Tag: new poetry

Anon | Shreds of Colour

November 12th, 2019

Shreds of Colour

Black

Black seeping
from pores, I choke
on its own smoke
– unspoken words,
A fire has been lit.

Standing in flames,
drawings and words
of what you think
to do, on once blank
canvas’s now speak

of what you drew,
Isolated four
seasons, almost
a fifth – silence,
A fire has been lit!

Blackbird beckoned
from the trees
of nearby eyes
in darkness
– peering

into the warmth
and light
of my nest,
young awaits
her food,

she sings, unaware,
protected from
your secret and
I draw – curtains,
A fire has been lit!

Every pulse fills
a rage, spins the air
around me,
Standing in armour,
I draw a sword

My blue eyes
change to Red,
with each and every
single
blink

I. drip. flames,
my hair
now charcoal black,
sweeps across a gaunt
pale face,

a barefoot thud
across the earth,
no longer high
heeled feet,
black cloak rattles

in the wind,
a primal roar
shows my cutting
fangs, fiercely
ride a horse

as dark as me.
A fire has been lit
and a mother sips
flame dripped tea.

Red

Is the colour
of every word, etched
canvas in a self-made
studio that hangs
a degree of fine art –
put a noose around
once welcoming

paper, spits
your vulgarity now,
menacing smile,
gritted teeth
and stinking
mind,
etching, etching, etching

your paint-stained
hands, blood-coloured
dripped and dried,
shakes the hands
of unknowing
artists and smiles.
“congratulations

free expression,”
must have watched
my smile a million
times, each tooth
aligned
and imperfections
– mine, anonymous

skull exhibit –
My pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out,
my pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out,
My pale white skin
shows no other shade
or marks, yet,
a sable brush
painted my
insides

out !
– lyrical, visceral sight,
shreds of colour
beckoning to write.

White

Is the colour of the sheets
to write and to sleep,
a moonlit sky
that once shone on two,

the colour of the walls
that held the night
secrets for too long
and the once crisp

laundry you splashed
with paint and hung
to dry in a gust
of colour and wind,

I wished you painted
the flowers instead
thrown from a
window at your feet,

smiling, hushed
hearts – my own
left me before
now

– a betrayal known
to only the walls
and I, birthing
colour’s while others

in whispering
winds of an artist’s
frenzied brush
and I’m almost blue

in pretentious walls
as though they are
still white,
shreds of colour
beckoning to write.

Blue

Is a sparkle of colour
left behind (- White -)
an enraged heart,
a gut that churned
in pencil grey

and contemporary art
-I rolled in darkness
of early morning birds
that sang yellow
songs reminding me

some things are still
the same and even
if they are not,
poetry won’t set
them free

so I retreat in colour
new, to never write
of shreds again
or infinite blue
– the colour of my silence.

Shreds of Colour is © Ana-Mai Smith

Ana-Mai Smith lives in Ireland. She holds a business qualification and she has a passion for reading, writing and reciting poetry.Ana-Mai has been writing privately for some years, she has began to submit her work. She enjoys to experiment with non-traditional structures and styles and she writes various different themes. She loves to incorporate colour intermittingly into her poetry.

“The Moment Daphne Survived” and other poems by Maria Karapish

July 14th, 2019

The Moment Daphne Survived

First, it was my legs that went shooting down
below the known world that knew me.
As they reached further and further
and continued to extend until I touched
upon something safe and nurturing and
secretive but liberating all at once, as my lower half
Was shielded from your hungry eyes.

Second, was the fear as I continued being engulfed
by not just my final resting place, but by a new vessel if
I was to continue living on in a way that could be considered living.
Without suffocation from your paralysing advances
Yet you still reached for me one final time and at that moment,
I couldn’t even scream, my mouth was the next to go.

Next, came the pain no longer anesthetized by shock,
accompanied by your own screams of anguish and perverse tragedy
at what was being made of my mortal self as I seeped into the soil.
Oh, my steadfast arms splintered away and upwards as I grew those
bare branches in turmoil.
The strain so searing became the numbness of absolutely nothing
As my transformation allowed me to assume the shape of a new self,

Here I am Apollo,
A newly formed loathsome laurel.
As now I would never again have my windows,
The light would someday be welcomed in other ways.
I left the world I knew in those moments, this new
sentience only took seconds to understand, unlike the painfully earnest
consternation you felt while watching your desire’s demise.

The Haze / I’m Learning

I drop my eyes like a stone
in a river.
The walls are closing in,
but this room has no doors.

I have found that everything
had changed but so slowly.
Living proof that you learn how
to go on.

Lessons learned in
infinite ways.
Over days into years
that blend
into one cacophonous Haze.

The Haze becomes a person,
an accumulation of sonic, infinite
song.
A melody composed of countless
contributions.

Some reverberate longer than others,
As if each vibration might
Bring closer a solution.
In this room,
I’m stuck in the moment,
repetition, repetition,
It’s been so long.

Dear God,
I hope that I’m learning
As it strikes my eardrums
Again and again.
Sound echoing
And eternally living on.

If I still had my Tail

Licking my wound,
pink tongue flicking.
Don’t look me in the eyes,
I never know what you’re thinking.

Sudden noises scare many,
don’t look at it too closely.
When what’s left of my tail is
between my legs when voices are raised.

I don’t whine or growl or howl
at you anymore, because you don’t
understand me, let alone why I’m
still lamenting, this bitch is irritable.

II.

Ticks and fleas.

Ticks,
how I’m looking over my shoulder,
how I end up expecting the worst,
getting more afraid as I get older.

I don’t have the time or strength to explain
why I’m perpetually rearing to fight.
An expression of enmity and that
split second, glimmering teeth in jaws
that open wide to bite.

I go around in circles sometimes
Before I go to bed with those toxic
‘What if’s?’ flaring up like an assault
Of fireworks going off in my head.

My monotone vision,
of black and white.
A bad habit of mine that
removes all but one factor in
my life when I’m racking and reflecting;

It would be uncanny to see
another universe that birthed
and raised another me.
What would I be able for?
If I had no ticks or fleas,
if I still had my tail.

To Sonder While I wander

Parks are peculiar in dim light.
In the dark, where I wander,
Watching a row of low hanging amber stars.
To feel a sonder until I feel some sort of right.

Ships shooting along the cement,
filled with strangers.
Are they anxious? Had their hearts been broken?
Pondering what their last words really meant?

I have nowhere to be but here.
I can’t overstay my welcome when
The only one watching me is the moon and
I’m much too mere

to bother her up there in her ghostly glow.
The sky her home.
An ever-changing kaleidoscope
of clouds and stars and comets

Much too far away for me to care.
Like my worries lying abounded at home.
Crumpled up,
Stuffed in a drawer somewhere.

Not my first or last time in the park
on a dull December night–
among neon bulbs, shrubs and stone.
To feel a sonder on a bench in the dark.

Maria Karapish is an Irish-Ukranian poet and artist, her main project includes the In My Orbit zine that contains her original poetry and illustrations. Her poetry focuses on themes of mental illness and how that affects everyday life and relationships along with pieces that stew over those many ‘what if’s? that refuse to leave your brain.

“Clutch” and other poems by JLM Morton

June 8th, 2019

Hex

without her, his gut
is like a hag stone at high water
craving for the sea

Voyeur

For weeks I pass the affair, on the turn
from common tarmac to unclassified track,
where shorthorns lap at the galvanised trough,
gliders rise on the ivied beech.

A people carrier parks in the lay-by
limestone creamed to the mudguards, the wheels,
the egg of his head tips back on the rest
his jaw goes slack and weak.

Dark forms heave as she takes him,
he takes her, they take. Two days a week
I pass, imagine her perfumed, well-groomed,
knitwear with no trace of lint.

Her hair glints in the weak winter sun –
he tweaks at the mirror and he gives,
she gives,
they give. Each week.

It isn’t love she feels.
I can tell by the bridge of her back,
how her body arcs over the gearstick,
reaches those thighs where his hands lay flat.

For weeks, they’ve an air of wilful oblivion,
unaware of that spacious interior,
how visible their mundane lust how exposed

the tiny football scarf suckered to the window.

First Earlies

The first, still sun we’ve had for days
and we bathe in it, incredulous –
me with our babe in arms, he with our first in hand.
Dazed, we survey the storm-swept borders
scan the allotted land for harvest.

Potatoes! We fall on them, finger rake the moist warm loam
for tubers, swiping their luminous skins with our thumbs.
Our eldest gasps and utters streams of sound with infant joy.

We stop, we stand.

We breathe.

We smell the petrichor,
watch as she turns up spuds like her newest words:
a vegetable lexicon tumbling over the stones.

First Earlies was originally published by Yew Tree Press, 2019.

Clutch

for h.l.

in the nest of my fist, a fledgling
scooped up from the lane

her soft unfinished beak
her shining eye
a buoy ringing in the green cathedral of trees

a single yellow feather wisps across my knuckle
there is a twitch of elephant digits

and I think about keeping her

raising her as my own
feeding her worms

but I let her go

chirring for the ones I could not save.

Oil on Canvas

In the chiaroscuro of her eyes there are deserts and swamp forests,
escarpments, flats of salt and vistas beyond the folds of flesh
soldered shut by surgical birth, the liverish scars gone waxy white.
There are palimpsests of palms upon her palms – the weens, the work fucks,
the women who took her last yuan for tapestries and hair combs on the mountain.
Whirlpools are quarried to embers in the clotted scumbling of her gut –
her conduct rendered now with prudent strokes of fat over lean.
But the song inside her head is still stuck
on her alla prima approach to relationships I hate you
the rasping of a parent’s dying breath go well, I love you –
held on the impasto of her lips, the anatomy of her dancing feet.

Good Girl

Her climb was perpetual, summit after summit,
scrambling over fissile shale, porous as swaddling,
sick with altitude. The air thinned, cymbaling her chest
like a mechanical monkey – but she was gut-tugged
through parting cloud, a full blue line, taut and expectant.

At last, she found it on a mountain top, half-submerged
beneath a cairn of stones –stacked, matt, pale and sheen –
a liverish disc, gritty to touch. Meat-heavy. Such
tightly woven cotyledons of villi, veins and blood,
the deciduous matter of family lore.

She did not flinch when hefting this foundation stone
into the nave of her life. Did not see its feathers
at her neck, crushing her spine with the weight of itself
until her fingertips revealed the words carved in:
daughter, brother, uncle, a mother’s mother’s gift.

Kneeling at the shore she hacked the cord with granite
until her knuckles showed, unloading on the salt, swell, source.
.

Clutch and other poems are © JLM Morton

JLM Morton lives in Gloucestershire, England, snatching as much time as she can to write between caring for a young family, renovating a house and staring up the barrel of a demanding day job. Her first set of poems was recently published by Yew Tree Press for the Stroud Poets Series and she is currently working on a collection.

Website: jlmmorton.com

“The Many Splintered Night” and other poems by Aishling Alana Heffernan

May 26th, 2019

The Many Splintered Night

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad,
wakens the dire horror of an unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire
of focussed restraint.
To dance under the moonlight in the eyes of the lights that pound into my head,
with the horror of a dancers aching bloodied feet,
the ache in a temple which builds, with quaking stranded legs,
It’s time to meet—
the one.

On the night watch stand, where the pendulum swings
into the land where the kings head swings, my destined king,
down, down into the bloodied dancers path in the mud strewn grass,
his head spins into the shining glass cut meadow
King
King
KING — without a head, but still
crammed into his crown.
—a sane mind is a very over-estimated thing.

When thought splinters into the cosmos,
minds shatter like a thousand splintered feelings captured in the grip of an opium haze
in the laze-y summer night
of a thousand splintered nights–
thought splinters into the cosmos of minds buzzing like hive-bees outside of the hive
-mind

The trembling of my fingers as I hit the keypad
wakens the dire horror of unfocussed brain that seeps too much into the mire of unfocussed
restraint
restraint, restrain it—the feathered spectrum of desire that seeps into the many splintered night.

How I loved the headless king,
How he sent me into the many splintered night.

Morning’s Good Morning

I open tender, dust encrusted eyes,
to morning’s good morning,
—fresh sunrise,
turn feverish cheek into
soft, soft cotton dreams,
even as they run far far from me.

Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
When the morning sun rises,
from the freshwater sea?
Dream-child, dream-child,
What will you be?
Now your dreams are setting you free?

Kaleidoscope

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him—
not what it meant or where we had been
I wanted to feel the colour inside him
unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

He’ll wander my mind and settle in my skin,
my pores will open to let the colours in,
breathe him in.

I know what he wants—
I can’t give it to him.
But still this Kaleidoscope draws me in —

And I see forests, a darkness that breathes, swirling broken oaken leaves falling onto a ground
filled with violets, touched by the moon in this room as rain draws me back to Earth.

Was it that much of a sin?
To want to taste his skin, and let
the colours in?

Even as they dragged me to his world,
and I bent down to drink,
the colours stopped my will to think.

Inversion means from the inside in,
he felt like colour and dragged me in,
as he spun from the inside in.
Kaleidoscope—
Settled in skin.

All I could think of was wanting him,
Not what it meant or where we had been,
I wanted to feel the colour inside him,
Unfurling from the inside in.
Inversion, a kaleidoscope settled in skin, that’s him.

Rag Doll

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside.
Locked and cross-hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain.
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll.
And from your mouth words like drops of infected blood creep into my skin and etch from my
pores the sunlight so recently sucked in,
From me you leach the life you crossed over and hid behind the painted veil of a painted face of
a painted life in a painted world,
Until your lies spin lies and worlds of their own, and your words lose even the ring of truth of
the suffering that once bound you to an earthly sphere,
And there in the madness of the clouds above, in the realm of the small and dead Gods, is where
your eyes see me, Rag Doll.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates,
They pay homage to the world left behind by the world left behind and the words of dead priests
still shuddering in their graves from the sins that mark the ineffable continuity of the energy of us *-
there is no hate from me to you,
The hate you hold for yourself is the hate of a civil war, tragic and born not of want but of a rising
tidal wave of resentment and fear and a driving blind force.
I was born when your child was not. Me, the fatherless one, gained the love of your father.
From me words you banished spill, not like drops of infected blood, but like names. Names bring
power, I name you, scarred one, weaved one, embroidered one, Rag Doll who from the corners of
my nightmares rises in the depths of my mind and teaches me again and again the meaning of
fear and love that is not love but bound to the conditions of a loveless bleak world in which you
are the rag doll and the needle both. The creation of pain and the creator of pain and the weaver
of lies and scorn.
Weave me, spin me, crosshatch and dress me. Strip the sunlight from my veins and from my
breathing skin, infect me with words so often told to yourself and still I will fight.
In and out the needle stitches you rag doll, kept in the past of a past of a past we never forget.
We never forget.
Stare at me.

The walls of your eyes are cold slates;
statues, paintings, shrines to the shrivelled soul inside
locked and cross hatched, weaved and embroidered until the pattern of you is a pattern of
unhealed scars building and building upon the rocky and treacherous foundation of pain
In and out the needle stitches you, Rag Doll,
even as you pull the sunlight from my skin–
I stand and sing to the heavens you no longer see through the cold, walled slates of your eyes.

Skin Covered Moon

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys,
forcing into unbending skin,
the desperation of their need to dominate,
and open-
Bleed, unbending skin, under the moonlit songs,
of long forgotten kin.

The sky is wakening,
it’s eyes open wide,
earth is dancing with its mother tide-
the songs we sing as the mortals underneath
(the steel bled unbending moon)
in our open wounded skin
fall notes of the orchestras
like stitches to a disease
they are the songs of a people
wandering the waste heat of the universe cold in crystalline beauty—
The heat of the blood pumping through our veins
As the clitoris touches the head of the universe of man
Key to Key
Forcing unbending skin—
Are we already forgotten?
Shall we etch pain and match scratches, scars to scars,
as the earth trembles and tears fall from the stars
up from Earth hollow are the cries
of the steel bled keys
The steel bled keys.

The time chilling horror of the steel bled keys
sing to the ones who’s bodies were never meant to bleed
and yet the songs of their people
mirror march to home
the songs of the forgotten
—the ones who felt alone
as they watch the moon
skin covered and open
through skin veiled eyes.

Aishling Alana likes to think of herself as the embodiment of organised chaos. In her short(ish) life, she has overcome progressive pain diseases, has met ex-prisoners of death row, interviewed Ted X speakers and gained a Masters in Philosophy of the Arts. She loves bouldering and the sea, and can often be found in the thinking ‘woman’ pose while learning how to code. Having been born in Ireland at the brink of an intense culture shift, her writing takes in fantastical elements of sexuality, religion and identity.

“The Girl in The Photograph” and other poems by Shreya Barua

January 12th, 2019

|The Girl in The Photograph|

I’ll take you by the hand
and show you what it’s like
to sit under neon signs
when the city goes to sleep
and you’ll have known
a little bit more
about what magic looks like
I’ll take you by the lips
and show you what it’s like
to taste the snowflakes
I caught on my tongue
and you might get to know
a lot bit more
about what dreams feel like
I’ll take you to places
you’ll forget to remember
I’ll show you things
your eyes won’t believe
until you start to wonder
if I am real;
if any of it is

So, I’ll let go of your hand
one final time
break away from your lips
one last time
wrap all the magic and dreams
around your little finger
and go back to being
the girl in the photograph

|Syria’s Daughter|

I am Syria’s daughter.
I will soon be just as forgotten as my name is.

And when they come for me
rummaging through heaps of concrete,
sifting through blood and bones
looking for bodies
to add to their death toll,
tell them I tried.
Tell them I tried to live.

Tell them
That I tried to breathe the poison that swirls across my country like a midsummer’s breeze
That I tried to match my heartbeat to the gunfires on the street so that I wouldn’t bite my lip
too hard out of fear
That I tried to sleep but my ears rang from the haunted screams that echoed all the way
from Damascus to Aleppo
That I tried to find a piece of land to bury my brother, his pale mouth still lined with blood
he’d been coughing for hours, but they had their guns ready for anything that moved
That I tried to shed tears when my father died in my arms but I couldn’t because my eyes
were as parched as my throat
That I tried.

Tell them I tried.
Tell them I tried to live while they slashed open my land till the cracks brimmed over
with the blood of my people.
Tell them they won.

I was Syria’s daughter.
Tell them that they can now have my mother.

|Victim’s Curse|

Last night
I found a girl murdered on the streets
and while her body grew cold
against the slush laden concrete
They wondered
if death had finally caught up,
having been beckoned time and again
by the dozen healed slits across her wrist
They checked
for signs of struggle
leaving room for doubt
that if she didn’t fight back
she was probably asking for it
They took
samples of her blood,
checking for drugs
because one less junkie off the streets
was no harm done
They rummaged
through her phone
looking for signs of provocation
since one shouldn’t make enemies
if they can’t afford to
They examined
the knife jutting out of her abdomen,
blood curdled around it
making sure that it wasn’t in fact her
who had somehow found a way
to twist it through her insides

Last night
I found a girl murdered on the streets
and it was sad
that I felt happy
about her not being alive
to witness that she was robbed of her life
in a world
where the tag of a victim
came with a price to be paid
and where dying
just wasn’t enough

|Serenading Through A Broken Heart|

I know now what people mean when they say that they can feel their heart breaking

I know because I am breaking yours
and I can see the anguish with which
your pupils dilate when you look at me.
You unflinchingly carry the conversation on
but your voice breaks precisely eight times
in the past minute.
I try to inch my hand closer to yours
and your fingers shrink away
sensing my touch
which isn’t welcome anymore.
Your lips quiver ever so slightly
and I can hear the accusing words
that you try to hold back.
You look unchanged and unaffected
but the blood in your cheeks that
I have grown so fond of,
has slowly started to drain away.
You look away
and fixate your eyes at nothing at all,
letting your dry cappuccino grow cold
and with it,
your heart

I know now what people mean when they say that they can feel their heart breaking,
because the entire time that I thought I was breaking yours, I was sucking the life
out of mine

|My Type|

He said he knew my type.

He said, I was the spoilt kind
and if I slit my wrists
they would bleed out alcohol
four pints of Jameson, three of Miller Light
and ten shots of Calle 23
staining the skimpy dresses
and short skirts that I wear
to attract countless lusting eyes
in bars or the corners of dimly lit streets
where I much rather stick my tongue
down the throat of a beautiful redhead
who later finds herself in my bed
while I find myself in a white man’s arms
telling him made up stories
about the ink that I’ve used
to turn my body into an exhibit
fluttering my eyes, showing off my piercings,
teasing and taunting,
and spreading the smell of tobacco
splashed across my breath
into the many salivating mouths
that I’m too distracted to keep count
before heading back only to find
those captivating curls of red gone
and mourning her absence over
a perfectly rolled Malana
losing myself in smoke
and silhouettes of other conquests
that I allowed to get away

He said he knew my type.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
He couldn’t be more right.

|The Girl In The Photograph| and other poems are © Shreya Barua

Shreya Barua is a recent Trinity postgraduate. She moved halfway across the world, from Delhi to Dublin to be able to indulge in the two things that have her heart: literature and travel. When she is not too busy daydreaming, one can find her hiking on the Wicklow mountains or sipping a glass of red by the grand canal.

“Vase Painters” and other poems by Magdalene Fry-Bigby

January 12th, 2019

Fractyl Poem — Seeming, Appearance and Being

How the true was with world
Is sometimes bricked
Out with bangles,

Sound and sight both alike.
Put your paint this
Side, put it that

Side, we talk a lot, like
Talkers. And face
This way, blink, brush

Through lashes, powder on
Powders, a look
For, or about,

Female, they say, so too,
Some male, they say,
So too this or

Sewn to that. Or, some say
Wine is crossed best
In a vat, brains,

Birds, nests like glowed on
Dendrytic leaves,
A state, or a

Syntax, both one
And the same. Say
Most who say on

What is seen and what is
Thought, and what it
Is that being

Is, and yet can sometimes
Be not, and then
Become again.

Fractyl Poem: Be Nothing That Is, Not

Hello is good, morning,
Evening, night,
We say Good to.

How are you is peaceful
It brings glad and
Not angry thoughts.

We listen, we hear things
The conversing
Has its ears told.

Which is how televised
Religious yes
Religious no

Is brought to table and
Brought to lowly
So we know some.

Fractyl Poem: Fruit from the Tree

Growing earthward, not sky
Bound, or even
Thinking sky

With the hair of the branch
That thin — and more
Thinning still does,

To stretch and to store with
Storing done as women
Are known to store

Up skin and grain and cloth
To prune and ply
Some with as they

Needle a strand over
And under and
On across, in

Where the earth is bound with
The rock and the leaves
And the waters

That run about, surface
Ridden, sky phased,
But forgotten —

She is the gleaming on
Moon soft not I
Seeming as me.

Vase Painters

In the temple,
In finite,
Two opposites —

Th’pokeberry crushing
Cosmographer,
Feather a’tilt,
Shadow tossed.

Th’sea duct, eyebright
Singing Thinker
In sustained quiet
Waiting thought.

___

A candle burns,
N’the coarse clay wall;
He sniffs, paints worlds —

The philosopher’s
Eye emerged:

A blink, nearly
To word, almost
Alike.

He eyed, the map
Drawer, feed win
Whinnier,

Him, thought him,
Of him, on him,
Himness,

The thinker
Huffed at such, th’vase
Painter —

Brushing there the
Divinity
To a

Life t’live beneath
The palm that lifts
The grain,

The wine, barley,
Such th’things we store.
Thinking

Salty thoughts,
Wounded like some
Yester’

Great ache were born
Where thought, light leaned,
Said no

Thin, bird legg’ed,
Th’Philosopher
Pursed his

Lip, scoffed at such,
The near Sophist —
Painter! —

There like pulling
Her who the moon
Winks to,

Who th’wine pink sea
Roves at, n’rides
Given’at

The low lay set’n
Rolled horiz-
On cupped.

Between what
We see n’what we
See we

See. “Him” he scoff
Thought aloud, n’returned
To wait.

The cosmographer,
Barb berried,
Dripped lines, he was, he

Was questioning his
Sight, he, he was
Pluck berried
Quill dipped,

Questioning him,
His sight, “Did he
Blot his

Vase painting?” At
Artemis,
There now

Smeared, the whole of
Her virgin breast.
“Mistake!”

Heraclitus
Recognized it with ease
From there

Where he sat smug
Across th’temple room.
“All good?”

He flung his words
Like the dark that
Flings right

On shadows flicked
Out at snarked darkness
By wicks

Bid to dance, to
Linger, “Dear god
Maker?

Are you quite well?”
Him pursed and him
Both pursed.

Th’Cosmographer shim
Slimmered eyes drew
Out an

Inaudible “No.”
Thinker sound! Blast him!
He thought.

The bow, curved long
The plumb vase belly,
Flickered

There, could it, please,
Just th’slim candle
Light be?

Vase Painters and other poems are © Magdalene Fry-Bigby

Magdalene Fry-Bigby is an Appalachian Queer poet and Single Parent advocate from Wayne County, West Virginia. She was educated in Philosophy and Literature at Marshall and Anglia Ruskin Universities. Her poetry and nonfiction can be found in several online and print publications. She is the founder of the Grand Rapid’s Michigan press, Deciduous Imprint. She lives in Northern California where she works as a Peer neurodiversity, social and human services consultant. These poems are from her unpublished works Pocket Book Three and A Book of Poems: for Heraclitus, respectively.

‘sunday DARTS and my phone’s dead’ and other poems by Alicia Byrne Keane

December 1st, 2018

sassy ghost

sometimes I’m startled by how
perfectly my boots land when I take them off
in poses too outrageous to plan
like a dandy has strode into the room
and is posturing,
invisible,
in my boots

i can’t draw shoes it makes me restless
  (the art room of my school
with its swelling cabin roof
like an overturned ship,
  the teacher played the bon iver album
with skinny love on it on repeat all the time
  the song makes me sleepy and cold)

i can’t draw shoes, when i try they look like puddles or ghosts
everything about them less certain on inspection
the soles worn in places so the line will look uneven on the page

(the fear that no-one would know
you were accurately capturing the wobbly bits)

When we came out that morning everything was covered in ice

We talked about so much stuff that I can’t remember
Any of it really, just that I was nervous in a good way

And that we slept surrounded by paintings
You’d done on the backs of cornflake packets

sunday DARTS and my phone’s dead

sunday darts away from me
into a corner, becomes
an imagined dampness

like when you can’t tell whether
clothes on the line are still wet
or just really cold

I was meant to ring you tonight,
but I’m sitting in various places.

A guy says


people at the platform are wearing
green woolly hats in a great number
and it still takes me a while 
to cop that there’s a match on


	the conversation behind me: a guy says Ssssssssupermacs 
	because he’s waiting for his friend to finish their sentence
	some people talk slower when they’re trying to interrupt you

	
THE TRAIN HAS NO MIND, 
another guy says jarringly


(I think: eradicate all ringtones that sound like
variations on the old-fashioned telephone bell)

	
	the train has no mind. 
	the display has said 2 minutes for 10 minutes
	so I step beyond the line and crane my neck
				don’t jump! a guy says
				as a joke,


I look 
at the space behind him.

sunday DARTS and my phone’s dead and other poems are © Alicia Byrne Keane

Alicia Byrne Keane is a spoken word artist and poet from Dublin, Ireland. She has performed at festivals such as Body & Soul, Electric Picnic, Castlepalooza and F Festival. Her poetry has been published in magazines such as Bare Hands, Headstuff, and Impossible Archetype, among others. She is a long-time performer at poetry events around Dublin such as Lemme Talk and Come Rhyme With Me, and was more recently involved in the Science Gallery’s INTIMACY exhibition. She is currently a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin researching translated literature and placelessness, more specifically in the case of authors who self-translate. Her work explores the absurdity that arises from losses in translation, even when interacting in one’s native language. She is interested in the effect of unexpected sincerity afforded by short, snapshot-like poems.

“Hair” and other poems by Kasey Shelley

November 17th, 2018

My Name Is

Kasey

Bailer
Kascerd
Kasmeister
Macy
Bae

Casey
Katie
Tracey
Lisa
Chelsea
Shelley

Bitch
Slut
Cunt
Whore
Prick tease
Damp yoke

Kasim
Kas
Princess
Hon
Love

Hard Work

When the boy texts you to cancel your date, saying you’re hard work, say “OK”. Say “Thank you”. This will confuse him, obviously. He will be expected to respond with “How?!” “Why?!”, starting an argument, thus proving, you are hard work.

When he writes back “what for?” you do not respond. When he texts you the next day saying “ah hun, babe” you still do not respond. He has already given up on something that did not have the chance to begin.

Besides, you like men. Men who know what they want and go for it. Men who do not masquerade their own insecurities in yours.

So you’re hard work because your walls are higher now than they were at what, sixteen? Well, he should now be taller than he was at sixteen. When you threw over a rope and he still refuses to climb. He is not worth it, not worth your time.

You are not hard work. You are hardworking. You survive every day in this world. Through work, home, love, loss. Through your own mind.

“You are hard work” Four words that will spur you on and give you more energy than Honey Boo Boo’s go-go juice. So write the poem. Sing the song. Get the fucking promotion. Work hard and become a better you. For you.

One day someone will come to the wall. And before you even offer to throw the rope they will be scaling. Scaling brick by brick to get to know you better. Because you are worth that.

So when the boy says you are hard work, say “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Impossible

All over the world,
Women chase the impossible
Burning their skin with UV bulbs or bleach
Trying to become the “right” shade

Ignorant to the damage
Or just screwed up priorities
It is not their fault,
They were taught this

They watch their bodies, its size
Step on scales and count calories
As six-year-old girls ask
“Mammy, am I fat?”

The perfect brows, lips, eyes, cheekbones
A flatter stomach but keep the boobs
Straighter nose, whiter teeth, hair only on your head
Don’t forget that thigh gap

Seasons and generations dictate
Insecurities and self-hatred

No matter the flaw there is a solution and price tag
They pay with money, tears and pain
Do not blame them
They were shown this

A guy tells her he likes natural girls
Like Kim Kardashian, Kim Kardashian
How will she ever feel beautiful
When even natural is distorted

Supermodels photoshopped beyond recognition
Striving to be beautiful
When even the sexiest women
In this world are not

Women comparing each other
With every percentage of their bodies
“Who wore it best?”
Dangerously competing with their own self

We tell the world’s daughters to be strong and confident
But we don’t allow their mothers to be

Different cultures of the world decipher
What is beautiful
But the universal response screams
“You are not”

Hair

The most common thing said about my hair
Is how brave I am
Well, it’s usually more like “Oh God I wouldn’t have the nerve to do that”
Don’t get me wrong I get lots of compliments
People stop me in bars or at gigs to tell me how cool it is
Because it is

But the general reception from women is how I was brave
for cutting off us girls only superpower
Psst – newsflash- I’m not fucking Samson
My powers are in my kindness to others, my strange sense of humour
and apparently, my ability to put words together and people call it poetry
Maybe, I can but that super duper special wax and sculpt my hair into a spear
and charge towards my enemy
Until then, it is just hair

In the two years that I have had my hair like this I have been asked twice if I am a boy
Once, was by a child whose mother looked mortified while I laughed
In fairness i had just done a 5K, hair scraped back in a man bun, sweat running down my face
The second was on a night out by a man
This was after he had already asked for my number
So the way i see it, he found me attractive either way
1-0 to Kasey

But I’m just so confused by this word brave
Do you know what’s brave?
Jumping off a cliff into the sea, swimming across to the next one and doing it again
Telling your crush you like them even though there is a 93% chance they’re gonna reject you
Reading a poem about your father hitting your mother, in front of your father and mother
Battling a terrifying disease of the body or the mind

Those are brave
This?
This was just a decision based on how badass Ruby Rose looked in Orange Is The New Black

The Girl Won’t Delete Your Texts

We kept the texts they sent us.
Declaring their love.

Showing off to our friends. Giggling.
Home alone we would read them back. Smiling.

The women before us kept the letters.
Keeping the physical proof for when the spoken words became nothing more than a memory.

Using them to torture ourselves.
To bring ourselves hope.

The power of your words.
The brutality of your indifference.

Kasey Shelley is writer and poet from Dublin. She has been writing poetry since September 2016 and performing regularly in the Irish spoken word scene since January 2017. She has been published in magazines such as Flare, Harness and in the anthology Selfies & Portraits. She is currently working on her debut poetry book.

‘The Road Taken’ and other poems by Kate Ennals

September 4th, 2018

Cuckoo

Before she was mine
she drank red wine and spirits
With class, in Egypt and Paris
An educated forties woman
From Wales, aquiline nose, my brother’s eyes
Stylish in scarves, tight belt, full skirts,
Intelligent. Conversation, politics.
A woman of intellect. Studious, serious
She pursued kingdoms of change

But with each revolution comes sex
And she became history. Mine
Look, here I come.
Cuckoo, cuckoo
Before I arrived, my mother was beautiful.

After Alvy Carragher’s ‘Mother’

I have just read a poem:
‘Mother’ By Alvy Carragher
over and over:
“You said it was love at first sight”

Mother, I don’t recall you saying that
On this couch where I now lie
where, as a child, I snuggled into your woven threads
of bosom and breath

The words, ‘I love you’? No
I would remember
Though I heard the scream
you held at arm’s length
Its tentacles tangled in our threaded embrace.

DNA

I come home from time to time
Motionless, I stand, glide down
Steel de-escalates underfoot
My eyes swivel, theatre bound
Air loses fresh, swoops up my nose
At the bottom, I step South,
Into tunnel, crowned blue and white
Ridged platform, yellow line
A rubbery wind shoots the breeze
My instincts bristle, on the rise
I guess the space where carriage will stop
Tube swoops in
My choice is good. Doors
Wheeze, release heaving crowd
cheek by jowel, shoulder, hip
I stand back, then
Squeeze and shove, shift as one
Teeter, grab a well sprung coil
We shunt and start
a broad church in communal lurch
a rhythm of common
I count the stations
Watch eyes doze, upright
Bodies twitch to ear plugged notes
Approaching, I crab, slide and twist
Mind the Gap
Turn right
Keep Left
Queue to tread and escalate
Inhale the light, sirens, petrol
Surface
flash an oyster, stride away
reassured of my DNA.

Lower Derries, Cavan

for Martin and Breda

The lake swarms, teeters the edge of evening shore
Low, the garden sky seethes, yellow and grey. Still,
We sit outside, nibble blue and white cheese
Pickle our lips with nasturtium seeds
Bite into blood red tomatoes, hand-picked from the vine
A yellow cucumber dressed in mustard and wine
Toast each other with homemade liquor
Beetroot and raspberry mixed with apple and pear
I settle on orange and elder flower
A course of wild pike smokes in black rising swirls
Cooked in a fresh branch of a fallen birch
Served with home-grown potatoes served with garlic
We chat of poetry and autumn spices.

PPS

in response to Seamus Heaney’s ‘Post Script’
At risk of turning this into an ad for Ireland
You may want to travel to County Cavan
For there the wind is always up
With fierce intent, blowing spores of bloodied rock
Drenched in storm and moonlight
The place is a palimpsest of history
Legend layered on leaps of myth
Grey, slate skies reigned by crows and ravens
Caws of silence on black scrawny wings
No ocean glitters, there is no flaggy shore
But there are giants, Lugh and Lag
Who jumped a gorge in the name of love
And left a chasm, a land of relicts
tossed with glacial erratics
a carbuncle of a fossil. Rooted and ancient
You will feel rather than see Cuilche loom
A cannon of earth spraying bullets of cloud
It shoulders the head of the North, tempers the South
From where craggy rivulets of pale faces stare
scattered amongst the raggy sheep
seeking refuge behind old crannogs
Piles of stones
The flesh of the land is weak, porous
lime mixed with water
Its heathery purple blood floods lakes that rise
Where ghosts ascend in morning mists
Stride, muttering, into dark pine forests
The limestone rock provides not a glint of warmth
Trees grasp and clutch at bare knuckled earth
Expose neolithic tombs, funereal monuments
They too catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

The Road Taken

It was dark as we crossed the cattle grid, pulled up the Barrack 
Hill, down the other side, 
around the mini roundabout, drove the N3 out of Cavan, Virginia, 
Kells, Navan, Dublin

Spiralling the short-term parking, coming to a stop at the top, 
and flying. Then travellating 
to the station. The train stopped at Manchester Piccadilly, a 
fret of ornate iron and glass

Suspended; industrial, opaque, white bulbs hang in the gloom of 
winter gloam. Groaning 
with Northern Asia, Derbyshire, an English winter 

   Red stone     red brick  red stone	  red brick	  red stone
	
Rows of town, city suburbs: Hawkeswood, Stockport, Hazelcroft and 
the Price is Right. 
We disappear into banks of soil and tunnel. Black electric light 
blasts into heaving peaks of green, velvet brown

Soft to touch, sloping down. In the sky, a lisp of blue in leaden 
grey, a flash of Hope, followed by a thrumming cab, 
to a Sheffield HOME of blue uniforms, snug around a bosom 
of pinned identity. 

My mother in law’s tiny marbled legs attached to a nappy, a bib 
and tucker. A baby mother. 
A soft face slack with grace, a momentary greed of interest, 
forgotten in seconds…
                    then repeated. 

Over again. Again. Soon, she tires of not remembering. I go on. 
Travelling on a train, to London. 
The carriage lights are dim. There are clicks of zips. 
Creaks of bags. Whispers of coats taken off

folded. Murmur of pale blue light. Rain squeezes drops down 
the window pane. I snuggle down in the interim for the linger of 
journey, the in-between. Chesterfield, Derby, Leicester,
St Pancras. 

I walk the marble floor that lays the way to Paris, passing 
cocktail bars, sumptuous shops, silver, gold, chains, 
and jewels, glamorous hair, bags and suits, leather, 
barrels of wine

Down	
	down   			
		down
                     to         
                         the         
                             Northern       
                                      line

I wade through a tube of Londoners: a commuter, a son, a daughter, 
an old man, a student, a worker, a patient, a brother, a sister, 
an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, an only child, a father

to you, mother: old woman, bright beads for eyes, swaddled in 
pads and yellow rage, hunched,
slumped, lost for words, waiting. I take off my coat, sit down. 
You are my destination.

The Road Taken and other poems © Kate Ennals

Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published material in a range of literary and online journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain plus many more). Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection comes in 2018. In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan, and organises At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office.
Before doing an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012, Kate worked in UK local government and the Irish community sector for thirty years, supporting local groups to engage in local projects and initiatives.

Φ kateennals.com

A Celebration of Irish Women Poets on Bloomsday 2018

June 10th, 2018

‘Hinnerup’ by Jess McKinney

.
sewing after so long
i wonder if there exists a song
a glass of water warmed in the sun
for each age she’s ever been
all the taps here run scalding
following the dregs of wine
flowing from hot water factories
tell me about her lover
stagnant on the periphery
who lived three towns away
making it harder to soak
she would travel hours to him
the wilting orchids
every other weekend
softening on the windowsill
found sanctuary with his family
reaching up into the day
young and in love
delicate and deliberate
i’d like to know how she felt
like grandmother’s thin fingers
on the birthday that I learned to hate
shaking but capable
the night i faked to get away

Jess Mc Kinney is a queer feminist poet, essayist and English Studies graduate of UCD. Originally from Inishowen, Co. Donegal, she is now living and working in Dublin city, Ireland. Her writing is informed by themes such as sexuality, memory, nature, relationships, gender, mental health and independence. Often visually inspired, she seeks to marry pictorial elements alongside written word. Her work has been previously published in A New Ulster, Impossible Archetype, HeadStuff, In Place, Hunt & Gather, Three fates, and several other local zines.

‘Prime’ by Peggie Gallagher

It is midwinter.
Your hands are chilled.
I lift you,
gather your first whimpers onto my pillow,
knowing as much by instinct as touch of skin.

We lie here amazed at the dark,
aware of the house sleeping around us,
the quiet patterns of breath.
Outside, the snow lies thick.

In this landscape of wild skies
and running tides,
and mornings lit with rapture,
I think
I must have been falling most of my life
to land here temple to temple
in this pre-dawn calm,
this kinship

of breath with breath
your hands cupped in my palms.

Peggie Gallagher’s collection, Tilth was published by Arlen House in 2013. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Poetry Ireland, Force 10, THE SHOp, Cyphers, Southword, Atlanta Review, and Envoi. In 2011 she was shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition. In 2012 she won the Listowel Writers’ Week Poetry Collection. In 2018 she is the only Irish poet on the Strokestown International poetry competition shortlist. Peggie Gallagher’s work was facilitated by Paul O’Connor.

Author image: Southword / Arlen House

‘Linen’ by Finnuala Simpson

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.

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.

‘June’ by Geraldine Plunkett Dillon

I fill my heart with stores of memories,
Lest I should ever leave these loved shores;
Of lime trees humming with slow drones of bees,
And honey dripping sweet from sycamores.

Of how a fir tree set upon a hill,
Lifts up its seven branches to the stars;
Of the grey summer heats when all is still,
And even grasshoppers cease their little wars.

Of how a chestnut drops its great green sleeve,
Down to the grass that nestles in the sod;
Of how a blackbird in a bush at eve,
Sings to me suddenly the praise of God.

The text of Magnificat and images associated with Geraldine Plunkett’s Dillon’s historical and cultural work were kindly sent to me by her great-granddaughter Isolde Carmody and I am very grateful for them. I am delighted to add Geraldine to my indices at Poethead. I hope that this page will increase interest in her work. Excerpts from the Preface to the 2nd edition of All In The Blood, memoirs of Geraldine Plunkett Dillon, edited by Honor Ó Brolcháin,“My greatest regret throughout the process has been how little credit she gives herself, for example she does not mention a paper she gave in the Royal Irish Academy in 1916 or her contribution to the article on dyes in Encyclopedia Britannica or her volume of poetry, Magnificat, or contributing to the Book of St Ultan, or being a founder member of Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe (the masks of Tragedy and Comedy she made for the Gate theatre are now on a wall in the Taibhdhearc) and the Galway Art Club, where she exhibited for years, or making costumes for Micheál Mac Liammóir in 1928, or being responsible for Oisín Kelly deciding to become a sculptor – he was one of very many who said that she enabled them to do the right thing for their own fulfillment. When she wrote it was in order to provide a history of her times and an insight into what made her family so strange. Like many of her generation she did not write much about her own feelings and her humourous and optimistic nature does not really come through in her writing. I would like to have been able to put that in but could not in all faith do so. “ It is also worth noting that Joe (Joseph Plunkett) named her as literary executor, and she edited his Collected Poems in 1916

‘At the door’ by Eva Griffin

Now, watch as I hang in the air
tempting as a sunset
and just as long.
Storms are not inclined to wait;
better to spill my secret wilderness
as I leave this love,
sucking light out of your blue.

Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a UCD graduate. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tales From the Forest, All the Sins, ImageOut Write, Three Fates, The Ogham Stone, HeadStuff, and New Binary Press

‘Cooking Chicken’ by Alice Kinsella

Pink is the colour of life
of new babies’ wet heads
and open screaming mouths.

Pink is the rose hip of a woman at the heart
of what’s between her hips
and the tip of my tongue between bud lips.

There’s the hint of pink on daisies
when they open their petals to say
hello to the birth of a new day.

But pink is also the colour of death
as the knife slides between the flesh
and separates it into food.

Pink is a suggestion of sickness when I pierce the skin,
dissect the sinews, glimpse the tint of it and turn
it to the heat to kill the pink and the possibility.

It’s the quiver of the comb atop feathers,
and the neck as it’s sliced from the body
by the executioner’s axe.

It’s the colour of cunt
and the hint in the sky
when the cock crows.

Alice Kinsella was born in Dublin and raised in the west of Ireland. She holds a BA(hons) in English Literature and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin. Her poetry has been widely published at home and abroad, most recently in Banshee Lit, Boyne Berries, The Lonely Crowd and The Irish Times. Her work has been listed for competitions such as Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Competition 2016, Jonathan Swift Awards 2016, and Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition 2017. She was SICCDA Liberties Festival writer in residence for 2017 and received a John Hewitt bursary in the same year. Her debut book of poems, Flower Press was published in 2018 by The Onslaught Press.