Tag: A Saturday Woman Poet

‘A Kind of Rescue’ and ‘Yes’ by Afric McGlinchey

July 6th, 2013

A Kind Of Rescue

Can’t inhale any more
of his boulder-sized words,
droops, like a fox’s tail caught
in a shower of rain.
His rage has turned her upside down,
bringing out the other one,
who launches

like a whale leaping from the ocean,
while she disappears
into nothingness.
Later, comes to, to find herself
carried in a cradle of human arms,
panic hitting her in the throat,
bruises blooming;

tries to cover them, looks up
to see a corridor
of huge trees peering down,
green faces leaning.
Across the sky, a white arc
wakes the beginning of memory…
then a mighty uprush, burning;

his smiling mask,
finger beckoning
casually, as though talking
of the weather, or moving house,
yet
eyes fixed as poignantly
as a bridegroom waiting for his lover.

Arms release her at the door,
and she ducks behind it,
fragments of a hide-and-seek self
flicking into place
like a coin into a slot.
On the camber of her hips, evidence
of thumb-prints.

A kind of Rescue is © Afric McGlinchey

Yes

(after Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses)

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

Yes is © Afric McGlinchey.
First appeared in The Lucky Star Of Hidden Things, published by Salmon (2012)

Afric McGlinchey’s début poetry collection, The Lucky Star Of Hidden Things was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012. She was highly commended in the Magma 2012 competition, shortlisted in the Bridport 2012 and won the Northern Liberties Poetry Prize (USA) in 2013. She won the Hennessy poetry award in 2011. Her poems have been published in Ireland, England and the States, in numerous print and online journals.

‘Nightmare’ and ‘The Fall’ by Eleanor Hooker

June 29th, 2013

Nightmare

A cobalt night in blue relief
and the hunt begins.
The green grass black
and the talking baby frightens me.
Bug eyed horrors hover in
our shadows, lingering, carnivorous.
Wailing now to let him stay,
He stumbles after, the talking baby.

Drop under the yickety yackety
picket fence. A treacherous fork
in the road. I know well the dangers.
Where I go the baby follows. I urge him
back to the black green grass, behind the
yickety yackety picket fence.
“You’ll be safer there” I promise.

He crawls back under with pleas
to follow. We neither saw the pit
that he fell in, in velvet silence. A
small hand held the edge but
slipped away beneath my grip.
A cobalt night in blue relief and
And the hunt begins.

Nightmare is © Eleanor Hooker

First published in The Stinging Fly and subsequently The Shadow Owner’s Companion

The Fall

Oh she bared her soul alright; it fell from a star cloud
Reigned by Canis Major. They knew it was authentic,
It whimpered like an unknown set loose inside a crowd
Of urban predators: fierce curs and savage sceptics
That roamed in packs. A few select gave shelter in
The telling, clad the naked soul in their protection,
Made suspect bargains to house her in a harlequin
that masked and silenced looked like her, even wore her skin.
But being undressed is like an honest thought, it cannot
Lie with dogs; it is the thing in itself, nothing more.
The truth is beastly but does not wag the tale. No, that
Is the subplot tellers invent when they call her whore.
And though her flesh is marked by canines, they strain to blame
Her first fall; judging original sin her true shame.

The Fall is © Eleanor Hooker

First published in The Shadow Owner’s Companion, February 2012

Eleanor Hooker’s debut collection of poems The Shadow Owner’s Companion, published by the Dedalus Press in February 2012, has been shortlisted for the Mountains to Sea dlr Strong/Shine award for best first collection in 2012. Her poem A Rite won the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland competition in June 2013.

Her poetry has been published in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The SHOp, Agenda, POEM: International English Language Quarterly, Southword (forthcoming), CanCan, Wordlegs, And Other Poems, ink sweat and tears (forthcoming).

She is a founder member and Programme Curator for the Dromineer Literary Festival. She is a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat.

‘Swallows’ and other poems by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

June 22nd, 2013

Swallows

The knitting needles
drew melodies from silence
as stitches seemed to follow
one another like swallows
alighting upon a wire,
watching the tiny dress
of softest yellow wool
grow like a sunrise
waiting for she
who waited within.

She, who came
and left
all too soon.

Stretched and stitched,
I lie empty, raw, alone
In the cold corridor of the hospital
grey knot of my mind
grasping blindly for meaning
I hold the soft brightness to my cheek,
then unravel the stitches
one
by
one

Swallows of hope
disappearing at sunset
to some unfathomable,
faraway land.

My grief grows, like wound wool.
Dull. Full.

Swallows is © Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Recovery Room, Maternity Ward

(for Savita Halappanavar)

The procedure complete,
I awaken
alone, weak beneath starched sheets.
As the hospital sleeps, my fingers fumble
over the sutured scar, a jagged map
of mourning stitched into my skin —
empty without and empty within.
Beyond these white curtains,
stars shine bright as Diwali
in a cold night sky.
Someday, within these walls,
I will hear my baby cry.
Cradling my hollowed womb,
I trace this new wound and weep.
The only sound I hear now is the fading retreat
of a doctor’s footsteps, echoing my heartbeat.

Recovery Room, Maternity Ward is © Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Rusted Relic

Drifts of dust muffle the old typewriter’s surface
each dead key is encrusted with rust—
a forgotten Gaelic font
of blurred syllables and bygone symbols.
Muted music. Smothered percussion.

Rusted Relic is © Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s poems have appeared in literary journals in Ireland and internationally. Her Irish language collections Résheoid and Dúlasair are both published by Coiscéim. The Arts Council of Ireland has twice awarded her literature bursaries (2011 and 2013). In 2012, she was a winner of Wigtown Gaelic poetry contest— the Scottish National Poetry Prize. Her short collection of poems in English Ouroboros was recently longlisted for The Venture Award (UK).

‘What She Sings Of’ and other poems by Eileen Sheehan

June 8th, 2013

an elegy of sorts

for want of an ash-tray
I rest my cigarette
on this grey plate,
a remnant
from some depleted set,
now serving as candle-holder

the cigarette tip sizzles
as it hits a pat of wax

I inhale and taste the tallow
as red seeps down the paper
stains the filter

a last molten drop
from a crimson candle, lit
as votive for an injured cat

the cat now buried
in a sunny spot
by the back wall

a favoured place of his
for grooming

somewhere
there was a point to all of this
which now evades me

like that raw evening,
placing his still-warm body
in the grave, how everything
but the weeping
failed me

© Eileen Sheehan from the collection Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books)

What She Sings Of

Once in a time he was the sky clothing me,
the warm earth supporting me,
the all-in-all of every night and day to me.

He was salt waves washing me,
he was wind caressing me, fire igniting me,
the first and last of every cause that moved me.

He was fish that jumped for me,
bird that sang for me, beast that nourished me,
the craving and cure of every need inside of me.

Now he is a bright ship pulling away from me,
white sail gone from me, his rough wake drowning me,
he is shimmer of scales growing out of me;

soon I will sing to him, comb out my hair for him,
draw him back to me, lure him down to me.

© Eileen Sheehan

first published in The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets (ed Joan McBreen/Salmon Poetry)

Eileen Sheehan is from Killarney, Co Kerry. Her collections are Song of the Midnight Fox and Down the Sunlit Hall (Doghouse Books). Anthology publications include The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets (ed Joan McBreen/Salmon Poetry) and TEXT: A Transition Year English Reader (ed Niall MacMonagle/ Celtic Press). She has worked as Poet in Residence with Limerick Co Council Arts Office and is on the organizing committee for Éigse Michael Hartnett Literary & Arts Festival. Her third collection, The Narrow Place of Souls, is forthcoming.

Poems by Michèle Vassal

June 1st, 2013

Drunk as Brendan Behan

Lovers lovers
their empty skins
hang limp in opiate closets
pulsing between insinuations
of naphthalene and the barbitural scent
of forgetting, they swing embittered
and toxic, mothy costumes
of a play that lingers only
on faded posters
and skin.

On the wrong side of midnight
drunk as Brendan Behan
I scooped up a last high king
kneeling on Clontarf road
   battled out
knees sanded to the bone
by the wet grit of ancient wars
   singing
   something
about not worrying about a thing
amongst Viking corpses
on the steps of the Bank of Ireland
where Wood Quay used to be
we kissed ourselves an island.

I clinched a burned out arsonist
    hands shaking
    climbing railings
in Stephens Green
   ..fucking
left an aftertaste of phosphorus
      reeking red
      like inhaling
the soul of a cracked match.

I chased a light eyed dragon
heart caving in to the count of nine
elliptic filigree of sins I kept
twitching inside a reliquary
of abalone dreams whilst
the rosary of Chopin’s Polonaise
undid itself in silver beads.
I slashed my defeats in the wrists of actors
snorted stars on the mercurial mirrors
of their well rehearsed eyes
and DT-ed on night’s poitín
when I drank neat the distilled dew
glistening on the mouths of girls.

© Michèle Vassal, published in A Taste of Hemlock, Salmon 2011

Dublin 75

Nineteen seventy five and
Mary worked Fitzwilliam square
genuflecting at closing time
for wretched men in nylon shirts
too drunk to know
too drunk to care
that whilst on bended knees
she thought only of communion.

From the Liberties to the Green

Dublin vomited poets and patriots
under the gassy glare of streetlights
leaning on convoluted shadows
and not quite balladed out
saints and scholars spewed up Spancil Hill and
Dirty Old Town, like a bad pint
In nineteen seventy five
love smelled of stout and vinegared chips.”

© Michèle Vassal, published in A Taste of Hemlock, Salmon 2011

Michèle Vassal is from Barcelonnette, a small town in the French Alps. She moved to Ireland, aged seventeen, to learn English and stayed there for thirty years. Her collection, Sandgames (Salmon 2000), received first prize at Listowel Writers’ Week and some of her poems were short-listed for the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Awards. She has been widely published internationally, in both French and English. Michèle currently lives and writes in France.

“Sanctus” by Kimberly Campanello

April 8th, 2013

Sanctus

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

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

II.

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

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

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

Sanctus is © Kimberly Campanello, from Consent. Published Doire Press, 2013

Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana. She now lives in Dublin and London. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press in 2011 . Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including nthposition, Burning Bush II, Abridged, and The Irish Left Review. MOTHERBABYHOME was published by Zimzalla in 2018. Pic by Brian Kavanagh

•MOTHERBABYHOME

“We Protect the Weak” by Kimberly Campanello

December 1st, 2012

We Protect the Weak

We protect the weak and call it love or ethics.
For the safety of our students this door
must remain closed at all times. Ani yalda tova. I am a good girl,
I tell the Israeli jeweler who is impressed with my Hebrew.
Someone nearby says, Fuck Israel. I offer, I am a bad girl. Ani yalda ra.

To dance is a kind of paralysis. Muscles contract
in a certain way and we call it beautiful.
The men on the beach made me think
they were dancing tango, but instead one
was helping the other will his feet to remember

walking. If I had withered hands and always gave you
your pen with my teeth would you think it beautiful?
For the continued safety of our money
these checkpoints must remain closed
at all times. For the quality of our progeny these legs

must remain closed at all times. These minds.
This mouth. This heart. Why don’t you substitute
your for these and this? See how it feels. Ani yalda ra.
Feel that. Feel me feel you. Tell me I’m good
and bad. Tova and Ra. Let us be both…

Kimberly will be reading at the National Concert Hall, on Thursday, December 6th 2012. Kimberly will be read her poems on the sheela-na-gigs in Strange Country, a new work by composer Benjamin Dwyer for uilleann pipes, tape, and poetry. More information and booking details can be found at www.nch.ie.

We Protect the Weak was previously published in the pamphlet, Spinning Cities (Wurm Press, 2011). Kimberly read this poem at Catechism, Readings for Pussy Riot, in Dublin.

Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana. She now lives in Dublin and London. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press in 2011 . Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including nthposition , Burning Bush II, Abridged , and The Irish Left Review .

Pic by Brian Kavanagh

A poem by Kit Fryatt

August 14th, 2012
Months-dead grandfather
I couldn’t have written this when you were alive,
& you kept living,
unknown to me,

like someone not obscure but obsolescing
whose death surprises mainly by his
having been alive till now (I googled Lawrence Ferlinghetti
today – he’s still alive:–)

. & unknown to my mother
. she has a half-sister
. three weeks younger, alike unknown

Fatherhood is a bit of a mystery
when you put it about like that.

From you I have serial faithlessness
from you she has a name
. & a maiden name
. that I am asked to say when asked by one of the ‘team’
. on the Credit Card
. Hotline, it being typically something unknown
. to other people, even those we’re close to,
. (I made one up)
& her hoary orphan paranoia.

© Kit Fryatt , all rights reserved

Untitled poem by Kit Fryatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://wurmimapfel.net/.
- Link to Rain Down Can
- Wurm in Apfel
‘Effluence’ by Ruth Vanita

August 4th, 2012

‘After the ups and downs of the day
Manufactured alone in this small room,
Aching in more than one way, I press
Seven buttons, and am at last in heaven.
Who is to be praised like Graham Bell
For the greatest, kindest imagining,
For knowing that no song can please so well,
So heal , as one voice saying two syllables
in a tone not reproducible ?
Thanks to an era that may blow us both
Up any minute, my heart is lifted,
I see the stars again , bless a world
That has you in it, and that makes you mine
Along a line so tenuous, vibrant, fine.’

Effluence, by Ruth Vanita, from The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets , ed Jeet Thayil, 2008. Reviewed at , Post III

Congratulations to Jeet who made the 2012 Man Booker list with Narcopolis

Issue 22 of the Southword Literary Journal is now online

July 7th, 2012

Issue 22 of the Southword Literary Journal of the Munster Literature Centre is now online. I am adding one of my published poems from Southword 22, a contents page from the journal, and a link to the Munster Literature Centre’s homepage. Please do visit the poetry, review and essay pages, as well as the other three poems on my page.

Issue 22 of Southword, the editors and contributors

Poetry in English is edited by Leanne O’ Sullivan.

Poetry written by , Jeffrey Alfier, Fióna Bolger, Tomas De Faoite, Kevin Graham, Richard Halperin, Brian Kirk, John Liddy, Mary Madec, Afric McGlinchey, David Mohan, Paddy Moran, Sue Morgan, Christine Murray, Paul Ó Cólmain, Caitríona O’Reilly, John W. Sexton, Michael Sheehan, Knute Skinner, Fiona Smith, Gerard Smyth, Matthew Sweeney, and Ken Taylor.

Short Stories are edited by Ian Wild.

Short Stories are by , Lane Ashfeldt, Armel Dagorn, Seán Kenny, Kieran Marsh, Danielle McLaughlin, and Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

An Ghaoth Aneas: Forlíonadh Gaeilge. Eagarthóir, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

Filiocht : Colm Breathnach, Clíodhna Cussen, Biddy Jenkinson, Dairena Ní Chinnéide, agus Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin

Prós : Mícheál Ó Ruairc

Léirmheastóireacht : Eilís Ní Dhúill agus Muiris Ó Meara

Reviews and Criticism , edited by Patrick Cotter.

Contributors are ,Sara Baume, Philip Coleman, Dave Lordan, Jennifer Matthews, Thomas McCarthy, Eugene O’Connell

As If

“It had not once occurred to her to ask (who) ?
Wherefrom is grace , and to whither it goes when
it departs ?

High-wordedness has stymied her sense of longing
in every colour from indigo to amber, amber to indigo.

As if , as if the jewels caught up in the blades of grass
were instead attached to the lashes of her eyes,
skewing her not-vision.

She peeked at herself in walking again and again
in that place. Only to be torn there,
back from those things most fiercely desired,

those hollowed-out things of indigo and amber,
amber , indigo, their very shadows mired by the
not-light

trees maybe,

Chris Murray