She said that Aisling let her cut the sprigs. It is 3.15 p.m, it is Thursday, I am examining two rosemary sprigs their blue-green, their silver underlight. She is stripping the small base leaves from a third, tapping its heel, putting it in a glass of crystal-clear-water for planting out with the roses in October. I can taste lamb-stew with rowanberries, counting the trees– alternating Crab-apple Rowanberry Crab -apple Rowanberry that syncopated another’s drive— Memory insists that I stand on a bank of the River Tolka, upstream from Socrates and his garden of roses, those colours we tasted– For here is the place that we committed him to memory that black water– Glas Naíon, the stream of the infants, with petals, with flower-heads. © C. Murray “The Rosemary” is a short poem from Gold Friend (Turas Press, 2020). I recorded a version of it for Lyric FM (RTÉ) in late 2019. Thanks to Eithne Hand for recording the poems and to Evelyn Grant for broadcasting the first poem on 07/03/2020. The second poem in this short series will be ‘Aluine’s Gardens‘ from Cycles (Lapwing Press, 2013) will be broadcast in May 2020, link here. Poetry File – RTÉ (Podcast) Online URL: https://www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_evelyngrantdrive.xml
Tag: New Irish Poetry
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Tree is real silver I. Birds tremble there alighting — (lighting) its stained glass recedes and within each bright ening light ening shape the song of a bird embeds a garnet— Each red-feathered song pewtering silver -ground on lazuli II. I see their (a) -lighting. They leaf the tree in the absence of bud, greening the tree Envoi: May Birds embed their gems secretly, beneath leaf Copyright 2022 Chris Murray First published Poetry Ireland Review N°138, "An Eavan Boland Special Issue" Editor, Nessa O'Mahony. Journals, and:bibliography, and: publication notes https://textworksite.com/journals-bibliography-publication-notes/
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Linen
A candied calligraphy of colours, I said
that I would change the sheets later.
And I said also that I could handle it but I could not, and will I fry for that?
I may, but only if you return.The stink of sheep hangs on me like wisdom.
You leave in a blur and your bag is heavy with spices,
I hope I do not let you back again.
It depends on my resolve, and on whether the seasons let me float.I’ll take myself running for the friction of denial,
cross my legs under the tables of the library.
I’ll spin yarns and wear black and eat fruit in the evenings,
till I’m taller and more thoughtful than I have been before.And I’ll try harder, too.
Kindness is like witchcraft, it must be brewed and stirred,
mulled over in secret with the herb scent of the night.
If it threatens to drown you, you must set yourself on fire.Do you think of me? Or am I a stop-gap to you?
I marveled at you on the phone when you were talking like a man,
Not laughing or stroking like you laugh and stroke at me.
Talking figures like your car was a woman,
You said fuck it we will fix the white van instead
For by the time the summer comes you will be traveling.I changed my sheets and they were smeared
sprinkled with both blood and mould.
But washed away now, and quietly, while you are asleep and going south.Warren
God’s the opposite of sentient,
God’s gotta lot on their plate right now
You hate phone calls but you rang rang rang rang rang rang
Kinda like the knock knock don’t stop of the old stories about Jesus and the hearts.I sit in a pub like the underground volts of mole town with glistening mirrors and brown
And think: and think: and think :
What if I AM us
What if we ARE meAmen. That boy gets bloody sleepy-eyed and ties you down with internet rope to have the best time,
you can still be held by the every-man compass of inner direction and salt.Lake licking
I’d be down for some
front door secondsI love overhand
and crying boys
and absolute disgraces
and civil war tales make me puke
because we are you and I am us and they are
watching
Jesus Christ and the cherubim all interconnected with stones and pencils and lustFrown Upon Me
When winter falls out I cheer up
Semi-automatic pistol you grip and
It’s like
Put that down honey I’m
Just in league with the bears you know
Don’t be afraid
Just because I am socialist without understanding politics
Just because I say this is how I FEEL out loud loud
And you don’t do anything out loud loud
You say: I am bad at words
You won’t kiss me goodbye in the street
You’re a removable boy access unacceptable
When the moon looms
When your blood is flat
When you are sober
~ Biggest mood: you not letting go of my hand drunkMangoes are a night food
I unfurl a peach strip of self denial,
curling tendrils like the mannerisms that
wind me in a high spiral,
each time I sleep I see extensions of my worst trade-offs
and subtle lingering traces of worn out faces and fading tastes.I see the way your limbs are positioned, they are unsure of
holding company with the air (and really baby I feel that)
yellow soft flesh without a skin and a concrete world he sings
that you stand in hallways thinking about the positioning
of your feet, and the happiness of our lives
was only coming.I do indeed know the strangest of manifestations,
I do certainly keep company with the eeriest of loves.
Boys can surely contract themselves into small spaces,
the gaps in my brain are of the overly hospitable young.I held onto him in our old bed and tightly traced
the profile graced with the ability that I gave him
his eyes were closed to look more firmly at the wall
he knew my heart was at his back
he may have held my hand but he did not.
I let love drop from my ears my eyes my tear ducts
(Love
Is forever I think)
I held him and said, I wish you well I wish you well I wish you
you hurt me so much
I wish you well I wish you well I wish you everything you can get nobly
I love you
Even as I fall for a better boy
I love you
He took my love in mime
Stayed curled-up, inaccessible and pure
In the dream my sister woke me with her heart at my back
She never touched me
I never touched him
I think that real love is forever
Mango is a night food.No Chill Kids
I’m sweeping
cold callers collect thoughts and manic and deathly
are you grossed out by sad?
I’m the icky girl no chill just spooky abandon to the rhythmic pulse
gymnastics of feeling floods
like crying toilets drunk
maybe we’ll get cool again I’ll put weed on the balcony
I need a lamp to grow me a glo-up
baked
half streaming
live rotWell I take photos of lights to hold them in my wet hand cracks
Before
After
Told her there were two of me that’s a lie there are a million and one
me things
Shakespeare was a matching addict holy hell that quill quick quick good god
give me some Adderall
but I’d only focus on the wrong thingDrunk dial
Low capped smile
I’d get off at the next stop but he’s gonna miss it
while mentally I put myself down the stairs bang bang
The street slush don’t stop us
Every fucking night I get shot at in my dreams I’m not joking
Last night it was my grandfather
There’s fingers and there’s whingers but I barely kiss gingers
Someone threaded their headphones through their jumper strings
What a strange little hullabaloo
I could do better if I were you
Because I’m a neat-freak never-speak who clean eats
I’ll go farMad girls and sad girls might be onto something
I’m crying holla holla wake up at the stars looking down on this shit attack
Honestly get me out asap
I’ll sail space smooth and I won’t look back
But my bones are hollow they don’t ever crackI see faces places and wastes but I am the one standing on a hill and
Pencey Prep is real as all hell
that is, not very, dubiously transient and flickering like the flame of
a secret place that never cleans itself so sleep me nowMangoes are a night food and other poems are © Finnuala Simpson
Finnuala Simpson is a twenty-year-old english and history student based in West Cork. In her free time she likes to write, cook, and walk as close to the sea as she can get.
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The Tiger’s Tail
City, a howl of chemical laughter;
menace fingers the air, seeking purchase
in the drunken smoulder of narrow streets.
Young girls toss ironed curtains of ebony hair —
shared tribal head-dress. Tiger sucklings,
knock-kneed, moon-eyed calves, they perch on the heights
of borrowed triumph: Prada, Miu Miu, Louboutin.
Fierce children, almost feral, wresting frenzied
joy from the teeth of new calamity:
night yawns deep, and they do not know it.
Car headlamps sweep the junction, horns blare;
ground shifting beneath them again, the girls
totter into the bloom of darkness,
each on milky limbs, pale and slender as a birch.
Occupied
28 October 2011
White slab on the doormat, postmark,
a familiar china blue — the forfeit
of dignity in monthly increments —
and I’m sick to my stomach, again;
on TV, Occupy Wall Street,
as though greed were a discovery,
injustice, a shiny toy or the new black.
I’ve been in my foxhole for three years now,
dug in behind enemy lines: terraced walls,
the polite exterior of war; wrestling
the slick of their machinery, bare hands
ink-bloodied in daily skirmishes with quicksand
bureaucracy and you — with the placard,
the ironic slogan — where the fuck were you?
Junkie
iPod, laptop, coffee machine (never used),
good for fifty euro, maybe more;
not to be sniffed at, enough to score
probiotic yoghurt, three weeks of Lexapro,
prescribed, of course. You’re nothing without your health.
Sweating, nerves buzzed, I trip rain blacked streets,
flash electrical goods at likely marks:
people who still care about appearances.
Don’t judge me, I wasn’t born this way.
I blame my parents — the ones who weaned me
on this crippling addiction to comfort — pushing
Food, Money, Education as security.
And when the world takes my roof, I learn to crave Roof.
And when the world take my land, I learn to crave Land.
And when the world takes my voice, I learn to crave Voice.
And when the world takes my power, I learn to crave Power.
My parents should have raised me a gypsy:
shown me the road, the cut of air,
the smell of dirt.
I smell it now.
It’s close.
The Talking Cure
The day I pull my face together,
paint lash and liner (the ordinary mask)
is, predictably, the day you make me cry,
as though the smudge of black across my lids
is just the beginning: a surface schism.
You draw me like a rotten tooth:
another battle-blooded version
of myself — raw and tentacled, untethered —
and, as you show me the extraction,
hold me up and turn me over,
I hang there, and sit here —
all tear-stung, throaty bile-burn,
oozing rust-rivered, black-eyed jangle —
and poke the ragged opening
with my tongue.
CAT Scan
A craw wind catches me and I trip
past gatepost guardians, the turn of railings,
into the hospital grounds. Hypodermic
drinks darkness deep, shows it to the light;
an apple’s skin can never know its core.
In the sting of a burnished room,
glass and disinfectant hold me safe and distant,
the scratch of gown makes me smaller than I am.
A cracked voice cuts into the hollow
of the machine, as it spins and slices me
like ham. Don’t worry, it says. You’re almost done.
Inside the blink and grind, the growl of plastic –
deep and still – I see a field in the half-light
of summer’s dusk, grasp a long feathered grass,
the nub of its soft head, wet like a kiss.
Three black lines, track to another somewhere,
pass the house and barn, their cut silhouette
gentle: an inevitable homecoming.
I find a face in a tree, there; black eyes,
truffle snout, mouth agape in silver skin.
I hold its gaze in the drizzle of darkness,
humming to myself; the tree bends to listen.
I hum the song again, in the quiet room,
where they tell me, spinning tree, grass, night,
through and through my fingers. Back out on the street
the wind shifts; I brace for the oncoming squall.
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Angela T. Carr is the author of How To Lose Your Home & Save Your Life (Bradshaw Books, 2014). Her writing is widely published in literary journals and anthologies — Mslexia, Abridged, Bare Fiction, The Pickled Body, Crannóg, Boyne Berries, Wordlegs — and has been broadcast on RTE Radio One. Three times short-listed for the Patrick Kavanagh Award, her debut collection won the Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition 2013, judged by Joseph Woods. In 2014, she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series, short-listed for the Listowel Writers’ Week Single Poem Award and the Cúirt New Writing Showcase, a finalist in the Mslexia Poetry Competition, judged by Wendy Cope, a runner up in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, and winner of the Allingham Poetry Prize. Angela has read at numerous literary events and festivals around the country. Born in Glasgow, she lives in Dublin.
Website: A Dreaming Skin
Twitter: @adreamingskin
Chris Murray 