Chris Murray

‘Cegenated’ and other poems by Anora Mansour

August 29th, 2018

Saturnian Girls

Orbit of cramped pantaloons
you offered painted blood
as an apology my love.

And I take it in turns
to disavow the tureen
of your torment —
your stone soup
its coagulated colours
seared by Farsi tea
and a spoonful of breast milk.

You often fantasise about
my forest path cries
amongst the de-coupled tombs
where the travellers sleep
and porcelain panthers creep.

Some womenfolk are
screws to their kin
guards grasping for that infinite love.
The needle that weaves time.

Wicked you made me weep
over identity papers lost
and then I knew
you’d become another Him.
One of the happenstance
patsies of pain.

Greedy confessors
whose tittle are a fiddle
from the hush city streets.
Their fistula make you say Aha.

I must shake the rack
this bacchanal ruin
your Thanksgiving banquet
for the baying peasants.

Beware the Saturnian sea-girls
clutching sharp pink conch
behind their backs,
their chosen weapon of defence.

Detroit Waters

I’ll soon be free
yes, restless me.
Glass holding up honky tonk hells–
Leaden water cities
singing of bullet bells.

The mouths of youth
one sip distempered
foamed then part demented.
Their thirst dissolved whole thoughts
into plastic playthings.

Mountains of mercury fill land up-
Between Detroit asbestos and Toronto festivals
only tide and crime
heave out mutual shots off Lake Insanity.
It’s cry of brown captivity.

Fallacy of Visions

The first burn mine blush
Fallacy of visions.
This last rain
a pageantry of his working hands
before I smarted down
stuttering shambolic
through the peeping
came Patrick!
Unrequited starling-look
here take my wrists
for tether is better
than no touch at all.

You told me fluted truths
left you full of cream
asleep in dewy fields.

I come from any shelf
my skull speaks continents.
Babel, not sign language
a punch bowl of gooseberries
wet with hours.
Seeded with tears.

Libyan Boat

Ghosts inflated on the Med
woman with her child dead
for she weighs more
than mariners must
than raw atomic dust
fawn umbilical chronicles to be thrust.

We shall soon devour hard green pears just to see
that dawn chocolate skin is ever sweet at sea
and joy moments under moonstones of Crete.

A grim desert tale blows north oh so cold
of spare bloated body parts to be sold
A bright circle of tellers laughing far too bold.

Conquest not consent creeps in my bed
only then can the phantom rest his head
lapping for the onyx shore
Whispering “non aver paura”.

CEGENATED

Here is the dusk baby plucked
for the reading of luck
the tumbledown tarot rhymes
menthol and black stubbed grime.

Here is the child indigo
whose mumbled tale is Esperanto
paid for with a slap and a diva’s shriek.
And she a frozen caste freak
watches the blind elephant dream.
While the deaf guard chews gum
to the clap of a shoe
so now she only nibbles nails for her food.

Here is the child too mute
to point to the clues
the horseshoe in the kitchen
spent salt and the sang-froid within.
Shouts on the line and gunpowder cops
black telephone cord snips
by Mother raving “Tis I who am the plot!”

Here is the child
a ruin inside.
Here is the child
who stops growing
at five.

Saturnian Girls and other poems © Anora Mansour

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.

‘Following the River Exe on a Wednesday Afternoon’ and other poems by Kate Garrett

August 22nd, 2018

Granny Woman

The men leave us be; at times
like this they take themselves
out to the porch with pipes
and tin cups. Everyone trusts

the granny woman. She knows
best, walks for miles when
there’s a baby coming, brings
her bag along. The bottles

of green-smelling whiskey,
fat leaves smooth and big
as her hand, rolled into jars,
rattle next to mud bases

for the poultice. She eases
the pains away, welcomes
every life into the wild world,
soothes swollen breasts so new

young ones can feed. Now and then
she brews up roots and stems
for some silly girl with a problem.
I’d say the men on the porch

never know much about that.
Some must believe they’re lucky.
They never say anyhow. They don’t see
what we see: the other side

of the granny woman, when she
doesn’t bring joy, calm and a blessing,
when she carries pain in her bag,
cramps, red blood, and a flat relief.

*Until the middle of the 20th century, it was typical for rural communities in the southern Appalachian region of the USA to include “granny women”. One role of these women was to act as midwives, using knowledge of folk remedies to assist in childbirth, and significantly but less extensively, with terminations and contraception. My great-grandmother was one of them, and granny magic/granny witchcraft is still practised today.

*This poem was first published in the anthology The Chronicles of Eve (Paper Swans Press, 2016)

Meeting Tink in a bar in Heaven

(for Tara)

When I sleep, she still exists.

Her face peach-bright
and more than just a pinch of skin.

My friend is a tattooed hologram who hugs
me tight and tells me she’s glad to see me

and how she’s sorry I can’t be a bridesmaid
as her wedding won’t be going ahead.

I won’t tell her when she left he changed his mind.
Most people do, when you go the way she did.

And she says she can’t wait for my wedding,
her corset is laced and her boots are shined.

She’s bringing her favourite lover, a leather-and-tartan
skirted sprite, curved in at the waist and out at the hip;

this one makes her feel more alive than ever.

I’ve been here all this time, she says, as music
blasts through black-light clouds – not a harp in sight –

and tells me how I’d love her new friends
because they are absolute angels.

*This poem was first published at Clear Poetry, and in Kate’s pamphlet You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams, 2017)

Following the River Exe on a Wednesday afternoon

My son fixates on sailboats.
We both dream of riding the currents

out to open sea, so we breathe
in midday shadows, meditating
on the shimmer of the aqua
air. I tap his temples, wisp lavender

under his nose; I hold his hand
until he finds his peace. We walk
along the pavement, heading east.
This is not like our river: tamed

by industry, churned with purpose.
This river remembers smugglers,
the density of salt.

The boy tilts his head,
squints and smiles, while the pale sun turns
blue waves to a shiver.

*This poem was first published at Clear Poetry, and in Kate’s pamphlet The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams, 2016).

The names of things unseen

for Ethan

You discover new spots on our adventures:
Abergele, Deganwy, Prestatyn, Colwyn Bay,
Betws-y-Coed, Llandudno Pier, Conwy Castle.
You and your brothers – pirates and knights –
duelling, peering into dungeons, or racing
to the edge of the jellyfish-dotted sea.

You pack your bag, almost overflowing:
a boomerang, a hacky sack, a water gun
shaped like a shark, an eye-patch and wooden swords,
bunched into place with books, knitting,
paper, pens (for the rainy days),
and a candle, painted in wax with your name.

Your friends teach you bits of an ancient tongue:
trenau, gwylan, “pen, ysgwyddau, coesau, traed”,
then you explore my dictionary to find
the names of things unseen, but read, and dreamed –
tylwyth teg, môr-forwyn, coblyn, draig –
wrap words like cowry shells to take back home.

*This poem was first published at And Other Poems, and in Kate’s pamphlet The names of things unseen (one-sixth of Caboodle published by Prolebooks, 2015).

Donkeyskin

She and I did our best with what we had,
spent years hunched in flea-dirt fur,
unlearned the cadence of our voices.

She and I understood emptying bins
of apple cores, ‘leave it for the cleaner’
among echoes of twinsets and ties.

She and I hid our black eyeliner, tubes
of Red 107 lipstick, silver dresses—wore
them on gloom-heavy Sundays, alone.

She and I married a second-rate prince
who watched us through the keyhole,
enchanted by bare feet, wet lips.

She and I crouch beneath long shadows
expecting a father who won’t stay gone—
bellies full of venison, hands gripping stone.

*This poem was first published in Dying Dahlia Review, and in Kate’s pamphlet Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2018)

Shorn

for Gráinne Ní Mháille

The gossips claim there’s power
in her long red locks,

but she wants to swing a sword
and feel the earth roll away
beneath her feet.

‘You’ll meet your death, girl,’ her father
says, ‘those waves of hair will catch

in the wheel, in the rigging, and break
your sweet pale neck.’ But there’s no fear

in her, our saving grace.
She pulls the knife
from its place beneath her cloaks,

drags it across the plaited red gold
and meets her fate above the coastal

rocks as she drops dead scarlet rope
into the sea: she is less of a girl.

She will become our Queen.

*This poem was first published in The Copperfield Review, and in Kate’s pamphlet Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016).

Kate Garrett is a writer and editor. She is the founding/managing editor of Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, Lonesome October Lit, and the charity webzine and anthology Bonnie’s Crew. Her own poetry has been widely published, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and longlisted for a Saboteur Award, and she is the author of several pamphlets: most recently You’ve never seen a doomsday like it (Indigo Dreams, 2017) and Losing interest in the sound of petrichor (The Black Light Engine Room, 2018). Kate was born in southern Ohio, but moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat.

‘A Proper Poem’ and other poems by Abigail Dufresne

August 17th, 2018

Big Brother Is Watching.

I wanted to push off into the crashing,
Batter against bridges
Be swept away by currents

You preferred the shore
No sharks on shore
No undertows to rip away your red tide sister

I wasn’t allowed to kayak without you,
And you weren’t willing to hold all my fire
Even with all that water, my flames are still reckless

We were both cradled by waves,
Rocked by the sound of seagulls,
Ate our sandwiches out of plastic buckets

Last month I fumbled every fiery part of me into the open mouth of a kayak for the first time in years,
Held the paddle in both hands, still pretending like I know what I’m doing,
Each stroke splatters lake water onto my face, it gets into my mouth, I am smiling so big

You own a kayak of your own now,
Step into it with much more grace than the hot coals on my feet could ever manage,
There’s a hook for your fishing rod and quiet patience to sit in

We fished together once,
I spend the whole morning casting the line; my flame soaring with it,
Warning all the fish to stay away I suppose,

You cast the line once
And pull back a fish,

My fire burns all the more furiously,
Lighting up the dock just enough
For you to throw the fish back by my light.

You cut the spurs of your fish hooks,
They slide out more easily, you say.
Catch and release.

I take waves in the face just to see my flames tumble,
My throat stings from the salt that gets in while I smile,
I dig my toes in as a brace for the crash

Brother,
I am scared to turn around
I don’t know what waves would hit if I’m not looking,
If I did turn, I know I would see you on shore,
With a flame just as steady and bright as before.

Meredith, New Hampshire

This town
Smells like
Sunscreen

So many little grubby hands
Dripped with ice cream
I can almost see them now
Gearing up for summer

This town
Smells like
Books that haven’t been read yet

They sit on the shelves
Waiting for gentle hands
Dripped with ice cream
To peel them apart one by one
In the scalding sun

This town
Smells like
Anxiety

That might just be
Me though.

Maybe I should
Get some ice cream,
My hands aren’t quite sticky enough
For this place.

I’m the foreigner
With soft,
Clean hands,
I don’t quite fit,

The door handles all slip a bit
Under my tentative grip.

A Proper Poem

Today I wrote
A proper letter
On proper paper
With a proper pen.
I put it in
A proper package
With a proper book
To go along.
I drove to the
Proper post office
And obeyed every
Proper posting
Along the way.
I pulled into the
Proper post office
With a
Properly pleased smile
On my proud face.
I promptly got out of
My proper car,
Walked up to the
Proper post office
And it was
Positively closed.

untitled

I wonder if my lover
Makes art about me

If he turns to his creation
And says

This is for her,
Never to see, but it’s hers non-the less

I wonder if there’s
Art that I don’t know is mine.

Lover,
This is for you,

It says,
You make me smile,

Even from so far away,
And maybe, just maybe,

Your smile is that soft and
Your voice is that kind and

It is not a trick
Of the distance.

This is for you,
Never to see, but it’s yours non-the less.

I held my anger
So tightly
So long
That my knuckles split
And dripped blood onto the carpet.
Today I opened my hands and found
Nothing
I looked at you and felt
Nothing
Maybe I’ve always felt
Nothing
And it scared me,
I’m supposed to feel something,
Right?
We kissed and your tongue tasted like
Nothing
I tried to flavor it with all the ways I’d seen
Movie couples kiss
But from beginning to end I felt
Empty.
I tried to fill it with all the songs you played,
How can something that sounds so beautiful be
Nothing?
But you didn’t write the music
It belongs to someone else.
You threw a grenade into a pit of
Nothing,
There was so much room for
The explosion.
But no matter how big the bang
Silence will always follow.
And I am grateful for the
Silence.
I reached into the nothing
And plucked out the songs I like.

Overheard At Church On Easter

We had
I saw
Crocuses today
And frogs
Calling
Peeping

He is risen
Peeping.

A Proper Poem and other poems are © Abigail Dufresne

Abigail Dufresne is a twenty-one year old poet, actress, and costume designer from Rhode Island with training in acting, design, movement, and devised theatre from Shakespeare and Company, The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and The University of Rhode Island. At this point in her career Abigail finds herself drawn mostly to devised theatre and Shakespeare for the opportunities these provide to engage with both poetry and acting within the same medium. She looks forward to exploring how these disciplines can also live within other forms of art.

‘Angel on High’ and other poems by Aoife Read

August 7th, 2018

Angel On High

An angel came to me today,
small and full of memories
a hodgepodge of worn paint,
and yellowed glue
chipped on her edges
and thick with the scent of my youth.
Imperfect, old, barely there.

You promised her to me
when I was as small as her.
Imperfect, young, barely there.
You said to me, “When I die, you
can have this angel, and she will always
look after you, even when I’m not around anymore,
to do it myself.”

It took more than the two years since your death
for her to find her way to me
but today she finally found me.

I’ve placed her somewhere high.
Given her pride of place
amongst childhood trinkets,
things that I can’t bring myself to part with
remnants of my smallness.
top shelf, where all the best stuff is.

She’s surrounded by gold now,
real gold.
The gold that grazed your weary flesh
as you breathed your last.
Rested on your pulse as you passed
from one void to the next.
The last of your skin cells,
still nestled between the
tiny crevices and notches
of your own trinket you couldn’t
bear to part with.

The top shelf,
where all the best stuff is.
where my last piece of you
is guarded by an angel.

Never Ask

You never ask me for my words,
you just let them drip from my lips.
Holding them,
like an inkwell holds the unwritten.
Consonants and vowels move around my tongue
and all you do is draw them from me
completing my sentences
forming full phrases
making a complete passage out of everything I say.

You never ask me for my touch
or my breath
those are things I give to you without a preponderance
or question.
You pull my insides out like liquid silk
and wrap them around yourself
clothed in effervescent innards
the heart of me
the lungs and guts and spleen.
splayed out you leave me.

It’s almost violent in its intensity.
In the thick heaving bosom of what
passes between us lays the
unerring simplicity of elegant lust.

You never ask me for myself because
you already have me.
You carry me in those hands of yours
that I can not look at,
without something stirring
deep within me.

The gentle, firm grasp
of your slender arms.
The softness of your presence
the lightness of your company.
The giddy stratospheres you take me to
the way you see me…

There’s just something so beautiful
In the way you never ask.

Small Things

Small things linger
a few weeks ago you sat at the foot of my bed
the light drenching you from behind,
casting your face in silhouette
we sat in silence
and read Kerouac and Ginsberg together
and lost ourselves in other people’s perspectives.
and I glanced at you, squinty-eyed as the light cloaked you
your hair a striking auburn glare
you didn’t know that I was looking
didn’t know that I was taking in every inch of you
forcing my eyes to adjust to the light so that I could look straight at you
devouring every morsel
hungry and searching
mine, I thought
forever, I thought
the weight of my love impossible
the cadence of your quiet breathing beating life into me
you looked so beautiful clothed in the sun
so ethereal and otherworldly
small things linger
small wonders
big love

Gaze

I’ve never been looked at
the way she looks at me.
with fire in her eyes
and a rumble in her belly,
like all the heavens come alive
whenever she casts her gaze
in my direction.

Sometimes her love for me is palpable
like it round house kicks me deep in my gut
upends me and knocks me from my standing.

Sometimes it is delicate,
and it traces its way across my flesh
languishing over every bump,
every crevice,
every part of me.

That’s how she loves me
ferociously
with teeth and hair and bone
with skin and guts and blood

Fearlessly
Unabashedly
Shamelessly
as though her whole world
is set ablaze
by the locking of our eyes.

Sometimes,
I think it’s so pure,
so perfect the way she sees me,
that I am devastated
by the beauty of it,
of us.

But when the intensity abates
I can gaze right back at her,
with all of my heart
dangling from the tips
of my eyelashes
and I am as raw
and bare as I can be,
and right at that moment
when our gaze is locked
and our souls are naked to each other,
I hope that she knows,
that I have never been looked at
the way she looks at me.

Angel on High and other poems are © Aoife Read

Aoife Read is a 34-year-old woman born and bred in Dublin. She is a breast cancer survivor, a lesbian and a quiet activist. Aoife has been writing from a young age, from journaling all through her teens to working as a journalist now, currently on a freelance basis, but in the past for local newspapers and as a deputy editor for various magazines. Her true love has always been for poetry though, and she has kept all of the poems she has written throughout her life from her early teens until now. A longtime resident of Swords Co. Dublin, Aoife lives in her family home with her cat, Xena. She has a partner of 6 years, Franky, who has been the focus of many of her poems. You might even say she is her muse, although she would murder Aoife for referring to her that way. Aoife has a huge passion for science, physics in particular, and is a comic book geek and gamer chick and a bit of an all-around nerd. These interests and fascinations are often found creeping into a lot of her work in various ways. Her recent battle with cancer is also something that has coloured a lot of her latest work. Her poetry and writing is laced with something deeper, perhaps thicker ever since.

‘Still Life With Hedgehog’ and other poems by Gaynor Kane

July 29th, 2018

Still life with hedgehog

The items have been arranged;
carefully positioned, to vary height
with texture and tone. Lit from the left.

But what the artist hadn’t bargained for
was that the sleeping urchin would unfurl;
spine straightening, light-tipped quills oblique.

To nimbly negotiate the spray of red roses,
and feast on wedge of watermelon.
White table linen turning light pink.

Abraxas

Oh, dark one!
I see shadows staring back
reflected in an ebony pond,
a black iris
smooth and shining.

Do we see differently?
Is your world in sepia,
or monochrome,
or technicolour?
Have you lost hope in humanity?

I stroll through the golden field,
seeded grass
swishes against skin.
You follow,
echoing my gait.

Under a shaft of sunlight
we stop – still.
Feel
our breathing
become synchronised.

Taste the mist of
our exhalation
merging in the stillness
of us
muzzles almost nuzzling.

But you are looking
down on me
and I wonder
if your power
will be my undoing.

I reach to touch your cheek.
The spell is broken
you rear up whinnying;
gallop off like a thunderbolt
leaving me in a cloud of humility.

First published in Visual Verse, Volume 3, Chapter 11 (https://visualverse.org/submissions/abraxas/)

Recipe for the scent of you

In memory of Winnie McCutcheon

Add two parts Sunlight soap
and one part Brasso or Vim
(depending on the day)
to Yardley Lily of the Valley.
Beat with vigour, wearing a floral pinafore
fold in chocolate and desiccated coconut
cut into squares – your signature traybake.
Top with a dusting of pressed powder
and cherry-red Max Factor lipstick.

Grey-scale

Our affair
lasted six months.
Meeting out the back
in a portacabin
hidden away
from village stares.
I remember
the mustard curtains
but not your face.
You asked me
the same questions.
Every-time,
repeating them
in monotone
so as not to influence my answer.
And on a scale
of one to ten,
I learnt how
to tell you
what you wanted to hear.

First published in the Community Arts Partnership Poetry in Motion 2016-17 Anthology ‘Matter’

Princess of Eiderdown

for my Nieces

In your first Winter,
I guide you into a king-size
ocean; you ride the crest
of the wave, along its middle,
waft a white muslin sail,
laughing at the breeze.
Smiling in a yellow dress,
golden hair radiant,
you are the sun
on my horizon.

Just as I think you are going
to pronounce yourself
‘Princess of Eiderdown’,
in your babbled tongue,
you discover my hand.
Our eyes connect briefly,
and although we have
different bloodlines, I know
we are bound together,
until the vanishing point.

You reach over, clutch
my finger in your tiny
hand, squeeze tight,
strengthen our connection.
Then with the nail,
of your pointing finger,
you pensively pick at the
white moon, rising
from my cuticle;
exploring life’s mysteries.

Lemniscate

The sign of infinity bows my breasts;
I tie them up, bind them tight, flat.

Conceal my sex, and the years,
the rebirths – always a girl.

Living with simple putdowns
or the terror of toileting at dusk.

In this life, I will walk barefoot
to the holy Ganges and bathe

in polluted waters. Make
sacrifices to end the cycle.

Journeyman

Danced through the dusk of the ‘50s
into the dawn of the ‘60s
across the decks of three sister ships.

Mitred and dovetailed joints,
trimmed trusses to the beat
of the Shipyard’s percussion.

Dreamed of sailing transatlantic
in the pure white bosom
of RMS Amazon, Aragon, Arlanza.

Still Life With Hedgehog and other poems are © Gaynor Kane

Gaynor Kane is a graduate of the Open University, with a BA (Hons) Humanities with Literature. She has had poetry published in the Community Arts Partnership’s ‘Poetry in Motion’ anthology Matter and in online journals, such as: Atrium Poetry, The Galway Review and The Blue Nib. In 2016, Gaynor was a finalist in the annual Funeral Services NI poetry competition. In June 2017, she was appointed as a member of the Executive Board for Women Aloud NI. Founded by Jane Talbot, Women Aloud aims to support female writers from, and/or living in, Northern Ireland.

Image: John Quinton Pringle ‘Still Life with the head of Dante’ (Wiki Commons)

‘Glendalough Sonnet’ and other poems by Angela Patten

July 23rd, 2018

Glendalough Sonnet

Rain and relatives, relatives and rain.
In Glendalough’s monastic town
a jackdaw baby thrusts his downy head
out of a round tower putlock and raises
an ungodly yellow beak to squawk
at gawking tourists snapping cellphones,
the spines of their umbrellas dripping
on the ancient bullaun stones
where monks once mixed their potions
and the holywell was rich in lithium
which turned out to be a great cure
for the occasional pilgrim who, like me,
suffered from the watery weather
or a sodden slough of Celtic despond.

Angela Patten © The Cumberland Review 2015

Inchigeelagh Getaway

Gaeilge, Inse Geimhleach, meaning “Island of the Hostages”
The land is a sponge sodden
with salt water and rain,
the mossed path a tangle
of Herb Robert and buttercup.
Giant leaves of gunnera
and the green spears of rushes
stand guard around the pond.
Laburnum hangs its head
like a girl drying her yellow hair.

Water gushes under culverts
over rocks, tap-tapping on the roof
of the sunroom like a timid visitor.

Through rain-streaked windows
I can see our hosts raise their heads
to look upward as the tempo
intensifies to an irascible hammering;
almost hear the ebb and flow
of their soft voices
from where I stand hidden
under a canopy of dripping roses
and dangling fuschia blossoms.

A clattering sound as three
runaway sheep hoof it down the lane
like boys going over the wall
to mitch from school.
Tomorrow they will have to return,
tails between their legs.

But for now they are part
of a thrilling spectacle as they trundle
three abreast into the green gap
between the high ditches.

The other sheep graze the wet grass,
their plaintive bawling
from the nearby field
like the call-and-response
of a gospel choir
singing the praises of
another doomed rebellion.

Angela Patten © Saint Katherine Review 2018

Ravens

In Norse mythology the twin ravens,
Thought and Memory, flew about
the world, collecting news for Odin
who had given them the gift of speech.

Did they work together as a team—
one forward-thinking, looking out
for bloody rumor, thin whisper,
foul-smelling allegation, while the other
mouthed words and phrases,
recited names, reiterated everything?

Did they return together, grigged
with gossip for the dinner table?
Or did Thought sometimes muddle
Memory with unanswerable questions—
Can Memory be trusted?
Does Thought delude itself?
Do we only live as long as Memory
wraps us in its wings?

Odin feared they might not return,
knowing their taste for decomposing flesh,
what that vertiginous perspective
might reveal—a new god with a dove
that whispers in his ear, some new
dark truth delivered from the air.

Angela Patten © Sequestrum Journal of Literature and the Arts 2017

Crowtime

“It is said that crows, like other corvids, recognize themselves in mirrors
and this is thought to show intelligence.” (Scientific American)

The last light of a winter’s day—
thousands of winged forms
flap past my windows—pins
pulled by a powerful magnet.

The sky is black with crows
crying in cracked voices of their plans
to steal what is left of the light,
to gather their feathered shapes
into a solid-color jigsaw puzzle
of land and lake and sky
that will click into place
only when the last bird
flies into its jagged aperture
and darkness falls.

Like the crows, my father
showed up night after night
to take his place in an ancient ritual.
To play his fiddle, not by standing out
but by fitting in with the other men,
those dark-suited bus-drivers and conductors
who brought to the session
all their quirks and oddities—
Mr. Ward with his head thrown back,
the accordion at rest on his round belly—
Mr. Keogh with his albino eyes,
long fingers sawing the fiddle—
and young Tony in short trousers
tootling away on the tin whistle.

Now my father too is part of that
collective darkness, the puzzle
that the crows remake each night.
That dawn, like a wayward child,
scatters joyfully each morning.

Angela Patten © Sequestrum Journal of Literature and the Arts 2017

The Pancake Artist

She only cooked them once a year
on Shrove Tuesday so we didn’t dwell
on the looming Lenten fast
as we raced home after school
to see her lift down the big black frying-pan
and heat it over the blue gas burner
until the fat spat and sizzled.

She’d hoist the milk jug full of batter,
pour a creamy stream into the pan,
tilting and tipping it to a seamless circle.
We hovered famished at her elbow
as the humps and craters formed—
brown sienna over khaki, burnt
umber over buttermilk. It was all

in the timing. One flick of her gifted wrist
and she’d landed it like a fish
on your plate. You rolled it with sugar,
a squeeze of lemon, scarfed it down.

Then it was back to the end of the queue
until your turn returned again.
No rest for her aching shoulders
until we were all contented sinners,
licking our lips, as full as eggs.

Angela Patten © LiveEncounters 2017

Tracks

After surgery the stitch-marks
look like bird-feet walking up my arm.
But what strange bird has left
its bone-white prints
embedded in my wrist like needle-tracks?
Perhaps it was the raven,
that faux-sorrowful funeral director,
walking beak-forward, gloved hands
folded behind his back, who walks the
twin trajectories of a railway line
that leads to a long-defunct station
where I might meet myself returning
from the beach with two scabbed knees,
embossed inoculations against disease,
the weals of ancient injuries like medals
from the battlefields of childhood,
and my mother’s crowsfeet
inching toward my eyes.

Angela Patten © Cultural Center of Cape Cod 2016 Poetry Prize

Glendalough Sonnet and other poems © Angela Patten

Angela Patten is author of three poetry collections, In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening, both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table (Wind Ridge Books). She was winner of the 2016 National Poetry Prize from the Cape Cod Cultural Center and her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont, where she is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Vermont English Department.

‘Bathwater Love’ and other poems by Niamh Twomey

July 22nd, 2018

Bathwater Love

I wear you wrong;
my reasons inside-out
and love like perfume
for others to admire.

At night you draw feathers
on my Skin.
And your kisses
teach me new vowels,

but we are in bathwater.
Slowly adjusting to the cold,
soaked in Inertia,
eyes squeezed, knowing–
spiraling
down

Song of Grendal’s Mother

They gave me no name
but ‘mother’.
Those Goldbricks in their golden hall;
I was not the Virgin Mary
of their wet dreams–
but real–
One who took an eye for an eye.
Agloewif.

Repeal that oldest fairytale,
old as the gold you play with.
I only took what I deserved
and ran–
But there’s something of Monster
in Man.

I

I am now.
My blood is words
bilingual,
and blighted stories.
My name is mine
but borrowed,
my home is Troubled
wet soil on dry days,
and cow shit springs.
But cut me open
and you will
find
nothing
there.

Family, Mine

Every family
is a sealed
can.

Father–
open wounds,
drooping wit,
salt.

Sister–
fire breathing
sister.

Mother–
angel
of cowardice
and fruit trees
I pinch you.

But we are a can
of good beans
despite it all.

Untitled

After You Died
You became Enormous.
A stone in every step,
garlic on the breath.
Suddenly from every spot
bloomed a memory,
and you lived
a hundred times over
in every head
of cinnamon curls
I saw from behind.

Sometimes I followed
your bouncing curls down the street,
standing back,
willing the head not to turn
and show the face of someone else
so you would die again

Someday

Some day
I’ll have my own house

With a shelf of poetry books
by the toilet
and short stories
for those long, difficult stays

with vibrant colours
painted on the walls
every wall a different colour
like Lego

With a deep couch
that swallows bums
and snoozing cat
meditating on a warm fire

With an old phone
waiting to sing
it’s wire in tangled ringlets
coiled like angel’s hair

With oriental spices
and a box of perfumed teas
of every fruit and flower
and porridge

With a kettle always brooding
on the blistering hob
while friends take seats and I ask
do you like macaroons?

With an old dusted piano
out of tune, but crooning still
rubbed down with old underwear
draped with a doily

With space to move mountains
in idle passing thoughts
with sun waking room
through velvet curtains in the morning.

There will be space for two heads
on the cushions on my bed
and my rusting red bell
will wait there for your touch

When some day
I have my own house

Niamh Twomey is a student of English Literature and French in University College Cork. Winner of Hotpress Magazine’s ‘Write Here Write Now‘ competition in 2016, she has since published works in journals such as ‘Quarryman’, ‘Quill & Parchment’, amongst others.

‘Live Bulbs’ and other poems by Katherine Noone

July 15th, 2018

In May 

You are everywhere.
Arthur Bells’ yellow bloom
fragrant and fleeting,
whitethorn buds abound.  

Mint makes it’s way to our door,
ready for picking. 
Swallows sing a sweet song
as they soar.

On my route
I detour,
lured by a lilac in bloom.
This month, of the mothers. 
                                                                                       
                          
Our Village in the Fifties

Vibrant.
Most houses endowed  
with broods of children.
We run around freely
unhindered by snatchers and traffic.

Play out in the fields
rich with daisies and daffodils.
Scale over walls to orchards
their branches bowed low 
with ripe rosy apples,

maimed by migration
it succumbs to stillness and silence.
Neighbours reach out.
Sheepdogs wait.
Footballs deflate.

                                                              
Live Bulbs

After red and yellow weather alerts
when floods and storms subside.
Broken tree twigs around  you
garden soil stripped aside.

Your emerald shoots  
remain sturdy and serene.
With enough resilience, robustness
to turn a blue moon green.

Katherine Noone’s first poetry collection Keeping Watch was published by Lapwing Press (2017). Her poems have appeared in Orbis, Crannog, Boyne Berries, Linnets Wings, Her Heart Anthology, Skylight 47, Proost Poetry, Vallum digital edition, A New Ulster and Ropes Journal.

Shortlisted Vallum Poetry Award (Montreal) 2012. Poem for Patience 2015, 2016 and 2017l.

‘The House That Don Built’ by Kevin Higgins

July 15th, 2018

“The sky is high / We shit on earth / We look up the sky /
The earth gives birth / To our future”
Yoko Ono, Poetry (July/August 2018)

(i)

The Christmas lights which bat their eyelids
all year round on the screaming pink terracotta roof
are classy as Demis Roussos’s
ground-breaking retranslation of the Odyssey.

The gold-plated giant front gate tasteful
as the prison raps of Bill Cosby and Orenthal
James Simpson combined.

The foundation wobbly as the sestina sequence
Access Hollywood says, Miley Cyrus,
is currently sweating over.

The walls and internal supporting beams
solid as a verse novel by Big Bird of Sesame Street.

The water faucets in the vast bathroom
he had purpose built for himself
understated as the last line of the Haiku
Admiral Tojo wrote the morning
he was hanged.

(ii)

In cases made of teak,
behind the thickest glass
Chicago has to offer:

Ezra Pound’s raised right hand;

Weldon Kees’s obviously suicidal car keys;

Eileen Myles’s last leather jacket
but one;

the bunch of blue violets
Emily Dickinson was buried clutching;

Edgar Allan Poe’s and Charles
Bukowski’s embalmed private parts
side by side for comparison;

a stray candle from Robert Frost’s
eighty fifth birthday cake;

and several false beards
Walt Whitman allegedly wore.

(iii)

For these are the endowed halls
where poetry goes to get preserved
in the finest glitter and formaldehyde
moldy Dollars can buy.

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published four collections of poems: Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry, The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is included in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). His poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012.

Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”

‘When I was six’ and other poems by Julia Deakin

July 8th, 2018

Valentine

It was you, wasn’t it?
Sent me a box of genitalia?
Not two but twenty-four ripe ovaries
with six enormous stamens each engorged with pollen
thrusting purple-veined through curvy lips and downy inner folds
around a fleshy pistil glistening with a film of moisture round the swollen tip
all bursting from a flushed, moist, hirsute declivity and smelling…
as if freshly showered?

Thank you for the flowers.
I won’t read too much into it.

Code

Dovebber, Jaduary ad Barch
the datiodal afflictiod bakes its rouds.
Wad grib afterdood you sedse
a cledched fist roud your epiglottis.
Baligd greblid, it hags id there
squeezig ad squeezig. Or baybe
you swallowed a dailbrush?

Do, you thindk, do – bore
like Hober Sibsod by the biddit.
I cad still breathe. You turd
the heatig up to baxibub, buscles achig
udtil dext bordig you fide
you’ve betaborphosed
idto a woolly babboth –

eyes streabig, dose ruddig,
gradba recobbeddig vitabid C
or baduka huddy. Feed a code, she dags
but you cad odely taste Barbite
ad TCP – there’s a cebedt bixer
codvedtiod id your siduses
ad dow your ears have god fuddy,

rushig ad gurglig like a Badhattad
sewer. Your braid turded to bush
you draba queed it, sdortig ad sdeezig
od the screed which idforbs you
you are cobbod. You have
dasopharydgitis, rhidopharydgitis,
acute coryza or a code:

ad idfectiod which affects pribarily
the dose…the bost frequedt disease
id hubads, the average adult codtracts
two to three addually. These idfectiods
have beed with hubadity sidce adtiquity.
There is do cure. You are biserable
as sid. You are hubad.

Code – first published in Magma 66, Winter 2016, Eds. John Canfield and Ella Frears (www.magmapoetry.com)

Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641

So, our dear Horrocks is gone. Twenty-two. I must repeat
what I find so hard to accept: that such a bright star
should be lost to us so young. After all we shared,
I shall never now shake his hand.

That November Sunday he, the better astronomer,
noted his observations there and then. I was too overcome
to touch a pen. I shall make amends.

Tonight though, at my window, the cosmos
he proved vaster and more ordered than we thought
seems emptier – a mere expanse.

My lenses mist.

Would he have planned to visit had he felt unwell,
or been ill for long? No. He was in health, for all we knew.

Which, in the end, was what? Something of the spheres,
their transit centuries hence. But of tomorrow –
of accidents round corners, stalking maladies, guests
with knives – nothing. Nothing about our inner storms
or numbered days. More of the heavenly bodies
than of ours.

Thus I am plagued by fears: that to fathom the skies
without first grasping our own profound cosmologies
is perverse. That to see – not as prophets but mathematicians,
the year, the day, the hour – so far ahead, is to spy
on God.

These fears I want his reason to reject.

But since my telescope cannot bring him closer,
it leaves me cold. I have no heart for work. No instrument,
good Sir, to measure loss.

Jeremiah Horrocks [1619-1641], of Toxteth, first recorded the transit of Venus and predicted future transits, including 8th June 2004. ‘The Keats of English astronomy’ died the day before he was to meet his mentee William Crabtree [1610-1644] of Salford. Their friend William Gascoigne [1612-1644], of Leeds, invented the micrometer.

Crabtree to Gascoigne, 1641 – from Eleven Wonders (Graft Poetry 2011, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)

Unattributed sampler
Bankfield Regimental Museum, Halifax

In memory of ELIZABETH HITCHEN, Who died November 26, this battle was begun
in 1841. The house was quiet and you must learn to be, Grandmamma whispered,
measuring the lines. Your little sister’s gone Aged 13 months to be with God.

I was just five but could already read THEY WILL BE MISST A VACANT PLACE
AT TABLE AND AT TIME OF PRAYER. What shall we put up there I asked,in the big space?
Lord knows, my love – God will decide she said, then smiled. Me, probably.

AT HOME AT CHURCH MORN NOON AND NIGHT she printed carefully MISST ALL THE TIME
AND EVERY WHERE. With the next letter, G – she stopped. When you’re a big girl, you can do the rest.
Next day she showed me cross-stitch and I sewed IN MEMORY until my eyes hurt.

Eight years slipped by AND ALSO ASSENETH WHO DIED when I was thirteen FEB 8 1849.
That night I satin-stitched an urn, an altar, half a rose. AGED 19 MONTHS. The cloth was grey by then
with childish sweat, pinpricks of blood and also tears AND ALSO

HANNAH two years on THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE ABOVE. I found the last lines of the verse
she had left off and marked them up, but couldn’t frame – until I’d lived as long again – to add
‘on’ to the G ON BUT NOT LOST OH THIS WE KNOW

– my nephew feverish, I had to end this tale. Thread by thread I drew our family back
AND ALSO EMILY MY NIECE WHO DIED AGED 4 YEARS AND 4 MONTHS AND ALSO JOHN their Father
WHO DIED 1865 AGED 28 AND ALSO AZUBAH WHO DIED AGED 18 YEARS and all so young.

WE KNOW WE TRUST I persevered THE BOUNDLESS LOVE stitching my fingers numb
oF GOD HE DOETH ill John’s son was ill, fighting for breath aged 4. If I could break the spell
I told myself and stitch one living name – my own – with some date soon perhaps all would be WELL

HIS WILL BE DONE WE SAY AND KISS his eyes his hands his fingernails God will decide
my needle vain to stop his CHASTENING ROD claiming one more AND ALSO for this field of crosses

MICHAEL HITCHEN WHO DIED JUNE 5 1872 AGED 4 and AND 10 MONTHS.

'Valentine', 'Unattributed Sampler', 'When I was six', 'Waltz' - from Without a Dog  
(Graft Poetry 2008, Ed. Nicholas Bielby www.graftpoetry.co.uk)

Image courtesy of Angela Clare, *Collections and Exhibitions Officer at Calderdale Museums Service, Bankfield Museum, Halifax*

Waltz

Married fifty years today, Ted and Edie
take the floor not needing onlookers, but pleased
for those who want to watch their Anniversary Waltz.
They bring their language from another world
of sweethearts, long engagements and apprenticeships
in which they practised drawing and respecting
boundaries, making choices at every turn
yet making believe there was no other way.
If asked, they’d say theirs was no mystery, just years
of graft, of grasping drifts and judging distances,
steering a course through fractured families, neighbours,
nations – weaving meaning into remnant spaces –
station platforms, backyards, beaches – patterning
the long and short sides of their years until they learned
to keep in step, beating time, being alive together.
Now warmed by applause they cross the boards
and, holding and yet not quite being held,
teach us the grace of gentle intimacy. They wear
the clothes they walked here in, but in the light confetti
of the mirrorball the years fall from them
and they twirl their wedding finery, still points
at the centre of a dancing world.

When I was six

Lotus shoes (early 1900s), The Tolson Museum

they broke my ankles and bound my feet.
They said it wouldn’t hurt when they put me to sleep
but when I woke it did and when I tried to stand
I fell and gashed my face and lay and screamed
and a nurse and my maid Suyin came running
and said don’t cry, with your tiny feet
you’ll be the envy of Szechuan.
Dressing my face,
nurse said I’d be lucky not to have a scar –
but when they unwound the bandages and saw
my feet, blue-black as a typhoon, the shape and smell
of rotting vegetables, I said o you want that then ,
is that what you want and they looked away,
busying themselves as I lay, listening to their feet.

You will be beautiful my father said, as if
it were an order and I said was I not that already
had I not been a perfect baby then and he said
you know that isn’t what I mean and me
this is the twentieth century not the tenth and him
the more you argue the more you prove my case.
What case, I said, what case?
I looked at mother
who was silent. Later she said why didn’t I paint
or practise holding my fan, looking ladylike…
that I should be grateful for a life of ease,
only having to bow and look serene.
But she did not look at me then, or when, married
at fifteen, I told her the day they broke my feet
still seemed like yesterday.

You’re lucky, says Suyin, brazen now,
you can sit around all day and think
how beautiful you’ll be – you are…. as she walks
away. You are not meant to walk but glide
they say, but I can only shuffle. My husband grunts
he married a lady not a labourer and anyway
he likes me better lying down.
Opium helps,
but sometimes I wake myself screaming
you said it wouldn’t hurt when you put me to sleep
and to my father, truly deaf now, what case, what case
and to my mother ladylike and to my husband
off somewhere and Suyin, in her own oblivion.
Tears run into my ears, along a faint scar.

Julia Deakin is a UK-based poet with three full-length collections, each praised by nationally renowned poets. ‘Crafted, tender poems, written with passion and purpose,’ said Simon Armitage of Without a Dog (Graft, 2008). Anne Stevenson enjoyed its ‘mature wit and wisdom’. ‘Real linguistic inventiveness’ said Ian McMillan. ‘Bold, irreverent and wickedly funny,’ said Alison Brackenbury of her Poetry Business Competition winner The Half-Mile-High-Club.

Eleven Wonders (Graft 2012) Michael Symmons Roberts judged ‘powerful, assured, elegant. Her formal skill and inventiveness make this a rich and eclectic collection. Those who, like me, have admired her individual poems in the past, will be struck by their cumulative strength and range.’

A compelling reader, she has featured twice on Poetry Please and won numerous prizes. Her fourth collection, Sleepless (Valley Press) will be published in October 2018.