Chris Murray

eve labouring for 37 hours, the ‘yes’ poem – gold friend

September 25th, 2021

eve labouring for 37 hours; the 'yes' poem

Great
monumental
Eve in pain

will bring
forth a Cain /
                       Abel 
Cannibal.

Exhausted stretch
rather/rather/rather
rather/rather/rather
dilate/ than die/ yes,

So just. Sous justice.
En vertu de la justice,
Pour:

(‘In sorrow you shall bring forth children’)

Face? Yes, yes! Present. Hands?
Yes. His image, 
who conjured it?

Mouth of dry twigs

the /sticks / stones
bones/ buttons
a knee-piece/ skulls          the threads— 

There are piles of skulls
pushing through my grimacing cunt,

All the pretty things,
the stones/ bones /buttons
A knee-piece/ skulls          the threads — 

Sous justice.

Published Leuvre Litteraire #12

Collected Gold Friend, Turas Press 2020

Online URL https://turaspress.ie/shop/gold-friend-by-chris-murray/

“Limerence” and other poems by Palmer Smith

November 22nd, 2020

limerence

i loved a somnambulist
we’re like a No(thing), a No(body)
two no-bodies equal Somebody, right?
(re)-read my words
bottle of tequila, all the limes
all the girls you have loved,
shaken up in this cup i lovingly stirred

you stumble on red oak floors ceiling,
a map of london lon-don-ing you
illicit, (i)llicit you, i’d like to
“I need some tea…eaRl gRey”
i never could roll my “r’s” like you
Afraid to WAKE you
an alarm could ring;
a poptart-realization could occur
you might realize what’s happening
when you hear the 11 o’clock news
(world news tonight, it’s good to have you with us!)
Present, presently? a gunshot to knee on 4th street

limerence in honeycombs
honey-orange sandwiches dissemble my skin
i let the honey in just like you
so (fool)ish, like a clown face
with a red button as a nose
Dying out, the bees are
dying out, not you; you might be
(a)round for (some)(time)
brown-amber eyes, did you know
that insects are stuck in amber?
they cannot escape the stick-i-ness
of the sweet sap, i might become one of them,
my wings are too fragile to be touched by
a nothing like you your fingers,
prints, imprints, do you love me?

One Night You Grew Silent

You said you wanted me
when you turned to face the lamppost.
The snowflakes caught your eyelashes
on the last languid Christmas.

Your fingertips braided my hair.
Your chilled lips smoothed my legs.
Your breath in hot clouds warmed my skin.
Maybe I love you a little.

I stand in line at the Drug Store.
There are fake Christmas trees.
I stand in line with closed eyes.

In the warm bathwater
I inhale the exhaust
of a cigarette smushed
into my mother’s glass bowl.
A reflection of my stomach,
of what could be below it…

And then I hear the phone line go numb.
Lifted the window to devour the snowed
and bitten air on a wet,
soon to be whaled body.

Ladybug

Upon a mint leaf appeared a beet-red ladybug.
Her left wing dilapidated, her black eyes tearing,
She whispered into my ear, “My heart feels a-tug;
…my love has left me, and thus, I am fearing.”

I inquired as to what had occurred.
She turned her gaze towards the dampened ground.
“Infidelity,” was the only word.
She fluttered a wing, without a sound.

“What is heartbreak?” we asked one another.
The male species is so damn unsatisfied.
Heartbreak is when a heart no longer flutters;
It is faced with a stomping reality: he lied.

Body #19

They called me body #19
when I laid under the half-door
of this half-block,
depleted of what existed above.

Nineteen, an odd, uneven,
unsure number. I observe
a deleted city, uneven in its skyline,
like a mouth without its biggest teeth
to help swallow its food.
It coughs and begs for someone
to help it, with a flailing tongue.
It is one of many mouths.

A number identified me…
not my hair, or my skin colour.
I would be counted amongst 20.
This I did not know until weeks later,
when wild newscasters counted
the remaining bodies like stars
on their fingers.

To count 20 stars
in a Manhattan sky would be rare.
But bodies? What was rarer?

A waking moment: atop smoky glass
and blood burned atop wooden desks,
with loose elevator buttons,
I counted the people surrounding
the rubble. They amassed to more stars
than I would ever count,
even on a clear night.

© Palmer Smith 2020

Palmer Smith is an emerging writer who began her MFA in September 2020 at Columbia University. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and wrote for the SLC Phoenix newspaper while in college. Her article, 23 Life Lessons was published in Thought Catalog, becoming an Editor’s Pick of the Week in June 2018. She writes about American Southern culture, relationships, childhood, and dreams. She hopes to teach writing and literature at the college level.
Protected: ‘Early risers’ by C. Murray

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“Moss” and other poems by Niamh Twomey

November 1st, 2020
Homing Salmon

Under the gush of shower water your greying skin
flails. In your mind you wade back to the brook,
the water icy even in summer, your seven siblings
balancing on the pebbled belly of the River Fergus,
suds in your hair, brothers dunking you under, ice forming
in your brain, penetrating your veins, Mother shouting Don’t
catch colds. No one but the river ever taught you how to swim.
Sometimes a silver fish would scurry by upriver. Everyone would freeze,
crane for a glance before it flickered past. Salmon, Father said.
Your brothers always poked the verge with sticks, boasted they could catch it.
Their brittle frames have since sailed over the shoulders of their sons
to the graveyard by the river but you remember them young.
Under the gush of shower water your greying scales
glisten in autumn sun.

(First published in Crannóg 53)

The Wooden Ladder

My Grandfather was a carpenter.
Sometimes he made toys for me
with odds and ends from the firebox.
Once, he made me a ladder for my dolls;
it had three rungs, rigid and rounded.
I imagined it was cut from a fancy staircase.

Its two stringers, the length of my arm—
the length of his hand, were parallel. I checked.
I learnt that word,
it means they’re standing right beside each other
but even if they go on forever in a straight line,
they will never touch.

My doll’s feet didn’t need to touch the rungs
for them to leap up the ladder;
propped against a shoebox in my playroom.
They were steady in my hands
like the saw in his when he drove
his mark into the wood.

(First published in the Qutub Minar Review Vol. 2)

Moss

for Ellen Hutchins (1785—1815)
“send me a moss, anything just to look at” –from Ellen’s last letter before she died

Here; a grey-cushioned Grimmia.
Here, a flaccid Brachythecium spine.
Thyme-moss, Hart’s-tongue, Sphagnum.
And let me take you under the sea;
a hive of sweet kelp, bouquet of carrageen
bedded in a throw of Dulce.
Knotted in sea spaghetti away from your fossilising name.
I hope you died looking at your moss,
stalks of haircap painting a different set of stars.

(First published in Boyne Berries 27)
```
When I Visit You Now

There’s a code for the door.
No smell of rollies,
no garden to capture
with a disposable camera.

But your brail-veined arms
stretch out to me in welcome.

	You’re a salmon, I think,
head bowed under the weight of scales
and I a poet trawling
natal streams upriver, digging
tiers along the riverbank 
as we walk to the dayroom

          then back

    but you slip 

from my grasp,
sinking to the riverbed–
staring at the television.  


(First published in the Qutub Minar Review Vol. 2)
```
Niamh Twomey is a writer from County Clare. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies including Boyne Berries, Crannóg, and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology. She holds a BA in English and French and an MA in Creative Writing, both from University College Cork.
“I don’t belong here’ by Fizza Abbas

October 18th, 2020

I don’t belong here

I love chipped crayons,
they tell me colours can come in different forms:
pitch-black darkness can become the reincarnation of red,
moonlight can subdue the proud ribbon-like body of the river,
wise men need not have a white beard.

I often whisper to the wavelength,
ask her to, once, and for all,
be flexible if dispersion is an absolute necessity,
to tune into madness
even if it’s her least-favourite frequency.
Sometimes, I even read her poems,
so she knows I have word bubbles
that don’t blow my way.
Similar to the paintballs
that she complains are too unruly and wild.

I am a laywoman,
with no command on phonetics
the shit sounds similar to me,
I often tell my husband–
take care of calories, the shit,
he, being the ultimate Science guy,
says, it’s a good fat joke

Once in a while, we’re on the same wavelength.

Nibbling the crayons, I often think,
I too can think.

An old woman judges me in a gathering

I find the silhouette of mom against the stunning sunset, tracing my footprints when a 70-year-old woman flaunts her half-tamed cupid’s bow in a majlis.

She looks for a golden ratio; here lies square, oval, rectangle congruent with the door, bar and a crosspiece.

Fizza Abbas is a freelance content writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her works have been published on many platforms including in Poetry Village and The Cabinet of Heed.
“Passing through” and other poems by Betty Thompson

October 18th, 2020
Balloons

A stream of them – long and
ribboning before they were inflated;
breath-filled they turned into
globes and cylinders: fat demi-lunes
ably shaped by the long-fingered
magician who, in his downtime
offstage from the Hippodrome,
relaxing by the fire, legs stretched
across the hearth, would plunge
those long hands into his pockets,
to pull out rubber neon
proto-chameleons. How he joined
limbs and torso, how he conjured
heads, ears and tails, I never knew,
just watched this flow of colour
and shape become a rabbit or a cat.
My own cat retreated to the yard
when this post-performance
played out: a narrow space, walled
high with London bricks, it shielded
her but not me from the fear I felt
when he threw his voice out there
to ricochet into the kitchen,
a prelude to his suite of tricks.
There were cards among his props
that he showed and shuffled, got
some gasps in return, but not from
me. As for the bouncy animal he
gave me – a red rabbit with swelling
ears – I pressed till I found a bursting
point. This was after I had seen,
through the back window of his
parked-up van, a cage of doves.

Passing Through

Do you find it dark in the underpass?
Crab of the thorn, a small light for small people.
The travel time is short. I’ve counted the steps
From start to finish. What’s more, St. Lucy
Blesses passers-through, steadies their heartbeat.
Her icon is set into the curvature of the archway.
Look up at the gold leaf glinting. Then emerge
To see the vista of a city farm, its luminous glass
Porch, eau-de-nil paling, fronds of faded lavender
On the verge. If you are there, the street is not
Abandoned. On sad days, I try to remember
The name of Johnson’s cat, memorialized in bronze
In a London square. It comes eventually, bringing solace.

Note: Line 2 is from ‘The Haw Lantern’ by Seamus Heaney.

Quay

In those minutes close to twilight
when the air shines
and the sky is pale as layered muslin,

trees swayed in a line along the quay.

In the river’s waves –
vivid as ink wedges on a Japanese scroll –

in the curving, widening river,
and on the road above, a bus appeared.

Its ample shape grew.
```
Gérard Depardieu in Eustace Street

His fleshy face aslant fills the screen
here in this vaulted room
           still light enough to see the patina on oak

though the lights are down
as I sit in a plush row where
benches used to seat the friends who met here

in silence mostly
unless one felt impelled to speak
 about the light within.

We too sit in silence
looking up at the screen of light
receiving its forms and tints, tracking their force,

tasting the full        mouthed vowels and moist consonants
of its habitués this day
        who, sojourning in the drab part of town,

relocate for a scene or two
        to its volcanic hinterland
to daze themselves with light and air.

Gérard Depardieu in Eustace Street and other poems © Betty Thompson
```
Betty Thompson was born in Dublin, now living in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. Graduate of UCD, the University of Bristol, and Bath Spa University. A collection entitled Painting the Vestibule published in 2009 by Scallta Media. Poems have appeared in Coffee House Poetry, Crannóg, Cyphers, The SHOp, Poetry Ireland Review, The Scaldy Detail, and The Irish Times, and included in the anthology If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry & Song, edited by Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth (Dedalus Press, 2014). They can also be found on the Irish Film Institute website, on the Coffee House Poetry website, and on the website of the UCD Library Digital Irish Poetry Reading Collection. I am a member of the Irish Writers Centre and I took part in the Women Across Borders Literary Readathon there in 2018.
“Time” by Fidel Hogan Walsh and Julie Corcoran

October 10th, 2020
2020, Memories

Blinded in a winter’s dread no prophet foresaw.
Spring’s new life erupted into a chaos of fear.
Desolation replaced the warmth of a hug.
Children banished from our everyday lives!

Ahh, the blessings — a swift journey home
to the unexpected happiness under one roof.
Chatter, laughter —
a family enduring dark days
come what may….

Time, the pickpocket of memories stood still.
Watching, new ways of keeping our spirits alive,
to be remembered, cherished.
Lost moments recaptured before Summer’s end….

An invisible killer started a war,
so much pressure on our frontline.
But it would be,
‘Love and Stay at Home’
that had their backs.

Death came at a fast pace.
Isolation, the enemy of a treasured last goodbye —
grief mourned in silent lockdown.

And now,
the road to healing shattered hearts and souls begins!
```
 
 Family Love
 
Father. Mother.
            Daughters. Sons.
                            Grandchildren. 
 
Love weaves its magical thread
         intricately throughout the ages.
Forging unbreakable bonds.
 
                Out from nowhere,
an unnatural enemy wreaked havoc
           on the close-knit unit.
They endured great sadness and turmoil.
          Separation with no hugs
to warm the blood, tested their strength… 
 
Generations fought for survival
alongside the mightiest warrior of all — Love.
 
And the family stood firm.
A force to be reckoned with!
 
```
Omen

Common sense flees at the first sign of fear,
hostage to an ever sense of madness.

Inception of a foreboding story’s journey!
I see; the one eyed child dancing on her grave — the ruins of mankind.
I hear; the dark one singing an ancient curse — a prayer not heard.
I smell; the rotting of bodies — soul thieves wanton destruction.
I touch; the soiling of a pure heart — unholy spirits grasp hold.
I taste; the drowning miseries in the afterlife — ripen death.

Saving the dead or killing the living?
On a night when the full moon is covered by cloud!

Words © Fidel Hogan Walsh / Images @ Julie Corcoran
Poems from ‘My Name Is’ by Polina Cosgrave

October 5th, 2020

Starship

The blackest of holes,
the hottest of suns,
the craziest captain alive.
Surrender to none,
be gentle to some,
stay tough as the skies collide.
The milkiest way is over my head.
They’re chasing me mile after mile.
This starship is mine,
try and catch me, I said.
This marvellous starship is mine.

Self-portrait

I’m almost young and comparably civil
for someone who nurtures her inner cynic,
I have a soft spot for Charles Simic,
Nintendo and soda bread.

I’m somewhat Russian and kind of solid
for someone who never knows when to call it,
I once loved a redhead, I wrote her sonnets,
but now the romance is dead.

She wished I had stayed in the capital city,
took care of her kitty, who’s bald and unpretty,
She said I was deadly at cooking and twitting.
my words and my soup turned sour.

I wished she had moved with me to the Ocean,
but she couldn’t swim, and I hadn’t a notion.
We blew our life jackets out of proportion
and labelled each other as cowards.

It’s crazy how even the Arctic winter
seems warmer than feelings which soon will wither.
I could live without her, but hardly with her.
It’s not the winning that counts.

I’m lucky the sun in my garden is blazing,
I’m planting my saplings and I will raise them
with leaves full of poison and sharp as razors,
with crowns that shall pierce the clouds.

Dog I Can’t Keep

First language is a dog I can’t keep anymore
barking in the back of my mind.
Stay, I command.
But it goes wherever it pleases,
reminding me who is the real owner here.
Its growling is so powerful that all other sounds get lost in it.
Your bites leave no scars anymore, I say.
I’ll find you a new home, I say.
It grins.
First find yourself one.
Its jaws are closing around my neck.

Tattoo

Homeland
is tattooed on my skin,
and the picture is changing in real time.
Here is my school friend’s fresh grave,
here is yesterday’s theatre student
in a prison transport vehicle,
here are the ashes of Siberian forests,
here are the history books being rewritten.
And here is the apple tree in my parents’ garden
blossoming, just like any other year,
and it’s my favorite part of the tattoo.
One day I’ll have the rest of it removed.

Poems from My Name Is © Polina Cosgrave

Purchase link for Polina’s book.

Polina Cosgrave is a Russian-born poet based in Ireland, published in a number of journals and anthologies, including Writing Home by Dedalus Press. Her work was featured on Echo of Moscow radio station, Russia-K channel, RTÉ Radio 1, The Irish Times, Arts in Action NUI Galway and Mother Tongues Festival. Polina’s debut poetry collection My Name Is is published by Dedalus Press.

‘Imprint’ by C. Murray

September 29th, 2020

          Amber
  her halls—
by the periphery trees
open out sky's lungs.
   There are small birds
below, 
      they sing
        her boundaries: 
 clay and Blue–
this living thing.
I touch her skin, it
strikes White   heart
-wood      blood runs 
    white with light.
She tells her tale,
Silver  
       beech,
a wren–
                   
           © C. Murray 2020

Read A Hierarchy of Halls

Imprint by C. Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Poems from ‘Alchemy’ by Fiona Perry

September 26th, 2020

Postpartum

You are as naked as a shucked oyster
so, my breasts are slashed and raining pearls
for you, my suckling child. The universe
has too many doors. A terrifying flower
unfurled overnight to tell me if they took
you away or carted you off to die
like pink tender veal. I would be prepared
to stand on my own mother’s shoulders
to push you back up to the surface, to stop
you from drowning— and she would want that—
because she too must have discovered this feral
wisdom in the bloodied wake of birth. Everything
is unfastening around me, voluptuously, in ways
I cannot understand yet. For now, I must be patient
occupy this hinterland and allow the stars to realign.

The Jesus Woman

After James K Baxter

I saw the Jesus Woman
milling around the school gates.
She wore grey marl track pants,
her hair was scooped up into a pineapple bun.
her breath smelt of coffee and ginger biscuits.
When babies cried, her breasts leaked milk.
When she smiled, birds flitted like glitter
among the trees. When she screamed
tectonic plates shifted. When she laughed
everybody got high.

The Jesus Woman sat in a café
and selected her twelve disciples.

One was a schoolgirl panicking in an airport toilet
soon to be married in an unfamiliar country.
One was a waitress who dropped her stillborn child
into a storm drain on Good Friday and ran away.
One was a grandmother who couldn’t read or write.

One was a freshly-battered office manager whose
husband supported a football team that had just lost 99-0;
One was a self-harming solicitor who advised
clients in an office festooned with original artwork.
There were seven others. But their identities have been
suppressed to protect the powerful.

The Jesus Woman said, ‘Ladies, from now on,
the rain will wash away our worries’.
She did no miracles.
She sometimes sold old clothes on eBay.

The first day she was arrested
for having a backstreet abortion.
The second day she was beaten by villagers
for accusing a pillar of the community of rape.
The third day she was charged with being a woman
and given twenty five years in a Magdalen laundry.
The fourth day she was sent to an asylum
for admitting she wasn’t cut out to be a mother.
The fifth day lasted for four years
while she worked as a comfort woman
constantly within the grasp of soldiers.
The sixth day she told her abusive father,

“I am the light of the world.
I am the one who brings into being.”

The seventh day she was set on fire:

the flesh of God was burnt to ash.

On the eighth day the earth stopped turning.
All of creation began to cry.

Every night these tears are collected
into a bottle for reckoning at the end of days.

Intensive Care

it does me no good to pay
attention to the shushing

sound of the ventilator or
the incessant twinkle of

machine lights, let me
pretend to follow

you (like a scuba diver)
gliding through lough waters

the passing of the Bann
Foot Ferry above us

chugging its cargo of suited
and booted brylcreemed boys

girls with shiny evening bags
resting on swing-skirted laps

our bodies are clouds now
we are wearing crowns

of marsh thistle we
want to stay just here

but currents are carrying
us away in their eddies

you reach the shore
and stretch out on your back

inviting me to place my head
on your belly, the weight

of it makes you smile because
this is how it once was

me curled up like a nautilus
sleeping in your womb

Poems from Alchemy © Fiona Perry

Preorder Alchemy at Turas Press https://turaspress.ie/shop/contemporary-poetry-alchemy-by-fiona-perry-debut-collection-from-turas-press/

Fiona Perry is the author of Alchemy from Turas Press (October 2020), a book termed as ‘an intriguing and compelling début collection from a poet who is already strikingly in command of her craft. Mingling daily life with the numinous, these poems reflect on love and loss, on the milestones of lived experience. These poems travel through time and space: from the magic of ancient birds in a New Zealand landscape, to the intensive care ward where a loved one lies dying; from the daily round of household tasks, to the dreamworlds where memory, imagination and reality merge’. Fiona has won the Bath Flash Fiction prize for her story, Sea Change. Her work has been published widely in Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Recent work has appeared in Lighthouse, Not Very Quiet, and The Blue Nib. She contributed poetry to the 2019 Label Lit Project for National Poetry Day, Ireland.

limerence

One Night You Grew Silent

Ladybug

Body #19

Homing Salmon

The Wooden Ladder

Moss

I don’t belong here

An old woman judges me in a gathering

Balloons

Passing Through

Quay

2020, Memories

Omen

Starship

Self-portrait

Dog I Can’t Keep

Tattoo

Postpartum

The Jesus Woman

Intensive Care