Tag: Irish poets

Poems from ‘Of Dead Silences’ by Michael McAloran

December 17th, 2013

Of The-

Head of death

The seasons dissipate as if they
Had never collected tears

A dissolving sky
Soil sieved through fingers

The silent laughter of the blood

Nothing More-

Ruins of the foreign sky
From which point all are dead

Smears of dying animals upon clear glass
The flies will gather, nothing more

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Ignites-

A blindfold of congealed earth
The dead drown of inverted tears

Lacking the light
By which the night ignites the living

Upon-

Brute flesh shocks the nothing back
Into resolve

And is then pissed upon

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Silences-

Heart of desolate
In a vice of flesh

Nowhere else/ nowhere/ nothing less
The winds erased having tasted ashes

Echoes of non-being
Inexplicable silences

Champion-

Dark hollow
The sky unearthed

One final breath to champion the infinite

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Ever-

Haven to begin from
Scarlet striking out striking the dirt

With liquid hands
As if it could have ever begun otherwise

II

#9-

Echo within echo within shadow of…
Absence/ walls/ flames/ still breath alone

Pantheon of carousel/ of vertigo/ of absences

Night’s undoing was never night
Hence the laughter forever ceases to be

#14-

Danse of polka winds…night undone/
Night flourishing…

Silent retrace of bone/ vapours/ memories

Immense sky of non-death/ nothing lessened
Razor absences/ peeling away the bloodlessness

#15-

Hollowed tongue…winds dealt/ silenced
Dread lest the fingers break/ (only the elapsed)

Sing elixir of non-speech/ mouth full of dry sands
Leaving behind the drapery of skinned tide

#18-

Adrift…a visage of mists…(dead unto breath)/ arbitrary
Vault of wasps/ colours/ discoloured skin/ emptily

Night of vague breathing/ unheard voices/ voices heard

Stillness of forgotten sky/ there or here again/ cast aside
Buried sun/ sky/ sun of ashen waste/ teeth of nothingness

#19-

Waste ground/ flies of haste/ silver voices/ decay
Black tongue of…wasted wounds of…soundless again

Arise dead/ so much the/ dread/ silenced/ birthed
Evaporating tongue of/ erased/ better never/ never to have been

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Lapwing Store link for Of Dead Silences

All the images accompanying the poems from Of Dead Silences (Lapwing 2013) are © Michael McAloran (Acrylic on unprimed canvas, 2012)

Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, Calliope Nerve, The Recusant, PMI, Sex & Murder Magazine, Full Of Crow, Media Virus, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Pratishedhak, Prathamata, Danse Macabre, amphibi.us, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Gloom Cupboard, Gutter Eloquence, 1000th Monkey, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Peripheral Surveys, Milk Sugar Literary Journal, Psychic Meatloaf, Cannoli Pie, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, Widowmoon Press, Nothing, No-one, Nowhere, Mastodon Dentist, Gobbet, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ygdrasil, Establishment, Stride, A New Ulster, Primal Urge Magazine, Can Can, etc.He has authored a number of chapbooks, including ‘The Gathered Bones’, (Calliope Nerve Media), ‘Final Fragments’, (Calliope Nerve Media), & ‘The Death-Streaked Air’ (Virgogray Press), ‘Debris’, (Erbacce-Press),‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media),’, & ‘Unto Naught’, (Erbacce-Press). A full-length collection of poems, ‘Attributes’, was published by ‘Desperanto’, (NY), in May 2011, & ‘The Non Herein’ was published by Lapwing Publications in 2012. An ekphrastic text/ image book, ‘Machinations’ was published in 2013 by Knives, Forks & Spoons Press (U.K). More recently, two further collections, ‘In Damage Seasons’ & ‘All Stepped/ Undone’ were published by Oneiros Books. Lapwing Publications also recently published a collection of imagistic aphorisms, ‘Of Dead Silences’

Poems by Rosemarie Rowley

August 3rd, 2013

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

I have not been keeping a ledger or account book
Of double entries, for the cost and price
Is not reckoned in the way you look
Or what you said, in whatever form or guise
I’ll never know your motives or intentions
Whether you acted blindly or on trust
But your suspicion of all engines and inventions
Does not bury the lost meaning, or let rust

The iron will, the gold enamelling –
Byzantine portraits in detail are enthralling
And with the years there comes the mellowing
Of my survivor’s guilt, the clarity of my calling
It was not fair, but lust and beauty
Caused the raid, and not excise on love’s duty.

© Rosemarie Rowley 2012

A RING TINGLE OF FEAR IN GOLDENBRIDGE ORPHANAGE.

A ring tingle of fear ran around my belly
Deep in my secret folds a spark of anger flew
To where your ears had picked up jelly-
Fish stings that wanted to be blue
It raced back to the womb of your un-desiring
Self where, abandoned, you brindled in your edge
Of razor sharp innuendo which was firing
Your awestruck envy of a child’s winter knowledge
Your long arm bent my back, a spancel
Till it almost broke with the weight of zealous
Might that needs exorcism in a chancel
To make a penitent nun like you jealous

So clapped my eyes and ears that were burning
As you roasted me on the spit your ire was turning.

ALL THIS DOING GOOD IS VERY CATHOLIC

He said as he sat at the wrought-iron utility desk
Beside the window whose frame was too large
You’ll get over me, you will risk
The transfer of love from the office to the barge
Of the old canal of desiring in my Dutch hometown
For we knew little, who were the divine elect
But that the balance of justice He wore in his crown
Of thorns on his head hurt, yet He was not perfect
But jealous of the worship of other Gods
He admits Himself, he is staff and rod
Knew Eve’s peccadillo and Adam’s pelf.
Everything ordained, the elect will be saved
Some go to Hell on the path you have paved
With good intentions, but lacking in free will
I see your progress in my view from the hill.

Rosemarie Rowley has written extensively in form: Flight into Reality (1989) is the longest original work in terza rima in English, reprinted 2010 and now available on CD. She has also written in rhyme royal and rhyming couplets. She has four times won the Epic award in the Scottish International Open Poetry Competition. Her books in print are: The Sea of Affliction (1987,one of the first works in ecofeminism, reprinted 2010, and Hot Cinquefoil Star, (2002) (which contains The Puzzle Factory a crown of sonnets and Letter to Kathleen Raine in rhyming couplets). Her most recent book is In Memory of Her (2004, 2008) which includes Betrayal into Origin – Dancing & Revolution in the Sixties (an 80 stanza poem in decima rima (ten line rhyme) and The Wake of Wonder (a regular sonnet sequence) and many other sonnets; all books, except her first, The Broken Pledge (1985, Martello) published by Rowan Tree Ireland Press, Dublin.

In 2003, she co-edited, with town planner John Haughton, an anthology of tree poems, Seeing the Wood and the Trees (Rowan Tree Press with Cairde na Coille)

Rosemarie has given papers for academic conferences in the Universities of Galway and Limerick and the Clinton Institute (UCD) in Ireland, in Bath, Edinburgh, St. Andrews’ and Stirling, Louisville, Sarasota and Atlanta Universities in the USA. in the UK, and in Prague, Venice, Paris ,and Valladolid on the European mainland. She has been active in the green movement in Ireland and in the Irish Byron Society and worked for a time in the European institutions in Europe.

Rosemarie has degrees in Irish and English Literature, and philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, an M.Litt on the nature poet Patrick Kavanagh, and a diploma in psychology from NUI.

‘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.

‘Redeeming Faith’ by Kelly Creighton

March 30th, 2013

Redeeming Faith

My parapets were worthless assets I made,
my sombre lookouts to watch for your leaving
and ease darkness with dancing forms, outlined;
no comfort for lost convictions.

My assurances were the altered me,
to expand before you my existence and cut
as you wished, joins that kept my heart, my soul
in their place. You could tweeze at your will

from my past and from my now to keep your
findings of my missteps silent from my
taciturn ears and sentry eyes. Unsound
you had seen from your stronghold where you called

me inland to your cathedra, to swab my eyes,
make me spun gold of your taste.
My faulty footings in your tower released me,
where I coasted in the wind to dive home;

past vanity’s attempts to regain the hopeful
sight of linked fingers. My hands held high,
clasped the love of lost promises embraced.
Count on change I will demonstrate.

Redeeming Faith is © Kelly Creighton, all rights reserved by the poet.

Kelly Creighton is a poet and writer with work currently and forthcoming in literary journals Ranfurly Review, A New Ulster, Electric Windmill Press, Inkspill Magazine, The Galway Review, Saudade Review, PEN Austria’s Time to Say: No! e-book, Recours au Poeme and other numerous other publications. She has recently finished editing her historical fiction novel Yielding Fruit. Kelly is working on her second poetry collection.

“Looking for Mother” by Dorothy Molloy

December 14th, 2008

I ransack her room. Loot and pillage.
I root in her trunk. Crack open
the tightly sprung boxes of satin
and plush. Pierce my breast with her butterfly

brooch. I pose in her hats,
French berets, mantillas of lace,
the veil that falls over her face,
the boa she wraps round her neck.

I try on her shoes. Her slippers
are mules. I can’t walk in her callipered
boots. I break into her wardrobe.
Hands grope in the dark. Faded bats,

like umbrellas, are humming inside.
Stoles of fox-fur and mink: tiny claws,
precise nails. Lips clamped in the rictus
of death. I’m hot on the scent

of oestrus, umbilicus, afterbirth,
eau-de-cologne, I fling myself
down on the bed that she made
of dirt from the Catacombs, blood

of the saints. Under the counterpane,
nettles, goose-feathers, a torc.

from : The New Irish Poets, edited by Selina Guinness Bloodaxe 2004.

The Poems of Dorothy Molloy was launched in November 2019 (Faber & Faber)

I remember well those fox-furs, my own mother was bequeathed a pair and I too delved into the huge old nana wardrobe, bringing out the fur stoles complete with little curled feet and a golden chain effect that operated as a clasp. The wardrobe revelation is part of most girls’ growing. In the meantime, there is a small piece on the trousseau, inheritance and the Island Women on the blog. I quite remember being unable to zip the zipper of my mother’s wedding dress confection onto me at twelve, nor indeed being able to squeeze my toes into the minute satin winkle-pickers that she wore for her wedding day!

EDIT : 25/11/2010, this is a Reblog of a piece written to mark the 16 day Campaign to eliminate Violence Against Women and Girls.

Mary Lavin’s Island Women
International day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls 2010

Chris Murray