Chris Murray

‘Top Shaggers’ and other poems by Emma Gleeson

May 1st, 2018

Top Shaggers

At first, we felt a clear hot rage.

This girl.

Torn into hysterics.
But not beyond reasonable doubt.

Fear Response
freeze,
a mind grasps it’s body tight
brain-stem trained by centuries
in how useless it is to fight.

But where justice
is hewn from happenstance
consent is an irrelevance.

But those boys.

Raised on porn and privilege
paying for impunity
in more ways than one.

We have let them down too.
We have let them all down.
We turned blind scoffing eyes as they grew
unfettered.
uninformed.

We let it happen.

My Grandfather,

stepped into his wife’s shoes
the day she died.
He learnt to make soda bread.
Took the smallest one, my father,
to sleep in his bedroom with him
the first year after.
Squeezed the boys orange juice
before school in the morning.

I never knew him in his prime.
His spark and sight dwindled as I grew.
I covet the memories of my older cousins
like jewels through a shop window,
nose pressed against a room I cannot enter.

A few years after Grandpa died,
I asked my father
if he still missed him.
He laughed,
and then looked very old.
And I felt young and foolish
not to know.

Someday I will be the one who hasn’t stopped missing.
Couldn’t.
And perhaps my children will fail to notice
How much my father always loved fresh orange juice.

Snow

rules relaxed
neighbours greet and smile
brighter than eye whites
it tells us to slow

we walk in the middle of the road
giddy with transgression,
the air is glistened
and it feels changed forever.

melts as it falls
like the mayfly
it lives just one bright day.
we cannot help but destroy
the diamond silk of the paths
never touched by another human
we plant our footprint flags
claim it as our own.

looking at the drenched-clean city
we feel the stirring of the great water within.
that from where we come
and that which sustains.
the original sea-womb of all life.
we stand
in a drop of our own essence.
the howling lake inside
silenced in snow.

Holding

I am interested in what is held in the body
when we have been unheld
when we have split from ourselves.
Subtle as a dew-kissed leaf
a muscle hardens.
a knuckle can freeze
we crystallise
slowly,
until one day no melting can come to ease.
But turning back to the hard light
the melting pain
that cure which no one wants
because it hurts,
we can lift our arms high
in the letting go.

Silence

I talk to you
as if my tongue skids on ice
the words slip out,
unruly children
no translator by my side
my word birds drop their seeds on barren ground
I stumble and mumble
wishing I could shake you and say

I CANNOT SPEAK TODAY

I have to sink myself into someone
like a hot bath,
the first touch being too much
small talk singes my skin,
always too thin
and it takes more time
than most
to unfurl

But still I talk and talk
In the hope that one day
I will have earned the right
to stay silent

Top Shaggers and other poems are © Emma Gleeson

Emma Gleeson lives in Dublin. Her writing adventures include poems, cultural reviews, and essays. She has worked in the theatre industry as a costume designer and events coordinator, and lectures on sustainability. She has a BA in Drama & Theatre and an MA in Fashion History.

Instagram @emmajgleeson
Website http://www.droppingslow.com

‘Our Sleeping Women’ and other poems by Attracta Fahy

April 25th, 2018

Our Sleeping Women

I think of my grandmothers,
their faces etched in mine,
their strength sleeps in my bones.
We meet in fields of crows,
their voices speak through the wind.

Old graves sloped down
from our farm. As a child,
I played house, tea sets
on tombs, innocent,
listening to spirits.
Daughters left to work
with duty not to themselves
but others who cared little
for the objects they’d become.

From the clay they cry
the song of the crone,
dreams of lives unlived, hope
moves in the soil beneath
my feet, rises in my breath,
they call – willing me on
with their work,

let your blood bleed
for daughters defiled, mothers
abandoned in shame,
scrubbed of sin in laundries.

Don’t listen to scavengers
who have taken your use,
their fear ripping your pleasure.
Starve if you need, until you’re heard.
Scream yourself into your body.

Your face ours, your womb creator,
the only real home, your self.

Red

After her father’s death she needed
a new bag, a red one, ‘a particular red’,
she searched, described the colour:
not the brown-red jasper, carnelian
or sardonyx, stoic like stale blood,
the fire red of scarlet, zircon,
flaming fluorite flames – of hell.

Not caring for dark rose, blood red rose,
rosewood or even a rose itself,
she continued her pursuit, not magenta,
garnet, or even red topaz –
too dark, they felt murky, dim,
vermilion looked too dainty.
Everyone tried – salespeople,

traders, desperate to sell,
appease and please, ‘No’ she said,
‘No’. She needed this bag,
this exact bag, the colour specific
in her mind.
Not jasper, fire opal or sard – although
patterns are appealing – not opaque,

chalcedony stones of the high priestess’s
breastplate. Merlot felt obscure, shadowy,
and too rich. She bought red shoes,
tourmaline, not quelling her longing;
this bag, colour, stone, haunted
her travels, she needed to find it.
Crimson could suffice, virtually

there, this hunt could leave her bereft,
she explained that the red-orange of
carnelian felt weak, it would not carry
her identity – a woman now – and the pink
red agate, amaranth and coral seemed
too youthful. Still in her prime,
the extremely rare beryl appeared

exceedingly old, barn red burgundy
like lava, too strong. Salmon although
elegant, robust, was fragile and flaky
when cooked, orange-red amber
could calm. Tired in search of her red,
unable to unearth that colour, the search
for red defied her. She gave up.

Her friend called. Just back from holiday,
she had found the perfect bag – Imperial Red.
Within, her gift, an antique ring, gold, with a
red stone – fire ruby.

Despondency

arrived as an unwelcome visitor,
a hungry heron, unsure of prey.
A dark cloud filled the air.
At first glance, I could not see
its slate eyes penetrate,
empty places. Sound,

a vibration, like a crow
cawing before rain.
This time, I welcome its company,
unlike when shutting it out.
We spoke, I listened, chatted
about necessary loss, the things

I loved,
pictures, trips, that china cup
and him, the importance of
grief in letting go.
Peace moved in. After,
we made tea, dunked biscuits.

This dark cloak, my friend,
its pockets, brimmed with wisdom.

A Diagnosis /My daughter speaks

I remember when my mother forgot simple
things, like where she left the hairbrush.

I helped her find it.
Older than my mother when she

forgot, I don’t remember little things.
Impatiently, my daughter tells me I need

to see a doctor, I may even have Alzheimer’s.
‘I’m worried,’ she says, ‘you’ve got

the wrong names for thing’s
and everything is lost in our house.’

She asks about breast checks, –
her friend’s mum had found a lump.

That mole on my skin needs to go,
she heard about melanoma. Yet again she

asks ‘What age can you get Parkinsons?’
After a half hour in the kitchen,

‘Can I get a lift to my friend’s house?
We’re having a sleepover.’

I lay the basket of her worries
on my table,

I drive.

Deirdre of the Sorrows.

With fierce perseverance,
a heart, broken with love,
she walks each day, two fields
from her house, to Lough Corrib.
Picks steps like a cautious
curlew on solid ground,
finds a secluded place,
unknown to others.

Hidden between reeds,
she leans in to shelter
against ancient trees.
Caught by a shimmering ripple
across the winter lake,
she dreams the music of another
and weeps for her loss.
No birds sing, instead,

winter mist, in harmony
with grey clouds, reflect
on water, no corals or shells,
only the impassive stems
of dead iris flaying in the wind.
A swan drifts to the lake edge,
others wait in the distance.
She also waits, to hear a bell,

as if to transform the tears that drop
like pearls in an Annaghdown inlet.

Ophelia

There is a storm looming,
somewhere mid-Atlantic
hurricane legs pound toward shore.

Ophelia, unpretentious
builds strength, overemphatic
waters, her eye focused,
moves with intent.
Her swirl dress manoeuvres,
blue hair stream waves
across horizon,
glisten in hazy sun,
clouds heavy with rain.

You listen, hear the eerie prelude
to the roar of her womb.
A thunderous rumble,
seagulls hide behind stone.

Tension, gusts,
brewing stomach knots,
like a braid waiting
to be undone;
her froth mouth
explodes, white foam lunging
her breath onto our path.

A day for sitting,
looking at old postcards,
remembering
you longed to leave,
cascade like others
into the wild, like
Ophelia,
betrothed to Hamlet,
became tornado,
wedded herself.

Your ticking watch,
louder than time,
ruby warm fire flames sucked,
as Ophelia swallows the tide.

A garnet sky,
silver cumulus turns rose.
It is raining –
lines on cards,
from those who stormed
their adventure.

Ophelia
is gathering,
criss-crossing twists
pink, intertwines blue,
crashing she flows over rocks,
flooding

Her entrails
blow over your window,
trees stripped bare
like dangling threads,
call you to let butterfly
fingers, slip ribbons
onto your hair,
rip your tide.

‘I will leave, follow you in winter,
‘Ophelia,’
you whisper, to scattering leaves,
pots, chairs,
the cards thrown over your table,
30 years on.

‘I will wear
a blue swirl dress,
twirl swelling waves,
into hurricane.’

Attracta Fahy’s background is in nursing and social care. She works in private practice as an integrative humanistic psychotherapist and supervisor. She is living in Co.Galway, and has three children attending college. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017 and participates in over the edge poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins. Her poems have been published in Banshee, The Blue Nib, The Lake, Burning House Press, and Galway Review.

‘Brontë in Boots’ and other poems by Denise Ryan

April 18th, 2018

Portobello

The summer is in town
when the ducklings wear their sequins;
performing the salsa,
gliding on the continental ripples
from the lights’ projections.
Glistening water arena of summer juices
featuring mirrored swans
wearing white tuxedos dancing the tango
to an applauding sun
and ever changing clouds
imperilled on the lacquered sky.

Delicately they flush their sacred win,gs
a waterfall of transparent energy
to baptise birds.
Happily, I rest beneath the arm
of a weeping willow.
Time is in no frantic rush,
unwinding near the rushes.
Can-Can dancers perform on the Canal Bank,
swishing their feathers to and fro,
a chorus line of marsh plants,
costumed in petticoats of weeds
and black root stockings.

They look burlesque for the seedy traffic,
as clowning butterflies uplift –
their papier-mâché coats,
like tiny fluorescent parachutes
ejecting from the smallest of flowers
landing gently on the rugged edge
of silken waters.

Brontë in Boots

Winter, my Heathcliff warms the narrative,
growing in my chamfered heart.
I imagine the moors reaching out behind
the city skyline, heather snapping like a whip;
under my studded-belt, novels gleam into portholes.

November mornings drool in romanticism,
I am at home among sinuous shadows
tailored in the fabric of winter,
listening to the wind’s barbed echoes fence the swallow like snow.

I sip my coffee, staring at the clouds’ heavy
hopelessness, whorls of hail clatter
against my window like Kathy’s shattered soul,
winter’s air is a man’s granite kisses;
the dark, his wiry black hair.

Like a metal flower, I bloom in biker boots
and cashmere, welcoming winter’s
intractable sorrow and it’s inward desolation.
Dwarfed under the emptiness of light
leaves unhook themselves from hollow trees.

Dali

You plant
your thoughts on duality
inside the cranium of her skull.
They grow into razor-edged roses
creeping down her nasal spine.
You wedge art inside her eye sockets,
arousing your desires to bloom through her frontal bone.
Her body mirrors a five-point star touching nothing,
except light touching darkness,
the moon cowering under her breastbone like a nuclear atom,
the gods assembling on the Moebius strip of her hip,
while you sit in the carnal cavity of her cheeks,
breathing in the olive air of Cadaqués,
your restless need for form hardening into infinity.

On a High

Build me a house in the cleft of a cliff
where we can live life on the edge,
raise it up on wooden stilts
so we can see the neck of the ocean
and feel the sun in the folds of our skin

drink gin for breakfast
moshing in the shadows
cracking the morning bones
both naked in blushing light
pebble-eyed and dewy

watch the night crawl like a giant crab
as we lie on the blue tongue of the moon
breathing each other in like vapour,
but promise never to look down
the fall too steep.

Out of the Blue

We enter sleep as conjoined twins,
my head resting on your chest
listening to your heart beating
like the thundering drums of China.

I lie twisted within myself
as the moon capsizes over Asia,
nursing my dreams, but one.
The heart reveals itself in time.

I imagine how beautiful it must look,
a clotted poppy
rooted between your lungs,
sluicing bouquets of blood through your veins.

I long to hold your thick burning fist
in the ewer of my hand,
kiss your hollow-pumping swell
that love acclaims

nuzzling my face into the smooth
membrane of the inner surface,
tasting a mouthful of your existence,
shadows shifting around neck and elbow

as you push in the blue light
detaching from our wild flower oneness
gaping from your wiry chest
an ugly black emptiness.

Brontë in Boots and other poems © Denise Ryan. Play Stone (Youtube)

Denise Ryan is a writer of contemporary poetry from Dublin, Ireland. Denise has been published in THE SHOP, Crannóg Magazine, and also several online journals including Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts.

Between 2010 and 2013, Denise was selected to write a series of poems for the National Famine Commemoration. In 2010 Flowers of Humility was read at the Dublin Commemoration and at the overseas twinning event in New York in Battery Park when President Mary McAleese officiated at the ceremony. Denise has been internationally received and has been highly recommended, shortlisted and runner-up in several poetry competitions. These include The Francis Ledwidge, and the Jonathan Swift awards. She is a member of the Rathmines Writers Workshop, which is the longest-running writers workshop in Ireland. Denise’s poetry has been published as part of an anthology by the workshop’s Swan Press, entitled Prose on a Bed of Rhyme (2012).Her debut collection, Of Silken Waters, was published in Autumn 2017, through Ara Pacis Publishers (Chicago, USA). Denise is currently writing her second collection for publication.

‘Siegfried’s Homecoming’ and other poems by Suzanne Stapleton

April 14th, 2018

Siegfried’s Homecoming

You come home from the war
at least a third emptier than you were,
Like all the words were scooped from your head
with the butt of a rifle
that you constructed with your own hands
and demolished too,
leaving so much of yourself in the barrel.

The teeth in your gums white crosses and country lines,
none of them belonging to you anymore,
rattle like augury bones in your sleep
because in the night you are some twisted, ugly thing
like a trout gasping for breath
on the floor of a fishing boat,
running from the yawning mouth at your heart
to get away from what remains here :
a battlefield.

You come home from the war and leave your love behind
in the hands of a poet,
a soldier whose eyes stare out at you in each nightmare
the claiming mark of his blood splattered across your face and emblazoned on your soul,
his smile tinged mustard yellow in your memory
but his hands so vivid;
pencil, pages, and the pistol,
flickering
callouses against your cheek
trampled into the mud
sonnets painted into your skin
frozen in his favourite shade of indigo.

You are dreaming of the hospital that had become,
by virtue of his presence,
your home –
and here is the battlefield stretched out again before you
but you are tired of fighting without him,
waiting for one more cloudless day in August,
50 years away he is a bruise in khaki pyjamas,
and you come home from the war,
finally,
into his arms.

Aorta

I will give myself to the sea
to the sunset
to the stars
I want to be unravelled by something greater than two hands

cracked apart at the ribs
in feast
a hollow empire no longer
filled with cloudless sky
venom dripping from my ears

“Eat” he hisses holding
a ventricle to my lips
bloody and raw
my own; still warm
pouring rain

He takes a bite
tearing chunks with glittering pillars of jagged salt licks
this is how it is done
how you get a dying bird to eat
or freeze in the night

ribs a ladder exposed that my body
might cower beneath
leaking blue blue sky
mouth agape
puffing clouds into the darkness for him to drink

the bird with no wings
choking on aorta

a sacrifice to the stars.

Eclipse

The woman lives
when the shadow of the moon
falls ebony on the earth
and the trees of her forest
are like burnt matchsticks
on scorched fields
she lingers then –
like smoke in the dark,
until we meet
in the appointed place,
two black holes in the abyss of the cosmos and
she opens
a nightmare mouth,
words slithering forth
– the tip of the tongue the teeth and the lips –
dripping from her chin
in jet black ink
“Are you ready?” she screeches
a crow
a banshee in the graveyard
I cannot speak, cannot see anything but the ink that rolls like a wave from her lips
dark and terrible
a blood moon
“I See you” she calls with open arms
a lover’s embrace
but the shadow is receding
drawing you to the heart of the forest
and she reaches for you once more
your hand twitches
the path is tangled
brambles whip and thorns claw
and you both understand
time is up
“Never again.” She croaks splayed against a tree-trunk “Never again”
the woman fades with the last of the shadow
she cannot return
and you are alone again
hands shaking in the sun
lips covered in ink

Don’t Cry

The milk spills
and spills
and spills,
the table still set in neat little rows –
too long for the runner –
dripping onto chairs and floor in swathes of ivory,
but the milk is always spilling in this house
running from eyes and mouths and ears –
this is what it means to grow up,
crying years of spilled milk
like they’ll help fill the seats with warm bodies
or light the candles’ stumpy wicks,
where you sleep just to keep the weeping at bay,
in the hopes that somehow,
it’s all just a dream,
but you wake up every morning at 7 on the dot
with milk crusted in each eye and bottles surrounding the bed,
milk teeth standing guard beneath the pillows,
like maybe you were a mother,
once,
or a child;
like you still are.

You Are the Sun

You are the sun,
calling lowly to the galaxy,
tragic and celestial,
40 billion light years from the closest star,
and the moon rings like a bell;
earthquake vibrations across the vacuum of space,
echoes roll over your skin, just whispers of what once was,
like a house that has already been burned down,
alarm still shrieking into the shell
that this is danger,
this is living,
but the moon is too far to hear a warning over
the bell tolls,
an angelus to Sirius and Orion and
Pyxis,
and the sun is farther still, drowning in a sea of silent stars,
baying softly of loneliness and terror to the empty night,
I am the moon,
you, the sun.
in the end, we are all just houses,
waiting to be burned down.

A Witch Hunt

Tear it all down
it is built on rot,
the sickly sweet cologne of wonderland decay,
and we are starving
but watch it wither,
feral smiles painted bloody across our cheeks,
prodding at the scars with witches nails,
hunters in the fray;
spitting poison and daggers and shards of glass,
leaving small disasters in our wake,
too many to fathom
still, we are starving,
tearing the world apart at the seams
from within,
demanding:
you peel back the curtain
and you will witness the ruins
filled with our skeletons picked clean,
but the flood water is rising,
and we have been so hungry…
peel back the curtain.
we are done waiting.

Siegfried’s Homecoming and other poems are © Suzanne Stapleton

Suzanne Stapleton is a nineteen-year-old emerging writer and Dublin native. She is currently a student of Film and Broadcasting in DIT, and often can be found writing poems instead of working on her scripts. Having spent most of her childhood writing, 2017 marks the first time Suzanne has shared any of her poetry with anyone outside of her immediate group of close friends. Her poems span a range of topics, including history, womanhood, and growth, but most are forms of self exploration and catharsis.

‘burnt offerings’ and other poems by Anne Casey

April 11th, 2018

burnt offerings

swilling cinders
of eucalypt forests burning up
and down the coast
tinged with hints of fear
singed possum hairs lifting into
clear blue air
an earthquake in Italy shakes me awake
a mother crying somewhere
volcanic embers cycling into
smoke of broken promises
women’s choices smouldering
charred remains of exiles’ lives
democracy doused with lies
and set on fire
headless horsemen prancing in the coals
blackened souls stirring
soot from scorched relics
ashes to ashes

and my mother in a box too small
to hold her all
laid in a field with all the others
when she could have flown
with the four winds
so I could taste again
the sharp tang of her loss
married to the rest

lately everything tastes of ash

(First published in apt literary journal on 3 July 2017, with sincere thanks to Editor-in-Chief, Clarissa Halston.)

where the lost things go

we sat upon a golden bow
my little bird and i
indivisibly apart
we dived into the sky
and to the purple-hearted dark
an ocean we did cry
for all the lost things
gathered there
in rooms beyond the eye
the aie, the I, the eye

(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

Between ebb and flow

Mist rolls off moss-green hills
Where wind-wild ponies thunder
Manes flying as they chase
Their seaward brothers
Locked in eternal contest
On this deserted grey mile

Past the little stone churchyard
Long-forgotten graves spilling
Stones onto the sodden bog
A soft snore from behind
My two angels sleeping
Thirteen thousand miles

From all they have ever known
Running our own race
To make the best
Of spaces like this
A rainbow rises along the horizon
And I recognise her

Come for my mother
Locked in her own
Immortal struggle
The sister returned
So I know it won’t
Be long now

And I cry a little at
The unbearable beauty
Of these diastoles
When we are all
Suspended
Here in a heartbeat

Between heaven and earth

(First published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

Metaphoric rise

A brief history of incidents surrounding the emergence of POTUS#45

i. rousting

hot wind howls through a hollow log
tawny tumbleweed trundles
over downtrodden plains

ii. ravening

on a sunlit lawn
a plump slug streaks forward
eyes on stalks

iii. a new religion

branches bowed with bloated fruit
nod to the gilded idol
dark clouds fall in behind

iv. aftermath

a squat lizard basks
on a sickle-hacked trail
black legs flail from his lips

v. in the bay

beacon dimmed and tablet fractured
the lady endures
her robes about her feet

vi. paradox lost

a fiery sunrise
heralds stormy days to come
ice shifts at the poles

(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 20 January 2017, with sincere thanks to Martin Doyle, Books Editor. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry, 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

In memoriam II: The draper

“The town is dead
Nothing but the wind
Howling down Main Street
And a calf bawling
Outside The Fiddlers”

My mother’s words, not mine
In a letter, kept in a drawer
These long years
She had a way with words
My mother

That’s why they came
The faithful of her following
Leaning in to her over the counter
For an encouraging word
Or the promise of a novena

Long before we had
Local radio
Our town had my mother
Harbinger of the death notices
And the funeral arrangements

Bestower of colloquial wisdom
Bearer of news on all things
Great and small
Who was home
And who hadn’t come

Who had got the Civil Service job
And by what bit of pull
The Councillor’s niece
Smug in her new navy suit
Oblivious to the circulating countersuit

“Would you ever think of coming home?”
Her words would catch me
Unawares
Lips poised at the edge
Of a steaming mug

Igniting a spitfire
Of resentment each time
Then draping me for days
I’d wear it like a horsehair shirt
All the way back

Until the sunshine and the hustle
Had worn it threadbare
This extra bit of baggage
In every emigrant’s case
Their mother’s broken heart

I never thought to ask her
“Would you want me to…?
So I could look out at the rain
Circumnavigating the empty street
And shiver at the wind
Whipping in under the door…?”

I don’t miss that question now
On my annual pilgrimage ‘home’
My father never asks it
Like me, I know he feels it
Hanging in the air
Alongside her absence

I miss my mother
And her way with words

(First published in The Irish Times newspaper on 31 January 2016, with heartfelt thanks to Ciara Kenny, Editor, Irish Abroad. Subsequently published in where the lost things go (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

burnt offerings and other poems are © Anne Casey

Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award in 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of Other Terrain and Backstory literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne).

‘Hinnerup’ and other poems by Jess Mc Kinney

March 28th, 2018

  *dint

It Began as most things do                       moist things do
everything everything       berry stained mouth
beer stickied floor & blood bloom undies
you ‘don’t mind’          and sure
                          I could probably get into you 
                          I only ever feel the bubbles on impact
                          during I’m somewhere else
                   the sun was a hot coal in the sky 
 seeing another one like you      he came just before   I                 
      decided a bit too late that I didn’t want what he
 asphyxiated thinking about sourcing justifications for those who 
insist            swear 
                  that my saliva isn’t a contagion
                  for those who are unknowing

  because kissing me will give you cancer 
then you’ll never be the invisible thing you imagined running 
alongside the     car          
                                               
and In Dreams     my hair falls in chunks to a cheering audience
        I grow old & genderless for money
nightly I wake feverish   trapped in the tight fist of your affection 
   drowning between cool bathroom tiles & Christmas cake sponge

but I won’t keep us downstairs    knitting and gritting at the base
          begrudging closed doors & far off hearing
          while I’m far off reliving tepid buoy lights
           & what you wanted me to hear
so I turn my mouth into a repurposed palette for the 
new             you
 walking the length of it with sparse sentiments blowing 
	you           but retaining no heat

   because unfortunately only others can administer the calming
            needed for the curdled bulb of my brain
      between me + heaven: 	    a place where I can smoke
so I left you holding the cuff of your jumper 	   waiting 

                   & bracing for the blow

AMY: spelled the right way

Frisbeeing your father’s slicked records into the ocean foam
not ‘boomeranging’ as you had once said
not coming back, not this time
but stuck in flux and spinning
reflective disks, CDs scratched and hanging
in the treehouse from which you will fall next year
on a wet November night when you weren’t old enough
trying to smoke a cigarette you stole
that’s why you fell, they said you weren’t old enough

Half our friendship was spent visiting each other in hospital
sparkling butterfly clips offered up on plastic sheets
conniving, bartering for my silence
I’m not supposed to tell anyone it happens
but it was hard to be alone after each cosmic collision
between tempered concussions and snapped clavicles
between fighting parents and shared rooms
so we continue, hushed and daring together, I pinky promise

Primary school passes, as it does, in a flurry
a few fearsome sparks and over, all of a sudden
as if all our memories already belonged to someone else
as if we didn’t need the fumbling trouble to become wisened
hardened, our most emblazoned fights mellowed
our passions come cartoonish like cheap plastic cheese slices
I can’t forget how you’d ring landlines all around town
to find me, 8pm and desperate before bed, to apologize

And when the time came to finally confront you
we were 16 and alone in the middle of a field at night
I’d crawled away from the boyfriend I got to match yours
from the tsunamis of cider, from the gendered expectation
but it was impossible still to make you understand
probably between my being drunk and crawling
so you say it never happened as you help me up
and then I just can’t stand you

turning vodka into wine

*hushed* it’s not just
not just the tropic tonic_____ now
it‘s heavier glassier receptacles
that are emptied quicker

quickly quenching the wild fire
the candle burning at both ends
wilting there now_____by the oven
before bare feet & childish eyes

sonic mother, please provide the cover
and resuscitate my ignorance
hand over cries, humming under covers
could I have been anything_____but a lover?

steady the line between us_____ just & unjust
a lot thinner when you’re stumbling
I’d do anything to be older
old enough to help you up

cortado

when well-meaning people align with me
align their lives with mine
it seems that they quit trying to become
or achieve themselves for a time
in a dastardly sense which can only descend
descend to ashes on communion
quickly quenching my reckless romance
romancing which necessitates an end
and so I approach you with an openness
forward an eager and honest grasp
but with well-meaning hands instead I rouse
rouse the ashes already put to bed
tidied away when setting aside the past
covertly hushing the used and the dead
so my digits recoil with the disenchanted
dragging back reverberated perspectives
the intoxicating promise of new loves
desires staining my plain epidermis
with electric potential that will not adhere
when I explain that I’m trying to be good
I don’t want to be problematic at all
honestly not at all and I never did
but that’s the woe of commitment and honesty
a small drop of milk to offset the acidity
I just wanted to love and be loved once and truly
not violently over and over as it has been
a great many loves each more fantastic than the last
the salubrious possibilities adjacent my reaching
my salivating hands reaching towards you
pulling you into the room and into my life
promising you a great many things
leaning beyond you to shield my eyes
but yearning to stay put please
hands reaching to never stop holding yours
I don’t want to disappoint another one
I will not disappoint you anymore

Hinnerup

sewing after so long
i wonder if there exists a song
a glass of water warmed in the sun
for each age she’s ever been
all the taps here run scalding
following the dregs of wine
flowing from hot water factories
tell me about her lover
stagnant on the periphery
who lived three towns away
making it harder to soak
she would travel hours to him
the wilting orchids
every other weekend
softening on the windowsill
found sanctuary with his family
reaching up into the day
young and in love
delicate and deliberate
i’d like to know how she felt
like grandmother’s thin fingers
on the birthday that I learned to hate
shaking but capable
the night i faked to get away

Jess Mc Kinney is a queer feminist poet, essayist and English Studies graduate of UCD. Originally from Inishowen, Co. Donegal, she is now living and working in Dublin city, Ireland. Her writing is informed by themes such as sexuality, memory, nature, relationships, gender, mental health and independence. Often visually inspired, she seeks to marry pictorial elements alongside written word. Her work has been previously published in A New Ulster, Impossible Archetype, HeadStuff, In Place, Hunt & Gather, Three fates, and several other local zines.

Poems by Valentina Colonna translated by Pawel Sakowski

March 27th, 2018

Ho raccolto un’ombra
quando salivo le scale.
Stava giusto scendendo.

Mentre toccavo le tegole
ho perso un’idea. Rotolava
avvolta tra i panni.
Poi il vento ha smosso le fila: è
scivolata
travolta di vuoti.

Il carro stava giusto passando.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –

Ho appena cambiato
l’acqua ai fiori.˜

I picked up a shadow
when I was going up the stairs.
It was just going down.

While I was touching the tiles
I lost an idea. It rolled down
wrapped in cloths. Then the wind moved the strings:
and the idea slid away
overwhelmed with emptiness.

A cart was just passing by.
– Flatus Fluit Ad Fortunae
Fossam –

I have just
watered my flowers.

Mentre cammino in terrazza la banda
suona e ti dico “La senti?”
Mi insegue da una parte all’altra
del perimetro di confine al mio riso
perché non sentano i vicini
quest’allegria dei miei anni
spaiati al vento.
Così suona nella casa di fronte
poi dietro in piazza, davanti
al secondo piano del muro bianco.
La cassa armonica ha la sua casa sul pozzo
in piazza dove la gente passa,
si siede, ripassa le arie
che da vent’anni riascolto
d’estate quando mia nonna
ancora alle nove mi sveglia
e ripete “Valentina, la banda!”

I am walking on the terrace while the band
plays, I ask “Can you hear it?”
It chases me across the space
to the borders of my laughter
so that neighbors won’t hear
this joy of my years
scattered in the wind.
So music plays in the house across the street
then behind the square, in front
of the second floor, the white walls.
The sound box has a house as its source
in the square where people pass by,
sit down, repeat the melody that
I have been hearing for twenty years.
Every summer when my grandmother
woke me up in the morning at nine
and repeated “Valentina, the band!”

Io non sono per gli altri che altro.
Sono ciò che non sanno,
che tace il senno.

Io non sono che nulla
nell’inattuale molto
che la mente scansa.

Per gli altri sono l’altro
che altrimenti vaga
oltre la trascuratezza
che ci separa.

Apparenti d’essere
mutati in nulla.

˜

To the others I am nothing, someone else.
I am what they don’t know,
where their reasons fall silent.

I am nothing, but nothing,
very much outdated,
avoided by their minds.

To the others, I am the other
who otherwise wanders
beyond neglect,
separating us.

You seem to exist –
you turn into nothing.

A MIO PADRE

Quando sento suonare e tu
non ci sei ma stai
in ogni spazio che ci trasciniamo
dietro da anni ogni volta è
sentire in anticipo il taglio
che entrambi sappiamo
irrevocabile un giorno.

Sei tu, compagno di nove mesi fa,
padre, che non posso evitare
col mio modo impacciato
di fare. In fondo sai
che i miei silenzi da sempre
arieggiano tra le foglie armoniche
per la nostra casa sollevata.

˜

TO MY FATHER

When I hear music and you
are not here but you are
in every space, we have been stretching
through all these years that have passed
to feel in advance this cut
of which we both know
is irrevocable, one day.

It is you, my companion of nine months.
father, whom I cannot avoid
with my clumsy way of acting.
Deep down you know
that my silences have always been
floating among harmonic leaves
in our house in the air.

A STUART

Mi accorgo che in fondo
eri tu il solo capofamiglia.
Me ne accorgo dalla voce
che ancora mi esce quando
per scherzo invento parole
che non avresti mai dette.

Siamo troppo presi dalle nostre
vite in bilico per annusare l’aria
come facevi tu, alzando il capo
e il naso strizzarlo a cogliere
ciò che non sentiamo, che non
intravediamo. Tu vedevi
visionario oltre il balcone
e sfiorarti era calmare
lo sguardo che gli altri
dicono non hai.

In silenzio hai aspettato
l’ultimo calore del pavimento.
Poi hai atteso che chiudessi la porta
per lasciare di te un solo grumo
bianco sotto il letto.
E un’intera casa senza voce.

˜

TO STUART

I realize that you
were the only head of the family.
I realize it by the voice
still coming out of me when
as a joke I invent words
I have never told you.

We are too busy with our
life on the edge to smell the air
as you did, raising your head
and squeezing your nose to seize
what we do not feel, what we do not
see. You noticed,
visionary beyond the balcony.
We touched you to calm down
the look that the others
say you did not have.

In silence you waited
for the last heat from the floor.
Then you waited for me to close the door
to leave you one white clump
under the bed.
And the entire house was voiceless.

Al mio funerale non portatemi fiori.
I ricordi non patiscono il buio.
Quando volti, le rose
che hai reciso per me
prendono il colore dell’ombra
e cieche posano all’ossario dei poveri,
dei sacchi all’angolo dove posto non c’è
per un chiodo al muro.

Non c’è più spazio alla tomba
dove l’abito la sera scende.
L’ho cucito in anticipo il mio
e la coda spolvera di pizzo il pavimento,
nel caso rimanga un alone
o il muro perda di salsedine.

Alla mia tomba non portatemi fiori.

Ne ho raccolti parecchi
sul mio strascico oggi.
Il tempo è questo.
È bastato passare
per trascinare dietro radici.

˜

Do not bring flowers to my funeral.
Memories detest the darkness.
When you turn away, the roses
you cut for me
take the colour of the shadow.
Blindly they cover the ossuary for the poor,
in that corner full of sacks with no space
to nail anything to the wall.

There is no more room in the grave
where my dress descends at dusk.
I sewed mine in advance
and its tail dusts the floor with lace,
in case a halo should stay
or the wall loses its saltiness.

Do not bring flowers to my grave.

I have collected many on my train today.
This is the time.
It was enough to pass,
even as my feet were bound with roots.

These poems are © Valentina Colonna – English translations © Pawel Sakowski

Valentina Colonna is a poet and composer. She was born in Turin in 1990 in a family of musicians and published the poetry books Dimenticato suono (Manni, 2010) and La cadenza sospesa (Aragno, 2015). Distinguished in several poetry competitions, in 2014 she was presented as an emerging poet in two national literary festivals by Davide Rondoni, who in the same year dedicated to her and Giorgio Caproni an episode of In which goes the world, broadcast on RTV San Marino.

Valentina Colonna plays A. Marcello – J. S. Bach

‘At the door’ and other poems by Eva Griffin

March 20th, 2018

Are you feeling this?

My desire is holding you in its mouth
shaking like a dog toy
amputated to fit my mould.
Regularly, I confuse excitement for affection
in a slow, crowded elevator
where a whisper of white buttoned shirts
is the scream of a night sky in my head,
close as a shoulder brush.

Something to work with

For the work, he says.
Square panels of it
lighting up my screen:
tarp-painted abstractions
punctuated by self-capturing,
sun-faced with grey crown
but not old.
Never old.
A father’s age perhaps.
Yet, I open the message;
orange brimming notification
tells me that he’s thinking
of my shivering in bed
on the other side of the island.
Says that he’ll be good
if he gets the chance.
Good for me.
Good for his ego.
Small slip of a thing waiting
for a night visit, the hot
shower of another body
sliding under covers.
Strong tattooed grasp
on waist; leathered, but
not old.
Light breath in my ear
catches hair like a summer
breeze in his stubble.
As if we’re not in October.
As if we’ll ever be here again.
He whispers, for the work.
It’s all this is.
I am for the work.

Candle

Eyes into the fire he tells me
that he sees it,
the next painting:
chrome yellow,
petals on the floor like ash
by our feet,
heads drooping close
like ours could
be
if I hadn’t left my heart
in the dregs of a pint
soaked through, too wet to carry.
I hold it, cold glass
little sanctuary while my legs burn
bright against the flame shadow.
He notices
I keep stretching it away,
a short press against
the slick stone and back
in again to see the orange
flicker on white,
to feel the pain of stolen heat
and I wonder
will my thin calf be the painting;
warmer in his eyes,
burning under the weight of him,
untouched.

Leftovers

A jug of milk in the fridge
is what he left me;
half of his own litre
brought from town.
For the tea, we imagine, but
standing in the kitchen
brewing it strong
he feels more like ground coffee;
ember smell of him
from lighting the fire,
rough-handed from work.
Outside, rusted mountains
crease along the skyline
like his eyes, laughing now;
almost disappearing but so full,
I want to believe, of me,
and the clouds of Kerry
in that moment
they look like cream.

At the door

Now, watch as I hang in the air
tempting as a sunset
and just as long.
Storms are not inclined to wait;
better to spill my secret wilderness
as I leave this love,
sucking light out of your blue.

At the door and other poems are © Eva Griffin.

Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a UCD graduate. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tales From the Forest, All the Sins, ImageOut Write, Three Fates, The Ogham Stone, HeadStuff, and New Binary Press.

‘Limited Horizon’ and other poems by Marie Curran

March 12th, 2018

Limited Horizon

Trees, thick leafed trees of April
Through to thicker early autumn
Encompass my horizon,
Stop me
Seeing beyond Cloonkeen, Gurteen
Hold me back from Balymac–

Their constant summer teasing
Filling up, greening up
My pegged fence line.
Only I know come late autumn
And into winter, I’ll catch my glimpse again
Prolong my view beyond this one room Parish.

By then, Hungary’s one hundred and ten mile fence
Across its Serbian border
Tasked to hold optimistic migrants back,
To keep them out of view
Of European leafed trees, keep them in view of peep holed wire
Throughout autumn, winter, spring. Again–
Will be joined by bigger fences, bigger struggles
Europe troubled.

Previously published Scarlet Leaf Review, 2016

Into Death

Her grief was as palpable as the malnourished
Briars of November, jutting from each shrunken ditch.

Unlike the briars, their thin wristing arms protruding
Towards my chest, she stood away from me, in the West
Beyond the lapping of an Ocean in Milford, Connecticut.

Placing thumb and finger upon a weakened thorn
I felt a stabbing pain and my eyes drooping
Fell upon hidden roots, gulping like my uncle did

Gasping at every molecule of oxygen, drinking
Slurping, swallowing each pocket of winter’s witching air
Between shrapnel’s of frost, and sanding’s of snow

Each element attempting to stave off contorted valves, strangling,
Cursing each tautened briar to death.

Previously published JuxtaProse Magazine, 2015

Freeze Frame

It was the second day
Of the middle month of autumn,
Almost 8pm, not yet dark but heading there.

The patch of sky, where your black tipped wings
Soared above my head, was red,
A reddish hint with whitened clouds behind it,
And in the gaps some blue. A glimpse of days before,
Long summer hours when you and yours
Flew bellied up, above my head
Circling, like children out of school
With lengthening days out stretched to play.
That day you flew alone, the rest no doubt behind you
Returning from a practice flight,
Weeks were all you had, before departure
To your sun drenched nest.

Underneath your wings I stood,
Hand waving, knowing of the little left,
The seasons change, the hotter sands.
And in that moment,
That picture frame I would no doubt gaze upon
During a frosted night, or starlit evening,
I asked, if you would freeze it too,
That joyous bond, your wing beat
Close my waving hand.
Only, you didn’t answer, I never knew.

Previously published Literature Today, 2015

Haunted House

A house need not be haunted
To scare the sanest mind,
Hidden in our folds lie ghosts
Their memories unkind

We keep them locked behind a door
We keepers of the seal,
We live our lives away from them
As if they were not real

Their voices rise like smoke at night
Their chains rattle at our door,
Their laughter that of storming wind
To coax us to the floor

Should we open up their box…
We enter to the past,
Should we travel deep enough…
They might not let us back.

If I Had Known

If I had known what I know now,
I wouldn’t have been silent,
If I had known the counting clock,
I’d have asked more questions,
If I had known I’d lose your face,
I’d have taken more pictures,
If I had known the little left,
I’d never have let you go,
If I had known what I know now,
Would it really be any different?

Previously published Poems from Conflicted Hearts, An Anthology 2014

Life is not enough

He had just life itself
No love to call his own.

Bounced about

Thrown between the walls
Of other children’s homes.

He had just life itself

Enough
Was said

This life was his to breathe

But life itself was not enough

No chance had he to live
No chance had he to ever fully live, or breathe.

Limited Horizon and other poems © Marie H. Curran

Marie Hanna Curran holds an Honours Degree in Equine Science and is qualified as an Accounting Technician. However, her time is now spent farming words as she refuses to allow illness – Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – impact her quest to fill the world with words. Her articles have appeared in the Galway Independent, Connacht Tribune and Irish Independent and her regular column sits between the pages of the magazine Athenry News and Views. Along with freelance writing, her poems and short stories have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies across the globe and her solo collection of poetry Observant Observings was published by Tayen Lane Publishing in 2014.

www.mariehcurran.com.

A Celebration of Women’s Poetry for International Women’s Day 2018

March 4th, 2018

‘A History of Love Letters’ by Seanín Hughes

Miss said every time I told a lie,
Baby Jesus had a nail hammered
into his hand.
She said I had a sad mouth,
corners downturned, pointing
to hell.

Stephen with the p-h had a mouth
like sunshine. I gave him a token:
a tiny toy dinosaur egg, pale blue and gold.
I wrote his name on my hand
and hoped the egg would hatch.

My body grew and Granny said, never
shave your legs, so I did. Better bald
spring chicken; better descaled
and plucked bare for boys
to touch with their nervous fingers,
and work me open.

The one who wrote love letters
spilled his entrails in black Bic biro,
telling me in no particular order
the parts of me he liked best —
some illustrated.

When Napoleon begged his Josephine
to lay herself bare, he meant
for her flaws to fold her
into neat and precious squares —
for her to be less than
his clenched-fist heart could hold.

In place of a filigree pen,
my hands hold pistachios
peeping from the lips
of yawning oatmeal shells,
ripe and given up easily
for a hungry mouth
that isn’t my own.

A History of Love Letters is © Seanín Hughes

Seanín Hughes is an emerging poet from County Tyrone who will shortly commence study of BA Hons English with Ulster University as a mature student.
Seanín was first published on Poethead in July 2017 and was selected for the Crescent Arts Centre’s Poetry Jukebox, launched in October 2017. She has work published or forthcoming both online and in print, including Banshee: A Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, A New Ulster and NI Community Arts Partnership’s Poetry In Motion anthology. Seanín is a longlistee for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, 2018.

'Love' by Müesser Yeniay

I have another body
outside 
               of me

they call it
love

[but this is pain]

if I had carried you in my body
only then I would have felt your existence 
                                       this much

MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; she graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She took her M.A on Turkish Literature at Bilkent University. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Muse Pie Press in USA. Her first book Darkness Also Falls Ground was published in 2009 and her second book I Founded My Home in the Mountains a collection of translation from world poetry. Her second poetry book I Drew the Sky Again was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia as Requiem to Tulips. She has translated the Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated the Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published a Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. She also translated the poetry of Israeli poet Ronny Someck (2014) and Hungarian poet Attila F. Balazs (2015). She has published a book on modern Turkish Avant-garde poetry The Other Consciousness: Surrealism and The Second New (2013). Her latest poetry book Before Me There Were Deserts was published in 2014 in İstanbul. Her poems were published in Hungarian by AB-Art Press by the name A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa(2015).

Her poems have appeared in the following magazines abroad: Actualitatea Literară (Romania), The Voices Project, The Bakery, Sentinel Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poesy, Shampoo, Los Angeles Review of Books, Apalachee Review (USA & England); Kritya, Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Casa Della Poesia, Libere Luci, I poeti di Europe in Versi e il lago di Como (Italy); Poeticanet, Poiein (Greece); Revue Ayna, Souffle, L’oiseau de feu du Garlaban (France); Al Doha (Qatar); Tema (Croatia); Dargah (Persia).

Her poetry has appeared in With Our Eyes Wide Open; Aspiring to Inspire, 2014 Women Writers Anthology; 2014 Poetry Anthology- Words of Fire and Ice (USA) Poesia Contemporanea de la Republica de Turquie (Spain); Voix Vives de Mediterranee en Mediterranee, Anthologie Sete 2013 ve Poetique Insurrection 2015 (France); One Yet Many- The Cadence of Diversity ve ayrıca Shaikshik Dakhal (India); Come Cerchi Sull’acqua (Italy).

Her poems have been translated into Vietnamese, Hungarian, Croatian, English, Persian, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. Her book in Hungarian was published in 2015 by AB-Art Publishing by the name “A Rozsaszedes Szertartasa” She has participated in the poetry festivals like Sarajevo International Poetry Festival, September 2010 (Bosnia-Herzegovina); Nisan International Poetry Festival, May 2011 (Israel); Belgrad International Poetry Festival, September 2012 (Serbia); Voix Vives International Poetry Festival (Sete), July 2013 (France); Kritya International Poetry Festival, September 2013 (India), Galati/Antares International Poetry Festival, June 2014 (Romania), Medellin International Poetry Festival, July 2014 (Colombia); 2nd Asia Pacific Poetry Festival 2015 (Vietnam). Müesser is the editor of the literary magazine Şiirden (of Poetry). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Turkish literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, and is also a member of PEN and the Writers Syndicate of Turkey.

‘where the lost things go’ by Anne Casey

we sat upon a golden bow
my little bird and i
indivisibly apart
we dived into the sky
and to the purple-hearted dark
an ocean we did cry
for all the lost things
gathered there
in rooms beyond the eye
the aie, the I, the eye

where the lost things go is © Anne Casey

(First published in ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017), with eternal gratitude to Jessie Lendennie, Publisher and tireless campaigner for women poets.)

Anne Casey’s poetry has appeared internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, broadcasts, podcasts, recordings and a major art exhibition. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection, where the lost things go in 2017. She won the Glen Phillips Novice Writer Award 2017 and has been shortlisted for prizes including Cuirt International Poetry Prize, Eyewear Books Poetry Prize and Bedford International Writing Competition, among others. Originally from west Clare, now living in Sydney, Anne is Co-Editor of ‘Other Terrain’ and ‘Backstory’ literary journals (Swinburne University, Melbourne).

‘If I Had Known’ by Marie Curran

If I had known what I know now,
I wouldn’t have been silent,
If I had known the counting clock,
I’d have asked more questions,
If I had known I’d lose your face,
I’d have taken more pictures,
If I had known the little left,
I’d never have let you go,
If I had known what I know now,
Would it really be any different?

If I had Known is © Marie Curran

(Previously published Poems from Conflicted Hearts, An Anthology 2014)

To date, more than 70 of Marie Hanna Curran’s poems have been published in journals, magazines and anthologies including Juxtaprose Magazine, ROPES 2015, Literature Today (Volume 2), Scarlet Leaf Review, and her own collection Observant Observings which was published in 2014 (Tayen Lane Publishing). Journalistic pieces featuring Marie Hanna’s varying viewpoints have appeared in newsprint and her regular column can be read in the magazine Athenry News and Views.

For more see www.mariehcurran.com

‘Haft Seen’ by Shakila Azizzada

If it weren’t for the clouds,
I could
pick the stars
one by one
from this brief sky,
hang them
in your ever ruffled hair
and hear
you saying:

‘I’m like a silk rug –
the older it gets,
the lovelier it grows,
even if
two or three naughty kids
did pee on it.’

Am I finally here?

Then let me spread
the Haft Seen tablecloth
in the middle of Dam Platz.

Even if it rains,
The Unknown Soldier
and a flock of pigeons
will be my guests.

Haft Seen is © Shakila Azizzada.The literal translation of this poem was made by Zuzanna Olszewska.
The final translated version of the poem is by Mimi Khalvati.

Shakila Azizzada is a poet from Afghanistan who writes in Dari. Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely addressed by women poets writing in Dari.

After studying Law at Kabul University, Shakila read Oriental Languages and Cultures at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, where she now lives. She regularly publishes tales, short stories, plays and poems. Her first collection of poems, Herinnering aan niets (Memories About Nothing), was published in Dutch and Dari and her second collection was published in 2012. Several of her plays have been both published and performed, including De geur van verlangen (The Scent of Desire). She frequently performs her poems at well-established forums in The Netherlands and abroad.

‘The Salt Escape’ by Jude Cowan Montague

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘You never will find him again.’
She walked out onto the sodium plain
where sour gusts scour the crags.

She found a groove in the ground.
Her body fit inside the crack.
I lay down on top, pressed my face in her back
wrapping my feelers around

The snowlace winds whipped our flesh
to ribbons, though swaddled in fur.
I folded my legs close and breathed in her hair.
I dreamed we were eggs in our nest.

Stiffened to stone in the night
and humming to underground forces
we heard the dark whisper of runaway horses
shuddering into the light.

The Salt Escape is © Jude Cowan Montague

Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. Her album ‘The Leidenfrost Effect’ (Folkwit Records 2015) reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She produces ‘The News Agents’ on Resonance 104.4 FM. Her most recent book is The Originals (Hesterglock Press, 2017).


'It was I' by Dolonchampa Chakraborty

The girl who was burnt for dowry today
        It was I 
The girl foetus inside her body which was burnt too
	It was I 
The new-born girl who was abandoned in a trash bag 
        It was I  
They were nobody’s daughter 


The girl who was not paid her daily wage 
       It was I 
The girl who was paid less than her husband 
       It was I 
The girl who was not allowed to join a job
As her husband’s boss
	It was I 
They were nobody’s sister


The girl who was raped by colleagues 
	It was I 
The girl who was molested by an auto driver 
	It was I 
The girl who was pushed to bed by a filmmaker 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s lover 


The girl who wasn’t privileged by her right to education 
	It was I 
The girl who never got the privacy of a healthy sanitation 
	It was I 
The girl who went from one kitchen to the other 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s pride 


The girl who couldn’t practise her right to marry 
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t practise her right to separate   
	It was I 
The girl who suffered a fruitless marriage 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s wife 


The girl who was sold by one
	It was I 
The girl who was bought by thousands 
	It was I 
The girl who made herself a sex-slave 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s friend 


The girl who sold her womb 
	It was I 
The girl who sold her baby 
	It was I 
The girl who made her baby an orphan 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s shelter 


The girl who was tortured in custody 
	It was I 
The girl who was beaten by a homemaker 
	It was I 
The girl who danced in a strip club 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s armour 


The girl who gulped her tears
	It was I 
The girl who couldn’t shed one 
	It was I 
The girl who got a slap on her tears
	It was I 
They were nobody’s precious  


The girl who slept on a footpath
	It was I 
The girl who slept in old-age home 
	It was I 
The girl who was kept hungry by her son 
	It was I 
They were nobody’s world 


Still, the girl who refuses to lose
	It is I 
The girl who refuses to drown or burn
	It is I 
The girl who fights back to victory
	It is I 
The girl who wants to float and fly 
	It is I 
The girl who is the lover of a gnome
	It is I 
The girl who forgets the obscure junctions 
	It is I 
The girl who pushes the darkness back into oblivion 
	It is I 
It is me who takes your hand and walks with you 
We make a destiny through the late night dew.
.
It was I is © Dolonchampa Chakraborty

Dolonchampa Chakraborty graduated in Calcutta and now studies Human Resources in Cornell University, Ithaca. She writes poetry in Bengali and has published two books of poetry. She is a freelance translator and editor working for the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders and several other organisations. Her poems have been published in prestigious Indian Literature, a bi-monthly journal by the Sahitya Akademi of India among others. She has been a panelist in the Samanvay Lit Fest. For two years, she has edited The Nilgiri Wagon, a literary journal that focuses on translating literature of Indian and other languages into English. She is passionate about languages. Currently, she is learning Kashmiri and leading a translation project of Syrian Poetry into Bengali.

Image detail from ‘Making Den of Sibyl Wren’ by Salma Ahmad Caller