, emotions, thoughts, abilities, disabilities and memories
I promise I won’t mess with your mind
You can trust me,
So, let down your guard,
Let me find in your mind what makes a person like you my kind.

Muse

I want to be your muse
Your inspiration
The woman who brings out the genius in you
The woman who makes you produce provocative and envelope-pushing work
The woman who makes you crazy like Picasso and bizarre like Dali
The woman who makes you flamboyant like Fela and abstract like Basquiat
The woman who makes you bombastic like Hemingway then shy like Lautrec
The woman who makes you flirty like Yeats and calm like Coltrane
I want to be your muse the woman who lets you be unafraid to be whomever

Melvina King is a poet originally from Philadelphia, PA but currently studying at the graduate level in Dublin, Ireland. Due to wanting a change in life, and a breath of fresh air she decided to move to Europe to experience living elsewhere. Writing poetry is something that she’s enjoyed since childhood. Back in Philadelphia, she frequents the open mic circuit. Poetry has allowed her to communicate her thoughts, educate others and let go of her feelings. She writes about her experiences as a black woman in this world, being from a West African immigrant family, her interactions with men/people, travelling and from how she sees the world. The themes that are explored her work include oppression, love, race, Pan-Africanism, self-esteem, sexual assault and identity.

“Tracing Rivers” and other poems by Leo Kuhling

August 27th, 2019

Ambiguous Loss

She is a mortician.

You see
she doesn’t move.
No eyes open, only
ragged breath. Flushed cheeks.
Silence.

She has prepared the body
nearly a century.
Not yet embalmed
but ready.

The lipstick is a light rose,
it makes white face
seem ghostly

And glasses perch on a nose
like mine
if lids were to open
they still wouldn’t see

She is her own mortician.

I have come to the funeral
every saturday
I have said goodbye

and kissed her
lightly

I have watched
the process
of becoming a corpse

almost

Fixed Vortex

Feeble fingers have collapsed into themselves
her fist, like an infant’s
lies limp in her lap

As if made of marble
the grip won’t relax
unyielding

“What is it that you
are holding on to?”

I take her thumb
try to unfurl the claw, the nails
digging into her palm
Stigmata

she must
be searching for some sensation
some sting of pain
something

“Hello”

I am watching two blue planets
to see if they
notice the sound

if gravity can pull them,
alter the orbit,
and turn them toward me

“Do you know who I am?”

they are empty planets
they don’t move

she is here
and not here

stuck
in the fixed vortex
of this
in between

Ingrained

We took you to mass today
I can’t remember
the last time you spoke

it could have been a year ago

and yet,
the words of the rosary are on your lips
a softest kiss

you can’t forget

Multitudes

I am looking at you now,
piece by piece
to reconstruct the you
you were

I strip away
the hair, white wisps
the skin, paper-thin, translucent
the muscle, the fat,
the soft

Right down to the bone
your bones
containing multitudes
of a lifetime
and my father’s
and mine

I piece you back together
carve the muscles that would
hold me tight in your arms,
the fat that made your
embrace so warm
the skin, toughened with time
the hair as thick as mine.

I am looking at you now
and you are looking at me too.
Somewhere
in those eyes of deepest blue
I think you recognize me,
And I, you

Tracing Rivers

Your frailness
the veins, thin filaments
visible
just under the surface

I trace with light touch
three rivers
as if faintest pressure
might stop the flow

Did you know
some cacti
survive years
without water?

Have adapted
to rainlessness
still bloom

But you?

It has been years.

Would anything
be better
easier
than this?

Even drought.

Athrú / Change

Tá an seanteach seo
ag titim.

Siúlaim istigh, ar chosa éadroma
lámha sínte
chun clocha a ghabháil

Níl ach deannach fágtha
anseo.

This old house
is falling down.

Palms outstretched
to catch the stones.

Only dust
is left.

Leo Kuhling is an Irish-Canadian poet based in Limerick, and a lover of all things spoken word. His poetry has appeared in the Ogham Stone, Silver Apples, Artis Natura, Dodging the Rain and the RTÉ Sunday Miscellany. Currently, Leo is finishing a M.Sc in Psychology and working towards his first book.