Category: poetry

“Villanelle to Cold Psalms” and other poems by Jane Burn

July 7th, 2019

Villanelle to Cold Psalms

Here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms
I am treetops, bearing a crown of night. The dark is born.
I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms,

shiver beneath the void of stars, sing the charm
of moths. Wish them against my neck. My skin mourns,
here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms.

Dusk is a lie. This is crushed light, visions of curious calm.
I am prey, twitching in uneasy sleep, a distant spire’s thorn.
I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms.

Here are the tendons of my neck. Here is the throb of harm.
I am lost as one drop of rain is lost to a storm,
here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms.

I bear a ghost of gloom in the curl of my palm.
I am the moonlight’s gash where the sky is torn.
I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms,

shiver of mist upon my mouth. I drink its balm,
damp upon the tip of thirst. Leave me to mourn,
here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms.
I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms.

Are Vaginas a Deal-Breaker Thing?

Let’s face it. I
are discomfited by my own, unsure
of the marsh,
unsettled by its sodden pocket.
Use a mirror and get to know yourself, I once read and I never
got round to doing that.

I can imagine a world of moulded dolls, imagine
the simple acts like
brushing each other’s hair,
shopping for mushrooms,
reading a column out loud,
swinging bags and holding hands.

We could build our chaste cairns upon the grass –
I’ll tell you that your laugh is like a castle’s wall
and you might say, today is all about discovering.
Might knock upon the bathroom door,
wince at my archipelago. See how I am the Orkneys,
how my tits are Egilsay and Wyre, how my belly is Eynhallow –

its stilling womb,
its natural abandon,
its offer to birds.
Or you might say scooch, so we can spire
at opposite ends of the bath and I would use
my best Joyce Grenfell voice to tell you, straight-faced

that there really is a place there called Twatt.
I can think about lips,
wrists, arms, eyes. Here is an offer of terrified flesh.
I will be undelivered.
I could have put a bow on a broken soul.
Gifted the screams I swallowed and kept.

I gave/my shame/to water/it told me/nothing about/myself

a kill of un-done bones/heron’s moveless stain/quiet worlds of moss/tilt
of riverbank/kingdom of frogs/vein of silverfish/weak baste of sun’s eye/
remember the/language of my mother’s hands/feral squat to piss on roots/
oh I wanted/thin rake of dusk/I saw a woman/wear a crown of dull sky/
here is a gift of throats/the water wears a skin of ghosts/you will not/
meet/the craving of cold palms/oh I saw a woman/reflections of trees/
are a desire of knives/fecund splay of spawn/wound of coming night/
I hear/your breath/your heart/a claim of fallen moons/a trick of wet

The Un-Flight of Porcelain Birds

My pretty flock, my throng of bisque,
brittle murmuration, flinty perched.
Silent wards of song, dawn finds you unyielding –
no rising in your tinted eyes.
If you drop, you fail to fly.
Your breasts crack. Your little heads shatter,
make the floor a nest of spelks,
a splint of muted beaks.
Spillikins of feather,
your wings are kept by clay.
Roost in my palm, echo of wild things.
You have never trembled evening from your throat.
You have never known
the blue sail of sky.

November’s Spoil of Rain and Plague

I am the daughter of stopped clocks – a plastic moon
where moments have stuck. Too late for elevenses,
much too soon for lunch. I am the passage of time,
its meaningless tether of hands.
I am the slicing of dials, have guessed at the hour
of my birth. I am Sunday’s child though I am not
blithe, or bonny. Wise nor good. My stars
are not aligned, I am not cusped. I am a mother’s
failed prediction. How massive my love can be, how
my tongue lolls like a dog, how I wear my heart
like a pelt of brindle screams! Come to the crush
of my great arms – I am Kraken, the page
you wrote in the Burn Book. I am Edward’s fingered knives.
I am cupboards on uncertain afternoons,
their content of chipped cups.
Allow me to offer my stains. I have held you in my brain
and failed to shift your face.
Fur and carcass – something ate the heart of me
and wasted the rest. There must have been a tunnel
and I slithered from it, wet and blind. I came
from a length of ferrous wire between us,
belly to blood. It fed me on ash and blades,
on something I can still taste.

Things Today To Do

Fumble on an octopus of keys
Wind the time from a crypt of dead wheels
Slam a drawer upon a bud of spoons

Sing into a citadel of tea
Cross your heart against a hex of bread
Mop the crackled tale of willow plates

Search the skim of glass for hints of rain
Find the altered ripples of a man
Ask the square of window for your face

Jane Burn’s poems have appeared in many magazines, such as Butcher’s Dog, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed With Pipework, The Curlew, The Fenland Reed, Strix, Under the Radar, Bare Fiction, The Rialto, Prole, Long Poem Magazine, Elsewhere, Crannog, Domestic Cherry, Iota Poetry, The Poet’s Republic, Eye Flash Poetry, Finished Creatures and the Oxford English Journal. Her poems have also been published in anthologies from The Emma Press and Seren. Her poems are regularly placed in competitions and she has been nominated for both The Pushcart and Forward Prize.

“Queen Medb Speaks to the Shy Poet” and other poems by Trish Bennett

June 23rd, 2019

Connemara Rocks

You held me with champagne
in a Galway crystal glass.
The light fizzed through its facets,
and danced a sparkling ring.
‘No dawter of mine’ll be on time,
make him wait’ you said.
Your brother; our driver,
obeyed.

We parked at the church,
set into the mouth of a bad turn.
The blessed virgin — mounted on granite,
stood guard outside.
Celtic crosses scattered
on the grave hill behind.
To the side, a stream flowed
under the stone-bridged road,

feeding the lake in front,
from where two swans watched
you open the door,
and hold my hand
to support my high,
heeled step.
You carried the weight of my frock,
the countryman’s Gok Wan.

I held tight to my autumn bouquet
as we strolled into that place,
built on unyielding rock
—a slope to its aisle.
‘The Coolin’ began.
My Bridesmaid led the march,
you slipped your arm in mine,
laughed, as you led me on.

Flower girls ran in a fizz to grab hold,
and tow us up that hill,
to the green marbled altar.
You smiled,
as you sacrificed me there,
to face the music
— half-cut.

Publication Credits
An earlier version, entitled Galway Crystal, Shortlisted, North West Words / Donegal Creameries Poetry Award 2017. Published in North West Words Magazine, 2018. Editors, Nick Griffiths, Deirdre Hines and Deirdre McClay.

Slices

You caught me today, at the turn
of that tight hill, before home.

When the sun dissected the trees,
a slice of the past shone;

that summer’s day
in our shop,

your suet-softened hands
held the knife,

as you dissected a liver
to show me fluke

‘Keep a tight grip‘, you said,
so it won’t slip as you slice.

You carved the disease out,
diced the rest for cats.

‘I could be a surgeon in another life’, you remarked
and we laughed,

before the memory fades,
replaced by the last sigh from your lungs,

as the grip tightens
around my heart.

Publication Credits
Published, Issue 1, Smithereens 2018 Editor Kenneth Keating.

Wisps

In the half light
betwixt day and night,
A glimmer whispers
by the edge of my eye.
Tendrils of a moment,
caught
between the suns last rays,
and the moonlit sky.

In the half light,
they appear.
Goosebumps salute the past.
Tense.
Yet, no deceit lies
in those prickly scents,
mellow roses,
wisps from a long-dead pipe,
envelop the heir,
to their circle of life.

Publication Credits
This poem was previously published in A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine, Female Voices in Ireland, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

Rituals

I stand in the corridor of power
and face the congregation.

The sun
illuminates the island altar.

Solid walls echo the sizzle of pans,
steaming hymns.

Often, my chant — not quite Gregorian,
catching the custard on the cusp of a curdle.

We’ll leave soon.
I will miss this chapel of a kitchen,

the soul of a borrowed place,
we never called ‘home’.

Our brown boxes,
taped to escape,

surround the naked dresser
in scribbled rows.

I plant my feet firmly,
whisk in hand,

seize a tight grip on the bowl.
The final liturgy begins.

Publication Credits
This poem was previously published in A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine Female Voices in Ireland, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

The Day I Became a Royalist

The memory of that day’s still sweet,
the way the sun filtered through hedges
beginning to explode
with blooms of hawthorn and chestnut;
the coconut trace that floated up
from yellow bubbled whin;
the excited buzz from her fans,
humming as I set to work.

Deaf as beetles they were,
yet they danced their tales,
while their friends watched
and felt the vibrations.
I longed to dance too,
but my rebel feet refused.

I looked the part.
In fact, I was smoking,
with all the right gear to meet a Queen.
No high fashion, fascinators, stilettos or frocks,
demure — in loose white,
a veil over my face,
and gloves.

The roar arose from the crowd.
Herself was close.
Royal guards drew lances,
made charges as if to say,
‘Your kind’s not welcome here’.
I worked on — ignored the line,
like my Father before,
when I was a child.

When her Highness appeared in my frame of view,
maybe it was the alien look of her dress,
poured out in layers like dark chocolate,
or maybe it was her long legs,
that could do with a rub of the razor,
that made her look huge.
She walked that confident walk of a girl at the top.
Her retinue fussed, had respect.
While her signature scent was strong,
they remained happy, loyal
content.

My senses captured it all
in a way no camera could;
that joy as I watched them dance and hum,
the chinook noise from drones,
the scent of our land collected, condensed,
mind-stamped into my memory cells,
that brought me home to childhood days
when my brother and I dug sections of gold
on our Fathers return.

The memory’s still sweet of that day
when I turned,
on meeting the Queen
of Apis Mellifera Mellifera,
my black honey bees.

Publication Credits
BBC Radio Ulster Time of Our Lives, Jan 2019.
The Leitrim Guardian 2019, Nov 2018, Editor Bláithín Gallagher.
Highly Commended, Bailieborough Poetry Prize, 2018.

Queen Medb Speaks to the Shy Poet.

In my time,
the bardic kind commanded the rath of royalty.
For fear of their sting,
we gave them everything.
They ‘liked’ me,
shared my scéal*,
I was Eireann’s Kardashian Medb.

The monks’ day dawned
and Kings were drawn to the power of the quill.
The page had turned.
The Bardic way faded like old ink.

Clerics came,
they scripted my tale in “post truth”.
Two thousand years have passed,
yet pilgrims still climb Knocknarea with a stone for my cairn
wondering whether I lie there, or at Rathcroughan, my home.

II.

Twenty first century banfhile**,
cooking, cleaning, rearing young.
You hold back your words for fear of their power,
twitter as you peer into your faceless world.

Grasp the quill in your hand banfhile**
but feel that bard in your blood,
share your words aloud.
Let the tale prevail,
yet script your celtic truth,
or sit there doing nothing,
and become a relic too.
.

*Scéal = story.
**Banfhile = poetess.

Publication Credits
An earlier version of this poem was previously published in ‘A New Ulster: The Hidden and Divine, Female Voices in Ireland’, October 2017, Editor Amos Greig.

Trish Bennett hails from County Leitrim. She’s got the breeze of Thur (the mountain, not the God) in her blood. She crossed the border to study over twenty years ago and was charmed into staying by a Belfast biker. They have settled themselves into a small cabin near the lakeshore in Fermanagh, and try to keep the noise down in their bee-loud glade. Bennett writes about the shenanigans of her family and other creatures. Sometimes she rants. She was a finalist in seven poetry competitions in the past two years, including North West Words, The Percy French, Bailieborough, and The Bangor Literary Journal, and has won The Leitrim Guardian Literary Award for poetry twice. Bennett is a Professional Member of the Irish Writers Centre.

Twitter: @baabennett Facebook: trishbennettwriter Blog: Bennett’s Babblings

“The Other Side of Things” and other poems by Robyn Rowland

June 22nd, 2019

I. The Other Side of Things.

from the sequence Sky Gladiatorials

Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown made the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic, Newfoundland to Ireland, 1919.Previous to that, they both flew for Britain in World War I. Alcock ‘was the first man to bomb Istanbul’; then, with plane trouble, crashed-landed near Suvla, 1917. He was imprisoned in Kedos, Turkey.

Air is crisp in the cockpit and seeded with summer
when he flies toward that once powerful city.
Constantinople, desired, mysterious, Mimar Sinan’s
mosques of exquisite geometry defining its shape.
Libraries bulge with rare illuminated books.
A city lovely in both poetry and Churchill’s dreams
sits unaware of the bombs Alcock clutches under his plane

The boy Irfan Orga is nine, father taken to the war,
never to return, his small brother ill from hunger,
grandmother sharing their two rooms, hampered by
new poverty, their home burned out by fire,
everything of beauty gone. In Mahmut Paşa Street,
his mother struggles through the crowded market to forage,
unused to being in public, to being touched like that.

She barters her family wedding gifts and silk-woven rugs
for any food possible. She sells them slowly, daily.
That day Irfan is carrying haricot beans and dried peas,
when just behind the station on the cobbled street,
across the Golden Horn three planes appear.
He never saw such a thing, wings and whirring. He wishes
he could fly. His mother is rooted into the stone street.

Deranged by fear, she grabs him to cower under a tattered
shop-awning she believes will hide them from the eyes
of pilots, field mice under a hawk’s gaze.
A roar, a shattering explosion, shaken earth and dust pall,
the mutilation, cartloads of lolling heads, limbs akimbo,
disconnected flailing stumps and the surprised wounded,
the de-limbed, faceless, the horses speared with their own carts.

This was the first bomb. They meant to hit the war office
but the bombs went wide, a man said. No-one believed him.

On the Beach

Bozcaada Island, Turkey

There is a bride in glorious white froth, laughing,
her black Turkish hair a net of breeze,
new husband stumbling on the rocks grinning, because
after the photographer leaves, she holds a selfie-stick.

There are two women friends, Meral and İlknur,
ambling, chatting, looking for deep-sea fossils set in stone
to embellish İlknur and Şefik’s home he builds nearby,
its stone and tiled beauty emerging from his dream.

I trail behind, head down for the small shells,
Trivia levantina found only here on Bozcaada,
exquisite false cowries, tiny ridges ringing them,
their tail canals rose-pink or purple.

There is a giant ship beached, Egyptian, looming
into a white sun streaking the sky pink with ebru clouds
trawling across the tankers far out and strobing towards us.
The ship’s name is Mercy God, a kind of hopeful prayer.

Shipwrecked last winter, fierce winds drove it sideways
ashore onto this beach, a grimace of cold sand.
Its cargo of onions was rotting for months,
a stench to banish all but the desperate.

Such strong women, we joke as I film my two slight
friends leaning on the ship like tiny ants pretending
to push it out, its hulk now home to crabs, birds
Up near its prow you can just make out Arabic for Allah.

Tiny shoots are rising like small green wings
out of the golden dunes nearby. Watermelon, Meral tells me,
someone’s been having a picnic and yes, they will grow
and the fruit will come for summer. You will be here.

On the way back past the darkening hull there lies a faded lifeboat.
Seal-grey with orange fluoro trim, it is half-buried now.
I had almost missed it, so much sand on its torn belly.
I quiz my friends – From the ship, I imagine?

No. Syrians, Meral instructs me, suddenly grim, and the way
she accents it – Surians – takes me a minute to absorb the facts,
sea now swallowing a sun burning orange with its last breath.
They tried the sea. They did not make it to Lesvos.

I am told like a child barely able to grasp meaning.
Beside the wreckage sits just one shoe, a man’s walking shoe,
faded brown suede, its many laces salt-stiff. My eyes are
pegged to it, cannot leave it. I am glad there is nothing else.

Across the narrow Mytilini Strait on Lesvos, women
are beachcombing too. They collect children’s clothing washed up.
They itemise, they clean it for those who might still come,
who survive crossing the sea of death that gulps them by the boatload.

Included in debris from three thousand dead in the Mediterranean –
a tiny pink long-sleeved shirt with boat neck, for a girl, size three months;
small black stretch pants with nylon sequined bows, size two years;
a pair of sky-blue heavy fleece pants, for a boy, aged five.

I. Family Catalogue August 1880

from the sequence Touchstones

for Annie Harding Lambert and Joseph Lambert, married in Kilmallock in 1861,
cursed with scarlet fever 1880

That year the Observatory in Armagh for the first time recorded
bright sunshine data using a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder.
Loving Katharine O’Shea met married Charles Parnell. History changed.
Susan Kate Lambert was 14, fate a flush in her bright-cherry lips,
when August 22 she died of scarlatina. The windows were already boarded.

That year the Irish Land League refused to harvest potatoes for
Captain Boycott and England paid ten million pounds
to get the crop in. Maria Jane Lambert was 10, still snuggling up
when crimson fuchsia dropped its silent bells, August 11.
and ill, her strawberry tongue peeled. No boycott for this.

Rebel bushranger in Australia, Ned Kelly had been captured. Joseph Lambert
named for his father, died at 4, August 21, fever burning brighter than turf
in the grate. Irish Renaissance began its flowering, women entered
medical schools. The red mist snuffed out Charles Edward Lambert aged 1,
August 5. Ned was 25. Such is life, he said, before they hanged him.

Contagion slunk deep into the corners of the house. Feral, it scuttled
across beds, breathing down sleeping throats, to bloom scarlet from inside
and all the love that exhausted itself in holding and mopping, wasted
by the upturned sods in the graveyard. Famine was still lurking,
a bad year in the West. Joseph, heart failing, was pensioned out.

Her own namesake at 7 months had coughed her way out of life in ’75.
But four children dead in a month. Too many for headstones. Fear carved
into Annie’s face, whittled her youth. How to keep the last three alive –
8, 13, 16 – boys she needed to become men? Big windows, clean air. Yes.
Big fields to run. Not a damp turf-smoked room, sun scratching at the glass.

II. Annie Harding Lambert Limerick, 1880

Four children dead to scarlatina, August 1880

Razored my long hair.
Hung it in shreds
at the windows.
Started on my arms.
Want them slit,
splintered glass.
Rough, spiky shards
that pierce right in.
Violent madness.
Strong.
Maybe I can terrify him too.
Frighten him off
with my banshee pain,
mighty howling grief.
Hold him back
in my sharpened arms,
all spikes.
Bleed him.
Old Red Breath.
Old greedy bastard.
I think – Red is it?
I can give you Red!
I tore myself, tore myself
till Joe stopped me.
Bound my talons back
with his tears.

Moon Dreaming

Bone white, the full moon
threads itself round curtain cracks,
through the lace cloth of my heart,
the same moon that lays itself
on your sheet of water
harboured below your window,
far away in space, in time,
both of us on islands, decades apart.
You placed a shell ring on my finger.
The sea gave it to you for me.
Solid twist knotted where a gem might be,
its interior is softly polished, the inside
of an oyster, from which the pearl fell.

that together, we went

(also published in Poetry Ireland)

that we went out, the neighbours,
one deaf since birth, alive to music and words,
chock-full of imagination,
the other intelligent and curious.

that we went out, friends,
along the Connemara shoreline with its jagged hurt,
its timeless stories of lost roofs off houses,
stone-walled gables standing alone now.

that we went out
to the local hotel, new and about to struggle
that held its opening, and we went,
past the ragged houses and the early evening.

that coming home, together with a glass too many,
road along the shoreline bending and swaying
like old Dylan songs they had played,
and against the still-high sun at late evening

one cow stock-still on the ridge of hill near home
a glaze of tangerine sky on its rump
and behind all blue, like that’s what heaven is.
and knowing that this is the feeling that’s best,

fluid old-fashioned thanks, almost in tears
for the friendship and the slow ways home
and the twilight, dripping orange and blue
under a three-quarter moon before summer.

All poems are published in Mosaics from the Map (Doire, 2018).

Robyn Rowland is an Irish-Australian citizen living in both countries. She regularly works in Turkey. She has written 13 books, 10 of poetry. Her latest books are Mosaics from the Map (Doire, 2018) and her bi-lingual This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (Five Islands, 2015; repub. Spinifex Press, Australia, 2018), Turkish translations, Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Robyn’s poetry appears in national and international journals and in over 40 anthologies, including 8 editions of Best Australian Poems. She has read and taught in Ireland for 35 years and has been invited to read in India, Portugal, Ireland, the UK, the USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, where, along with Canada, Spain and Japan, she has also been published, sometimes in translation. An extended interview with her appeared in Agenda Poetry, UK, December 2018. She has two CDs of poetry, Off the Tongue and Silver Leaving – Poems & Harp with Lynn Saoirse.

She has been filmed reading for the National Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, University College Dublin.

“The Many Splintered Night” and other poems by Aishling Alana Heffernan

May 26th, 2019

The Many Splintered Night

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad,
wakens the dire horror of an unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire
of focussed restraint.
To dance under the moonlight in the eyes of the lights that pound into my head,
with the horror of a dancers aching bloodied feet,
the ache in a temple which builds, with quaking stranded legs,
It’s time to meet—
the one.

On the night watch stand, where the pendulum swings
into the land where the kings head swings, my destined king,
down, down into the bloodied dancers path in the mud strewn grass,
his head spins into the shining glass cut meadow
King
King
KING — without a head, but still
crammed into his crown.
—a sane mind is a very over-estimated thing.

When thought splinters into the cosmos,
minds shatter like a thousand splintered feelings captured in the grip of an opium haze
in the laze-y summer night
of a thousand splintered nights–
thought splinters into the cosmos of minds buzzing like hive-bees outside of the hive
-mind

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad
wakens the dire horror of unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire of unfocussed
restraint
restraint, restrain it—the feathered spectrum of desire that seeps into the many splintered night.

How I loved the headless king,
How he sent me into the many splintered night.

Morning’s Good Morning

I open tender, dust encrusted eyes,
to morning’s good morning,
—fresh sunrise,
turn feverish cheek into
soft, soft cotton dreams,
even as they run far far from me.

Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
When the morning sun rises,
from the freshwater sea?
Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
Now your dreams are setting you free?

Kaleidoscope

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him—
not what it meant or where we had been
I wanted to feel the colour inside him
unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

He’ll wander my mind and settle in my skin,
my pores will open to let the colours in,
breathe him in.

I know what he wants—
I can’t give it to him.
But still this Kaleidoscope draws me in —

And I see forests, a darkness that breathes, swirling broken oaken leaves falling onto a ground
filled with violets, touched by the moon in this room as rain draws me back to Earth.

Was it that much of a sin?
To want to taste his skin, and let
the colours in?

Even as they dragged me to his world,
and I bent down to drink,
the colours stopped my will to think.

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
Settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him,
Not what it meant or where we had been,
I wanted to feel the colour inside him,
Unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

Rag Doll

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside.
Locked and cross-hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain.
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll.
And from your mouth words like drops of infected blood creep into my skin and etch from my
pores the sunlight so recently sucked in,
From me you leach the life you crossed over and hid behind the painted veil of a painted face of
a painted life in a painted world,
Until your lies spin lies and worlds of their own, and your words lose even the ring of truth of
the suffering that once bound you to an earthly sphere,
And there in the madness of the clouds above, in the realm of the small and dead Gods, is where
your eyes see me, Rag Doll.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates,
They pay homage to the world left behind by the world left behind and the words of dead priests
still shuddering in their graves from the sins that mark the ineffable continuity of the energy of us *-
there is no hate from me to you,
The hate you hold for yourself is the hate of a civil war, tragic and born not of want but of a rising
tidal wave of resentment and fear and a driving blind force.
I was born when your child was not. Me, the fatherless one, gained the love of your father.
From me words you banished spill, not like drops of infected blood, but like names. Names bring
power, I name you, scarred one, weaved one, embroidered one, Rag Doll who from the corners of
my nightmares rises in the depths of my mind and teaches me again and again the meaning of
fear and love that is not love but bound to the conditions of a loveless bleak world in which you
are the rag doll and the needle both. The creation of pain and the creator of pain and the weaver
of lies and scorn.
Weave me, spin me, crosshatch and dress me. Strip the sunlight from my veins and from my
breathing skin, infect me with words so often told to yourself and still I will fight.
In and out the needle stitches you rag doll, kept in the past of a past of a past we never forget.
We never forget.
Stare at me.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside
locked and cross hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll,
even as you pull the sunlight from my skin–
I stand and sing to the heavens you no longer see through the cold, walled slates of your eyes.

Skin Covered Moon

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys,
forcing into unbending skin,
the desperation of their need to dominate,
and open-
Bleed, unbending skin, under the moonlit songs,
of long forgotten kin.

The sky is wakening,
it’s eyes open wide,
earth is dancing with its mother tide-
the songs we sing as the mortals underneath
(the steel bled unbending moon)
in our open wounded skin
fall notes of the orchestras
like stitches to a disease
they are the songs of a people
wandering the waste heat of the universe cold in crystalline beauty—
The heat of the blood pumping through our veins
As the clitoris touches the head of the universe of man
Key to Key
Forcing unbending skin—
Are we already forgotten?
Shall we etch pain and match scratches, scars to scars,
as the earth trembles and tears fall from the stars
up from Earth hollow are the cries
of the steel bled keys
The steel bled keys.

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys
sing to the ones who’s bodies were never meant to bleed
and yet the songs of their people
mirror march to home
the songs of the forgotten
—the ones who felt alone
as they watch the moon
skin covered and open
through skin veiled eyes.

Aishling Alana likes to think of herself as the embodiment of organised chaos. In her short(ish) life, she has overcome progressive pain diseases, has met ex-prisoners of death row, interviewed Ted X speakers and gained a Masters in Philosophy of the Arts. She loves bouldering and the sea, and can often be found in the thinking ‘woman’ pose while learning how to code. Having been born in Ireland at the brink of an intense culture shift, her writing takes in fantastical elements of sexuality, religion and identity.

“Homage To Kinsale” and other poems by Linda Ibbotson

May 26th, 2019

In the Absence of Boundaries –

The Third Movement

A note from the other side of silence
hangs in mid-air blue.
Undefined, intangible, unchartered,
neither lengthening nor shortening
or pulled by gravity’s umbilical chord.
I wonder if the wind will carry it in her wings,
perhaps into another realm?
Is it transcending, tentatively balanced on the sacred,
votive, perhaps coiling around a prayer wheel
or roaming the streets of Manhattan
to dance with Ksenia in various shades of black and white?

It has no place for concealment, no obstacle to circumvent.
Is it an apparition on centre stage with no curator,
a muted tone on a Chagall,
lowering its pitch to a finely tuned line of cerulean blue
or does it linger in an atelier in Antibes
where, ascending from a counterpoint
it improvises with the light?
It does not hide in the mouth of frescoes
limed with cardinal red where it cannot speak of freedom
or in the narrow place where it cannot stretch
and where the light does not enter.

Sometimes, it weighs as heavy as a Caravaggio,
a magnum opus as dark as a requiem’s crown of thorns,
a dying cadence longing to flee from a penitentiary stave
to lightly play between the shadow and shadowless
in your visionary third eye, the eye between eyes
where those who listen, see,
and those who see, listen.

In the Absence of Boundaries—
The Third Movement

Was published in California Quarterly Volume 42 No. 3 September 2016 (Editor, Jeanne Wagner, President – John Forrest Harrell)
Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire. Invited to submit by Editor Helene Cardona

The Paris Sketchbook –

Pastiche
Paris opened as a book under my skin.
‘A Moveable Feast’ Hemingway once said.
There is no war under my skin,
only art that sometimes speaks of war.
In Eglise Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre the first six notes
of Bach’s Marcello ‘Adagio’ chime with Notre Dame.
A note cannot play without the air
and the air was filled with hibiscus.
Paris is a panacea, my alter ego blossoming
as sweet as Spring on Sunday’s stroll
in Jardin du Luxembourg, with Antonia.
Along the Seine, unblemished bathers
in July’s La Plage, promenade next to drowsy
heat of the afternoon; right and left bank booksellers
and posters of Le Chat Noir.
Pont Neuf, a synapse, lay between.

I watched the way the light fell
and I fell into myself
and it felt good and it felt strong.
I watched sober shadows from second story windows
at La Palette etched into lithographs
at Musée d’Orsay, in the same room
as Madamoiselle Chanel’s nonchalant eyes,
half sleeping, half remembering
the protagonists at Rue de Seine
more than a generation ago.

I wandered into antiquity, a mileu of veined alleyways
leaning into the bow of Île Saint-Louis.
I searched for lost time; a la recherché du temps perdu,
with Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre,
unconscious Belle Époque minds unleashed
along with expressos and coq au vin at Café de Flore.

I turned away from the rifled gendarmes and unrest,
opened my book and began to sketch.

The Paris Sketchbook—
Pastiche
Published in Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire, Invited by Editor Helene Cardona

The Paris Sketchbook—

The Art of Seeing

There is a place
I sit and sketch the still shade
before the light fades
in and out of restless dusk.

There is a place
where broken shadows rendezvous with La Boheme
and Chopin’s Étude in C minor.
Falling as arpeggios,
weightless snow weighed heavily on cold bones of Paris,
impermanence melted white on soundless white
audible only at the edge of silence.

At Place de la Concorde,
Cleopatra’s needle stitches clouds,
an easterly wind severs flesh and pleached limes,
paper thin leaves shudder into chaos,
to bind winter wounds the colour of blood.

I sketch in grey graphite, the colour of stone
feel the chill of a revolution in my bones.

At Notre-Dame,
knarled gargoyles gather rain and Gregorian chants,
understand and mis-understand
the things that were, things that are
and l’ave nir, things to come.

It is cold at Père Lachaise as I watch the city of light tremble
and I wonder, would we see more clearly in the dark?

The Paris Sketchbook—
The Art of Seeing
Published in Levure littéraire. – Numéro 13 2017 Editor-in-Chief Rodica Draghincescu; founder and general director of Levure littéraire. Invited by Editor Helene Cardona

A Celtic Legacy

Rising from Celtic mists,
calloused white boned fingers
on goatskin
unravel lyrical etchings
on ancient stone
that weeps beneath wounds
swathed in redolent moss
and pink veined thrift.

Stone that cleaves to breath
from Uilleann pipes
shaped to spear the horizon
of Atlantic blue,
carrageen and crab.
Flint and turf furrow
Skellig spines
that once housed the faithful
and guillemots.

Ribs of currachs
kneel before
Ulysees and crosses
scoured by silent storms as
ancestral skin stretched
to beckon retreating tides.

Anchored between the sacred
and calloused white boned fingers
the Book of Kells
lay bleeding.

A Celtic Legacy
Published in The Enchanting Verses Literary Review Issue XX 2014 Editor-in-Chief Sonnet Mondal and Guest Editor Helene Cardona
Eastern World – Editor-in-chief Asror Allayarov
‘A Celtic Legacy’ in addition was read on radio in France and Ireland, performed at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne

Beat of the Bodhran

I hear your hands.
A benediction of skin to skin,
a mantra of ancient bone
rising above celestial scars
and swan sons of Lir.

I hear your hands
beneath the solstice;
acoustics ascending
from wings of sorrow
as Tara’s breath exhales,
lifting her emerald veil,
meadowsweet and whitethorn
woven to crown the halos of pilgrims.

In the distance,
shadows awaken
and dance with eyes
that speak of legends.
Drifting,
in the half light of an eclipse
time falls like snow
on Sliabh Luachra,
cold flesh bound
in sacred stone
as Danu’s limbs
coil around the limbs
of the immortal.

I hear your hands
In the heartbeat of ravens,
echoing in the womb
of the Holy Well
and the gentle whispers
of the wind that
cradle a lament.

I imagine laughter,
binding the wounds of heroes
turning blood into
petals of scarlet flax
as if fragility
becomes fertile.
On the street of the stone ringfort
I see streams of colour
in a blind pipers eyes.
Through each scarred hue
a solitary reed softly sings.
Behind, a damselfly
opens its wings
to catch the colour
before it too
bows its head in prayer.

I hear your hands
as they slip between Atlantic blue,
each wave knowing its birth.
In time and out of time
the restless salt breeze
flies with wild geese.
Somewhere,
in the rhythm of soft rain,
each drop remembers.

I hear your hands
in the flute song of the egret.
as Erin kneels before the ephemeral,
the sanctuary
of the known and the unknown,
her mossy gown
unfolding half forgotten myths.

I hear your hands,
a heartbeat
on an incandescent moon of skin,
a rhythm
in the wintered hands of a scythe,
in the footfall of red deer,
and in the light of the eternal.

And as I watch Celtic mists rise
above ancient stone,
I feel both a longing
and a belonging
to this land, this people, these words
that linger as a mantra,
in the warmth of solace
beneath the silent boundary
of my skin.

Beat of the Bodhran
Published in Asian Signature 30/01/2016

Homage to Kinsale

As nights obsidian curtain lifted,
the skylark heralds the dawn chorus
in my demesne of duck egg blue.
From my balcony,
a mirage of matchstick masts
navigate the thirsty mouth of the harbour,
and my skin drinks it all in.
Sometimes, when I bury myself, in myself.
never quite reaching the point when thinking stops,
I unlatch the door, drink tea, and savour wild berry tart
at Poets Corner,
or stroll to the Spaniard
where the swans dance to Francesca’s mandolin,
and in my solitude I feel quietly content.
I look at life in black and white at The Gallery,
buy a chiffon scarf from Stone Mad,
peacock feathers with hand stitched beads
and fly it like a kite on the beach.
After sundown you’ll find me in The Black Pig
sipping a glass of red,
satisfied with the feeling that finally,
I have arrived.

Homage to Kinsale
Published in Irish Examiner 27/10/2015, Iodine Spring/Summer Issue XVI 2015 Editor- Jonathan K. Rice, Eastern World- Editor Asror Allayarov, Douglas Post Issue 1216 w/e 30/04/2016, Live Encounters December 2016 Editor- Mark Ulyseas

Linda Kinsale Linda Ibbotson was born in Sheffield, England, lived in Switzerland and Germany and travelled extensively before finally settling in County Cork, S. Ireland in 1995. A poet, artist and photographer her work has been published in various international journals including Levure Litteraire, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Iodine, Irish Examiner, Asian Signature, Live Encounters, Fekt and California Quarterly. Linda was also invited to read at the Abroad Writers Conference, Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, Butlers Townhouse, Dublin, and Kinsale, Ireland. One of her poems ‘A Celtic Legacy’ was performed in France at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne. Her painting Cascade has been featured as a CD cover.

“Eve Labouring for 37 Hours, the yes poem” C. Murray

May 15th, 2019

Poethead by Chris Murray

ring—

Eve labouring for 37 hours; the yes poem
Great
monumental
Eve in pain,
will bring
forth a Cain
Abel
—Cannibal
Exhausted stretch
rather/ rather/ rather
rather/ rather/ rather
dilate/ than die/ yes.
So just, sous justice.
en vertu de la justice,
pour,
‘In sorrow you shall bring forth children’
Face present ?: Yes, yes–
Hands? Yes-
His image,
Who conjured it?
This mouth of dry twigs
the sticks/stones
bones / buttons
a / knee-piece/ skulls.
There are piles of skulls
pushing through my grimacing cunt—
all the pretty things,
stones/bones/buttons
a / knee-piece / skulls
Sous justice.
So just, sous justice.
en vertu de la justice,
pour,
‘In sorrow you shall bring forth children’
Merci!
…

View original post 402 more words

“Dreams of a Happy Ending” by Farideh Hassanzadeh

May 12th, 2019

Dreams of a Happy Ending

I throw my nightmare
into your arms
with all my shaking and sweat,
but you stick your hand
into my heart
to pluck my boobs.

I throw my fear of losing words
into a book,
but you throw your shirt
on the clouded pages
to let me know
“It is missing a button”.

You have thrown in my face every day
all the small particles of dust
on the shelves and in every corner,
more sharply than a magnifying glass,
but you ignore the sandstorms
devouring your mate.

Ah! how simply you turn
our shining marriage ring
into a stinging snake
slithering so fast towards
my so-romantic dreams
of a happy ending.

“with many thanks for Becca Menon’s help recreating this poem in English”

A song of despair

People go to the park together
People go to the cinema together
People become friends now and then
and write letters to each other
they even marry each other sometimes
and live at a home for long years
always together
but always apart
like the books in the shelves
or like the stones on the graves.

Farideh Hassanzadeh is an Iranian poet, translator and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was twenty-two. Her poems appear in the anthologies Letters to the World, Contemporary Women Poets of Iran by Faramarz Soleimani, After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo, The Poetry Of Iranian Women by Sheema Kalbasi, Tonight, An Anthology of World Love Poetry by Amitabh Mitra.

She is the author of Eternal Voices: Interviews with Poets East and West and The Last Night with Sylvia Plath: Essays on Poetry. In addition she has translated Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life by Ian Gibson, Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry, Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, Women Poets of the World, Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry, Selected Poems of Iaroslav Seifert, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Blood of Adonis by Samuel Hazo, The Beauty of Friendship: Selected Poems by Khalil Gibran, Love Poetry of the World, Classic and Contemporary, and Selected Poems by Blaga Dimitrova. the Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.

Her new book is Footprints of Cats in Poetry, Stories, Paintings, Politics, Religion, Medicine, Cinema and Science.

A celebration of Irish Women Poets on Bloomsday 2019

May 9th, 2019

“Yes” by Afric McGlinchey

(after Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses)

…yes and then
I touched my finger to his lips
to stroke away the cider,
and put it to mine
and our tongues went plunging
– such a lush sweetness –
the grass so springy-soft on the cliff
and the waves crashing below
and I had to catch my breath
and the night’s perfume drowned
that tang of lamb
and I thought of my first kiss
– what was his name? Johnny? – yes,
his tongue so unexpected,
wriggling like an eel,
but this time it felt different,
and even his silence didn’t matter
when he stared, stared at my breasts
and I let my hair slip loose
like that Cape Town girl,
and you have moonlight in your eyes, he said
so I took him in my hand
and he whispered, would I,
ma petite phalène, he said
and I thought I may as well,
as well him as another,
and the sea was swirling below us in a froth
the sky gorgeous with stars
and I suggested with my eyes
that he ask again
and I knew he would
and I wondered if I’d say yes
and then I urged him down
and he found his way
through all my layers
and I might, I thought, yes
I think I will
say yes.

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

“Beochaoineadh Máthar Maoise” by Ellen Nic Thomás

A dhílleachta linbh gan ainm, gan athair,
Do chraiceann ar aondath le humha an nathair,
A lúbann timpeall do thaobhán uiríseal,
Mar bhata ceannródaí is sníomhanna sisil.

Is trua liom ciseán do dhóchas a fhíochán,
Do dhán a chaitheamh i bpoll an duibheagáin,
D’eiseadh a chruthú ar bhunús baill séire,
‘Nois tá tú chomh cotúil leis an gCailleach Bhéarra.

A iníon, a mhiceo, a ógfhlaith bocht,
A leanbh truaillithe, maith dom mo locht,
Imigh anois leat, ná bí do mo chrá,
Le smaointe ciúinchiontacha ó mhaidin go lá.

Ellen Nic Thomás is a bilingual poet from Dublin. She graduated from Trinity College with a BA in English and Irish. Her work has been published by headstuff.org, Tales From the Forest and The Attic.

“Homage to Kinsale” by Linda Ibbotson

Homage to Kinsale published in Irish Examiner 27/10/2015, Iodine Spring/Summer Issue XVI 2015 Editor- Jonathan K. Rice, Eastern World– Editor Asror Allayarov, Douglas Post Issue 1216 w/e 30/04/2016, Live Encounters December 2016 Editor- Mark Ulyseas

Linda Ibbotson was born in Sheffield, England, lived in Switzerland and Germany and travelled extensively before finally settling in County Cork, S. Ireland in 1995. A poet, artist and photographer her work has been published in various international journals including Levure Litteraire, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Iodine, Irish Examiner, Asian Signature, Live Encounters, Fekt and California Quarterly. Linda was also invited to read at the Abroad Writers Conference, Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, Butlers Townhouse, Dublin, and Kinsale, Ireland. One of her poems ‘A Celtic Legacy’ was performed in France at Theatre des Marronniers, Lyon, the village of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse and 59 Rivoli, Paris by Irish actor and musician Davog Rynne. Her painting Cascade has been featured as a CD cover.

“Symphony of Skin” by Audrey Molloy

i. Tuning up

They are there if you listen.
On the train, in the Laundromat—
the instruments, I mean;
bells, stirring in two-way stretch cotton,
(their owner slumped in the window seat,
his work boots tapping a secret rhythm);
timpani buttoned under a cashier’s blouse,
a cello bound by polyester pinafore
in salmon pink. She thinks
the air is flecked with soap dust,
doesn’t realise it’s rosin from her bow.
Air flows through apertures
where, later, fingers will flutter,
strings blur under the rub of horsehair;
their discordant mewl barely heard
above the swish of the train,
the hum of machine,
louder in the darkness of tunnel
or the lull of rinse cycle, then soft again.
Tuning up, they’re getting ready
for this evening’s symphony of skin
to begin at precisely 10.15.

ii. Skin music

And you can never explain it in physical terms—
what happens between two people
on an ordinary bed, in an ordinary room.
Let me ask you, could you school the cuttlefish
in Ludwig’s Emperor (second movement)
in terms of anvil, hammer and stirrup?
Paint the hues of daybreak for the mole?
There is only air, compressed and stretched.
There is always space between skins,
no matter how closely they press.

No touch, only the music of skin;
an oboe sings, a cello answers.
Locked within the strands of collagen,
atoms built of smaller blocks,
each one a capsule packed with strings,
each string a note that’s yet to play.

iii. Reverberation

Afterwards, they lie curled,
two bass clefs facing this way, that.
They talk of anything, of childhood;
croak the lyrics to every Paul Simon song
they can recall; this, the highlight,
now the players have left the stage.
They will meet people
who promise them more than this,
more than you could write about this.
Sleep will come later, a raft
pushed out on a starred sea.
What oak bed? Which room?
There is nothing here
but phosphorescence
undulating along their border.
Only this tiny stage
drifting on the night swell,
a single baton on its floor.

Symphony of Skin, first published in Meanjin Volume 76, ed. Bronwyn Lea

Audrey Molloy was born in Dublin and grew up in rural Wexford. She now lives in Sydney, where she works as an optometrist and medical writer. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Moth, Crannog, The Irish Times, Orbis, Meanjin and Cordite. Audrey’s work has been nominated for the Forward Prize and she is one of Eyewear Publishing’s Best New British and Irish Poets 2018. She was runner up for the 2017 Moth Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for several other poetry awards.

Website: www.audreymolloy.com

“Sanctus” by Kimberly Campanello

And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own? – James Joyce

At the English pub in Indianapolis, we discuss technology. He says he can already hear the robot’s footsteps on his grave. In the worst neighbourhoods, the prairie is coming back. Cattails are pushing up through old sidewalks and nearly all the important species of sparrows have returned. A Future Farmer of America—in other words, a 14-year-old white kid from the pesticide-drenched heartland—slips backwards from a mall railing and falls to his death among the Super Pretzels and Dippin’ Dots down in the food court. I get reminded of incest dreams and the two I’ve had, one for each parent. My mother calls and gives me the run-down on which of her friends is on a morphine drip and which is in remission, and she tells me that when I get back to Miami I should get a job and always keep a full tank of gas. The homilitic style of evangelical Christianity is the same in Ghana, San Diego, Little Havana, and on Ellettsville, Indiana’s Hart Strait Road where in the abortion scene of the Halloween morality play she yanks a skinned squirrel soaked in beet juice from the screaming girl’s crotch and holds it up with food-service tongs before tossing it on a cookie sheet. You’ll have a clean slate if you accept Jesus, right now. We’ll all have a clean slate, if you accept Jesus, now. The body of Christ. Amen. The body of Christ. Amen. The body of Christ. Amen. Don’t drop it. Use a metal plate with a handle that could guillotine a communicant’s neck. And on the third day, I drank poitín at an Irish pub in Bloomington, Indiana, in fulfillment of the scriptures. Take this, all of you, and drink it. This is the bloodshine of the newest and most everlasting covenant. Don’t drop it.

II.

Death is a real bummer. We live through and for our parents and still Freud was wrong. You should hurry up and put your face right in it for an hour and that is definitely a sacrament, more so than that night in Garrucha at the misa flamenca, though the music was nice. Even the Sanctus didn’t offend me. Finally, I would add that the world is falling apart, always has been, ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent, etc., and that my favorite sounds are when you say things like, Everything is fine, or, That cunt is mine. I hear them and I clench and unclench and I. love. you.

Tell me it’s too much. Amen.
Tell me it’s too much. Amen.
Tell me it’s too much. Amen.

Let us kneel down facing each other, holding razors.
Lather up my head and I will lather yours.
I am worthy to receive you.
I am your mirror. On which a razor
lay crossed. We’ll shave it all off.
If our knees can handle it, let’s stay like this
until it grows back, softer than before.
If they can’t, let’s make love, and say,
These are our bodies,
which will not be given up
for any of you.
Let us say our own word
and we shall be healed.

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 published MOTHERBABYHOME, a book of conceptual poetry in 2018.

“Being Your Mother” by Karen O’Connor

I eat the things you spit out
I bend to your will
at night when I hold you
my shoulders breaking
from the strain
of your two-year
two-stone body
like my ribs will crack
and turn to dust
deep inside a place
I never knew existed
I sing, my breath catching
in my throat
your fingers instinctively
milking mine
settling into sleep
and still I hold you
pull you close
my muscles burn
the night ploughs on
but you and I are still suspended
in my mother’s arms
her fingers curling in my hair
her breath, like mine
breathing in with yours
so close, I often think
it’s you are holding both of us.

Karen O’Connor is a winner of Listowel Writers’ Week Single Poem Prize, The Allingham Poetry Award, The Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award for Poetry and the Nora Fahy Literary Awards for Short Story. She is a poet and short story writer and her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Karen’s first poetry collection, FINGERPRINTS (On Canvas) was published by Doghouse Books in 2005. Her second collection, Between The Lines, also from Doghouse Books (2011), was featured on RTE Radio 1 Arts Programme, Arena.

Website: https://www.karenoconnor.co.uk/

Poethead Indices

Contemporary Irish Women Poets https://poethead.wordpress.com/contemporary-irish-women-poets/
An Index of Women Poets (International & translated works) https://poethead.wordpress.com/index-of-women-poets/

Poems written in Dublin by Sarah Chen

May 6th, 2019

The Defamiliarizing Effects of Walking Around as a Passerby in Dublin City

The defamiliarizing effects of walking around
as a passerby in Dublin city
a camera in hand and a greater
inclination to look up
are sweeping and various.

You suspend dizzy with secrets –
knowledge of red bricks and grass blades
spoon-songs echoing from street to streets
teal bikes intertwined in leggy daydream
watching beer barrels sleep –
or is this just the hangover
from last night?

The pink lady and the blue lady
glide past the Celtic refrain
but are enchanted yet
same as you.

The many lovers in the green
are the same as the bookish man beside you
is the same as the jogging woman in heels
is the same as the boy feeding the seagulls
is the same as the man laughing at the boy feeding the seagulls
is the same as the seagulls
are the same as you.

Jerking back and spinning forward
many times and many “sorry’s”
sudden stops and the ever-present hesitance to street-cross
you’re swept dizzy again with barks and cars
and smoky smells and sea air
and sameness and Self and sky.

You stumble onto this street again
different stumble than the empty swollen nights
the same cobbled hands
that caught your bare feet frenzied
now cradles flower stands
now upholds sand-man and backwards-guitar-man and you
are the same as them.

Yet it is different
the way burgundy edges sharpen
with just a bit of sun
like wind wakes
or is it you?

Through the wade of beauty
the Wave of All Things
you see her still –
radiant.

Take her hand and pull her
into the curtainless shower
of red bricks
and unnoticed upper stories
and Guinness with or without black currant liqueur
and grass blades
sharing simultaneously
secret knowledge.

Well, you walk and wave
and wonder now
will you see her again?

But only fleet glimpses on Front Square
only know casinos on O’Connell
only love her on a sunlit day
only a passerby.

I’m Falling in Love With Myself

I’m falling in love with myself
Bed serenaded by sun-soaked singers
Beep beep beep of backing truck lingers
Ever running rivers on my skinny fingers
I’m falling in love with myself.

I’m falling in love with myself
Sister wakes up and sighs delight
Dappled movie drawings loop in our minds
Arm hairs seem to multiply
I’m falling in love with myself.

I’m falling in love with myself
Sunk too deeply in ethnic pride
Took brother’s mayonnaise and shifted my eyes
Rose up, texted, apologized
I’m falling in love with myself.

So large and small and dual am I
Coloured and black and white am I
Take the lift and face the sky
Siblings below and siblings above
All cloud-kids and mirror tell
“I’m falling in love with myself!”

That Last Night

Spark me once more
in your watery ways,
in your absent wars,
in your sharp-eyed face.

Charm me once more
in your cloudy gaze,
in your secret shore,
in your steady haze.

They told me in your early days
you built roads that led to nowhere.
Draw my threads down wandering
the roads that lead to nowhere.

Spell me once more
in your timestuck pace.
Close your colored doors
and forget my face.

I’ll tell you once more
the words I wrote
and give you some American advice.
You’ll smile sweet,
I’ll stand and go
Quickly and hide my eyes.

Greener grass grows fed with tears
and swallows steps inside.
Did I tread too softly here –
leave no traces behind?

Seymour’s Fat Lady and My Mom

Seymour’s Fat Lady and my mom
anticipate me at the gates
so I will remind myself 
     that I’ve crashed twice already
     and I can’t read directions
     and I’m full of highways
so let them drive me off the plane
and I’ll sing ‘em a song.


In Vocation Of Now

From home to here
From “only there I cannot say where” 
From bright-starred field to Dartry Road
Rathmines Dublin Six

Seven cities this semester
Half-ten heart tanglements 
And probably too many poems

Now I am a now-vessel
Shaped and painted and ever still
 	I will put on my Isbell playlist
 	I will dip my salmon in sesame
 	I will set a reminder to call Mom

I will mend the nets 
To fly by

Sarah Chen is an emerging poet and 19-year old college student. Raised by Chinese-immigrant parents in Texas, she moved to Dublin in August 2018 to study English. Her writing experience was previously limited to songs performed with her rock band, but now is expanding into the territory of written poetry. Her collection of poems, Poems Written in Dublin was written in the span of a morning upon completion of her first year of college.

Another Good Friday by Maria McManus

April 19th, 2019

Maria McManus on the murder of Lyra McKee

mariamcmanus

I hardly know where or how to begin. I feel waves of grief for the family and partner of Lyra McKee and for all of us, after her murder. Here we are, twenty-one Good Fridays after our peace agreement and we wake to the news of another life lost. Lyra McKee, was doing her job as a journalist and was shot dead by Republican terrorists in Derry. Some coward in the night stepped out of the shadows with a gun and shot. She is dead.

My generation inherited The Troubles, but we have failed to finish them, to deal with them so definitively that we can instead focus, fully and constructively, on creating a life-affirming future. The future will happen anyway; it will come as time comes, second by second. So what now? How will we make it better?

I wrote this poem for TURF, a dance theatre piece I…

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