Great pink blossoms in bunches like bouquets hang head-heavy against willow's stasis. Peonies emerge, pink and blood.
Wren piccolo, and the heavy perfume of a dying rose. She brings flowers that are dying. These are mauve. Zephyr-caressed, their petals, fawn-edged.
Shades of pungence, of mauve pungence. They will bow-down by morning.
I do not understand. The green leaf falls on my black end table. Why bring the dying to me? Haven't I had enough dying? Your mauve roses, zephyr-curled, are browning. Frilled.
The white cherry blossom is blown. Tulip mouths hang open in despair. I almost step on a white eggshell, broken, out-of-nest. There is a dead tree and no nest above me.
The small birds have flown. The rooks in the ancient tower do not want to be disturbed by me.
There are trays of proliferating pansies by the church steps. Several snails seek succor in her door frames. A cross across a mossy path once an egress, stops you in your tracks.
Note. "The Trees, Dawn" forms a part of my recently published work "Found Poem, Spring". The three parts of the poem are "The Trees, Night", "There Are More Blue Flowers in Spring", and "The Trees, Dawn". Thanks to the editors of Skylight47, Bernie Crawford, Ruth Quinlan and D’or Seifer for publishing this excerpt. The poem in its entire can be read here.
'The Trees, Night' is an excerpt from a tripartite poem titled 'Found Poem, Spring'. The titled parts of the poem are 'The Trees, Dawn', 'There Are More Blue Flowers in Spring', and 'The Trees, Night'. The poem in its entire can be read at The Honest Ulsterman , with thanks to Editor Gregory McCartney.
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!
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.
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
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.
‘The Virgin…’ He smirked, then ‘Virginity is a complex concept, pet’ I said. ‘I’ve been sent by God; He has a job–’ ‘So I’ve heard, you’ve got the wrong girl.’ Then, he grabs my wrist, ‘I must insist.’ Kisses my knuckle, twisted fuck. I imagine it going through his skull. ‘I’m not your Virgin, okay hun?’ (I have sharper teeth that tend to bite off more than I can chew.) I tip my halo to a jaunty angle and, standing now, tell him to ‘Beat it, Gabe. Babe, you’re too late, my body cannot belong to God, for my heart belongs to another. I am my own lover, impregnated daily with my own possibility. There is no room at this inn, there is only room in this womb for one birth, my monthly rebirth. The moon fills her spoons from my newness. Life does not come without sacrifice, and I have too much of it to live and not enough of it to give. Yes, my body is a vessel for self-love above all else. forever and ever, the end.’
He didn’t like my cheek, he aimed to rip it from me with the back of both hands. I spat a hot, crimson clot into the centre of my palm and saw my future in a little pool of red, staining my head, heart, and life-line. I wiped it on his face, and, splayed now, I prayed for a miracle, to save me as the struggle was thrust from me. Am I to believe this is what the Father would want for his child? He gazed at me as if he had just arranged roses in a vase: ‘Immaculate.’ With a bat of my lash, I snapped the wings from his back. With a grin that dimmed this wimp’s halo, I cooed: ‘So I’ve been told’ and slowly I watched the triumph drain from his veins. No more Angel. Just Gabe. ‘Poor babe.’ I winked as I limped away.
Pit
He said cherries were his favourite food. Wild or sweet or sour, he craved these fleshy drupes with that single groove to run his finger through.
Gone in one and when he was done, he’d spit out the stone and tie up the stalk with his tongue, wonder where the next cherry is coming from?
I’d never had a cherry– he’d had many. He could see the ruby in me: in my lips, in my cheeks, down his chin, in his teeth.
Ever been a cherry? Plucked, sucked, bit, and turned to pit.
Tattoo of you
Needles in my ribs help me breathe. Blood spots, drips, and flows. A secret, for now. Ebony and currant and crimson. Not hues of remembrance, a symbol of strength. The shades of war, our war. A battle that began the night those boots were left on the carpet. My face in your palm, wrapped in your scar tissue so I wouldn’t have to form my own. You absorb shock after shock, bare blow after blow. For me, for us. And then, an alliance. We did not lay down arms when left waiting on doorsteps, we summoned an esprit de corps. The sound of sobs into the sound of drums. Once weeping, now war cries. Tears cannot sting when you are made of salt.
So this is not pinned to a lapel, This is on my ribs, under my skin, in my blood. I flow ebony and currant and crimson. Two: For me, for us, For you.
Once upon a winter
Our eyes picked each other through the falling flakes that laced our lashes. Denying the chill in the air carelessly they went roving carefully devouring tempting mittens to misbehave and mouths to do the same. We blamed the black ice, that brought our bodies slipping and sliding, and gracelessly colliding. I’ll never forget the pain of pins and needles that came as you held my hand. My blood tidal waved, hot to my numb fingertips. It, like me, wanted to be As close to you as possible. I’ll never be cold again, I thought.
And so then, our clothes, lost like the last autumn leaves, billowed to the ground as we welcomed the changing of the seasons with our bare young bodies. We were born in the decay, the early darkness, the starkness and cold. It made us hold each other closer and warm ourselves on the heat of the other’s blood beneath. The steam of our souls, rose like ghosts from our open throats wafting out into winter in the springtime of our years as we lay, bathed by the greedy moon. Ruling, coming sooner, lingering longer. she would not let us sleep for she loved us too much. It’ll never be dark again, I thought.
Danielle Galligan is an aspiring poet born and bred in Dublin. She is an actor, theatre-maker and a graduate of The Lir, Trinity College Dublin. She is very excited about her work being on the Poethead site. She has previously been published in the Qutub Minar Review.
Here you cast your dazzling eye through clouds ruptured on surging waters, where in winds on a mission across skies born of voids words were loaded:
let me out;
crowns of heaving leaves spilled trees, turned them upside down, a splay of tangled guts, and spat out the despair of the years in a season:
let me out;
until the decay of the black spell set in, the mulch of slow rot, a creep of violets unfolded:
oh, take me away
where hushed trees mangled in that storm descend to the bend on the old-winding road and fields and dusk woods and torn mills and canals and Lee waters take on every mood and ripple it back.
Father and Earth
Just like everyone else in this city where grey lines blur sky to pavement, you’re an extension of the rain; the incessant drizzle on these streets seeps through clothes, misting words of weather and when, colour coded alerts, storms between showers.
I’d listened as wind gusted every odd night, worrying for a future I might never see, where nobody wants their children to be, and reasoned water never ceases to be water.
You’d become old; the cough caught you.
I think the sun was setting with no great glow; patter of rain every odd hour, grey skies shortening the day.
Your steps faltered, your pulse soared; rough nights in A&E and finally the quarantine ward.
You gave the staff the brunt of your tongue, There’s nothing wrong with me;
I’ll sign myself out.
You didn’t, though you would have. Tough as mountains, old rock. Stubborn as the wind that roars.
Old mountains in clouds, mist of rain, Earth, floods of pain,
will you name yourself out?
Scramble
Don’t you know that deodorant is toxic she says, fanning the air with her fingers. Puts a song in my head. I turn to the messages on my phone. My doctor. Cholesterol is high. Advise a healthy diet and regular exercise. Are you listening? she says. Throw it in the rubbish. It’ll explode in the dustbin truck. Who cares about the bin-men? she says. What about the bin-women? Well, I haven’t seen any of them, she says. Hell, I’m trying to read. What? Letters from the dead? There’s no chlorofluorocarbons in them anymore. I’m not concerned with holes in the ozone, she retorts.
*
The wind was high, she says. All through the dark hours I listened to its protests unaware she was awake beside me. It happens nearly every night, she says, between storms.
It’s a top down issue, I insist, and besides, we notice the elements now.
Our granddaughter lets out a wail from the other room.
Rings out like an alarm.
Slip into The Sea
Curl under the bridge to sleep awhile, bullet-force rain dancing in gutters; pretend you’re the river, the last mile.
Feel tugs of water in your lungs, a vial prescribed to draw down the shutters; curl under the bridge to sleep a while.
In twilight, between poison and bliss beguile, this rain’s furious prance softens to mutters; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
You’re coming to the end of this trial – I’ll give you the sea, the warm water utters; stay under the bridge to sleep a while.
If you let the sea take you, saltwater will file scabs from your soul and offer to suture; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
And if you listen to the waves’ murmuring sail, essence of this transcendent suitor, you’ll break from the bridge to swim a while and find you are beyond the river, the last mile.
In rivers
I see you in rivers,
the swallowing holes and murky beds.
In the water,
dirt blots my eye; I hold my breath,
fly rings dot the surface; a broken bottle’s on the floor.
There’ll be no poppy red, ghastly watercolour spread.
I don’t tread and I don’t flounder for the above,
but sink right in until my breath is algae green.
There’s a moment; in the twilight,
I’m fearful, not knowing what’s to come.
The depth of an empty canvas greets me.
And my dead mother, my brother, you,
whisper at the watery fence.
A ghost life-film runs in my mind.
That’s a fly swatted out.
I struggle with the layers; I hurl against the skin.
There’s nothing I ever gave to sway me from this picture.
What have I ever done of note? Do I want something of note?
Aspiration is for the living; I’m knifing this to death.
There’s the slow river snake,
you whisper, whispering
patchwork reflections on the pool of the water.
Once this was enough; rise and disturb.
Fish playing rings for flies.
Danielle Galligan is an aspiring poet born and bred in Dublin. She is an actor, theatre-maker and a graduate of The Lir, Trinity College Dublin. She is very excited about her work being on the Poethead site. She has previously been published in the Qutub Minar Review.
Chris Murray 