Tag: Skylight #47

“Thin Places” and other poems by Eithne Lannon

April 7th, 2019

Thin Places 

The wild meadow weave, the strand, 
         places of late summer, autumn,
 
a stone skimming water, suspended 
        in air, its slow motion glide punctuated 

by the drop, touch, rise of a ghostly presence,
          this wary hesitation between water 

and stone, mysterious as the rift between 
     music notes in air, unsettling the familiar light 

which shudders again with tiny rainbow bubbles 
   holding air-drops in. And then the final slide over 

gravity’s edge, into polished bottomless depths, 
        beyond the belly-aching threshold⎯

dropping, ever dropping, into the quiet 
     whispering, the unspeakable tenderness.

Binn Éadair

I have waited through the long winter grey
for the slow clean curve of spring,

the sun a warm breath on my neck,
its lips glossed with a damp breeze.

Far below, the murmurings of wind and water
weave a familiar braid of intimacy,

the whole of the blue sky is stretched wide,
light falls on us, a lovers’ blanket spread on sand.

This moment is already time’s fugitive;
sweet rain pooled in a dockweed’s leafy

pocket, the soft unwrapping of downy buds,
moss gathered in a hollowed bowl of earth—

like a container that holds and pours,
we are filled and emptied.

To be lifted then into the loose
hem of the breeze, cast out

over the spooling cliff, to drop
like a bird, free-fall into the wind.

Earth Music

I will lead you by the hand to the hushed hum
of the gentle oak, an evening breeze sounding

shivers into leaves, quiet turbulence in the air
and the gravity of sound settling on mossed stone.

I hear its tongue-lick in ivy the way a bat hears
the silhouette of trees, or a whale the shape of its home,

touching the skin like sound braille, tiny neck hairs
startled to its presence; earth music in the trees

and in the stony wind, atoms of light trembling in tiny
dust particles where body-bones separate, flesh disappears.

Between heart-pulse and light’s shadow-touch,
I will lead you to the quiet abundance of silence,

the wide emptying of voiceless things; earth’s pulse,
seamless and somewhere beyond absence.

Translation

Early evening, the sea all silk and copper-clad,
russet seams threading air, holding nothing

but lingering light. Poised on the glazed edge
of the estuary, a heron; stem-like and spectral, folded

into the soft grey petals of his shadow. Overhead,
dark-bellied geese fly in low wavering lines,

flock to the beginning of memories they don’t recall
from a place they reclaim without guidance—

here, clouds are porous with light, lisping vowels
and tongue-flickers lapping twilight—while westward,

through the woods, a wash of starlings erupts
from the trees, sweeping murmurations,

the chorus of bodies dips and dissolves, rises
into dust formations. Now the heron loosens

unwieldy wings, lifts like vapour,
like stillness taking flight.

It’s hard not to believe in this; birdsound and birdshape,
two seagulls wing-surfing the ragged cliff-spine,

entirely consistent, faithfully articulate—
what we don’t have words for may still exist.

In the cool breath of evening, tidal swamp-sands
swell over stones, shadows slide out of things.

Motionless again, the heron
is zen master,

a hanging bell holding through the dusk
of the estuary,

the slow unravelling of this moment
every other moment fits inside.

Moon

Take the river’s curl, the ocean’s wave, 
      the never-ending trees, the sway of a meadow,
        the roll of the sun, the scattered stepping stars.

And take last month’s silver bud of moon
    now come full to the sky, her mouth is wide and open,
      white lips brimming with a soft wet light,

month by month, she gives her widening
    emptiness to the earth, holds the planet in her orbit,
       washes ocean after ocean over sand: 

I stretch out my arms and reach for her,
    hold hands with her rhythm, climb into her open
      wound, my blood is lapping at her perpetual pull,

I sleep in the mantle of her tidal pulse, slip
   the ring of her light onto my finger. At the last hour
     of fullness, I wade inside her alluvial silt,

feel desire awash in my gut. Lost inside
    her wholeness, carved into her darkening spine,
      I am swallowed into goddess light.

Thin Places and other poems are © Eithne Lannon

Eithne Lannon is a native of Dublin. Her poems have been included in various publications such as The North, Skylight 47, The Ogham Stone, The Lea-Green Down Anthology and Boyne Berries. On-line in Ireland, the UK, US and Canada, she has work published on Headstuff, Artis Natura, Sheila-na-Gig, Barehands and Punch Drunk Press among others.

Her work has been listed in various competitions such as the Bray Literary Festival, the Dermot Healy competition and Galway University Hospital Poems for Patience. She was winner in 2018 of the Ballyroan Poetry Day Competition and Runner-up in Against the Grain this year. Her work was also Highly Commended in the Blue Nib Winter/Spring Chapbook 2018 and commended in the Jonathan Swift Awards.

Eithne’s first poetry collection Earth Music was published by Turas Press in April 2019.

‘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

‘Live Bulbs’ and other poems by Katherine Noone

July 15th, 2018

In May 

You are everywhere.
Arthur Bells’ yellow bloom
fragrant and fleeting,
whitethorn buds abound.  

Mint makes it’s way to our door,
ready for picking. 
Swallows sing a sweet song
as they soar.

On my route
I detour,
lured by a lilac in bloom.
This month, of the mothers. 
                                                                                       
                          
Our Village in the Fifties

Vibrant.
Most houses endowed  
with broods of children.
We run around freely
unhindered by snatchers and traffic.

Play out in the fields
rich with daisies and daffodils.
Scale over walls to orchards
their branches bowed low 
with ripe rosy apples,

maimed by migration
it succumbs to stillness and silence.
Neighbours reach out.
Sheepdogs wait.
Footballs deflate.

                                                              
Live Bulbs

After red and yellow weather alerts
when floods and storms subside.
Broken tree twigs around  you
garden soil stripped aside.

Your emerald shoots  
remain sturdy and serene.
With enough resilience, robustness
to turn a blue moon green.

Live Bulbs and other poems are © Katherine Noone

Katherine Noone’s first poetry collection Keeping Watch was published by Lapwing Press (2017). Her poems have appeared in Orbis, Crannog, Boyne Berries, Linnets Wings, Her Heart Anthology, Skylight 47, Proost Poetry, Vallum digital edition, A New Ulster and Ropes Journal.

Shortlisted Vallum Poetry Award (Montreal) 2012. Poem for Patience 2015, 2016 and 2017l.

‘The Music of Stones’ and other poems by Colette Colfer

February 10th, 2018

Stepping Stones

Here are my hands, outstretched for your bare feet
so that each step of your path through darkness
and gravel bits splintered with thorns will meet
uncalloused palms of moccasin softness.

This is your extraordinary journey
beyond mapped landscape and into unknowns
but my knuckles will jigsaw rocks like keys
filling locks to smooth roughness for your soles.

My hands will be luminous with love light
anticipating your transformation,
pulsating warmth for this your longest night
when each footstep is a destination.

Although you are alone you’re not alone,
I’m reaching out my hands as stepping-stones.

Anchors

I search shorelines at low tide
for portals that open time
to the pip of it.

Fingers like a blind man’s
on stones, periwinkles, chainies,
and drops of smooth blue-glass on sand.

I trace cat-gut through seaweed
to hidden hooks on feathers,
German baits, spoons and spinners.

Each rock a prayer bead
in the litany of belonging.
Pock-air, Connigeer, Shollister, Claim.

Worms

The graveyard was January grey and cold.
Dad was crying. I’d never seen him cry before.

Strangers spilled over mounds and dips,
around jaded headstones that tilted towards sleep.

Grandad was lying in a fresh coffin
with brassy handles that glinted like baubles.

I stood in my little girl knees at the frontline
by the open hole that gasped for closure.

A priest’s ragged voice led the chorus of mourners
in prayers that lifted up into the sky like birds.

Men used ropes to slowly lower the coffin
till it was anchored deep and still on the black.

Some one of them broke the shadowy silence
with the thud of a shovelful of clay on wood.

Nanna turned her back, took broken steps away,
my two sisters at her sides like crutches.

There would be worms now on Grandad’s face and clothes,
wriggling over his eyelids, into his ears, up his nose.

Afterwards, in a carful of adults who laughed and told stories,
I stared at the hedges so the whole world blurred green.

The Music of Stones

We tuned ourselves to skylark song and searched
the skies all summer for their high hovering spots
where birds trilled like semi-quavers
in the unlined stave of a hot blue sky.

We paused to stare, enthralled by dives that spliced
our days. Then satisfied we’d amble on
through sunburnt fields beside the sea towards
the lighthouse, stopping at the next birdsong.

All summer that summer we spied on skylarks,
climbed cliffs, found caves, swam skinny dips
and lay naked on reclusive sandy beaches
where you taught me that even stones can sing.

No Looking Back

Sometimes you’ve got to leave behind a place
you’ve loved since tumbling into time and go
for good, that is forever, go goodbye
without a looking back like Lot’s wife did
and died from turning, turning into salt
still standing, white dissolving in the rain

The Music of Stones and other poems are © Colette Colfer

Colette Colfer works as a part-time lecturer in world religions at Waterford Institute of Technology. She has also worked for many years in journalism and is an award winning radio documentary maker. She has had poems published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Caterpillar (for kids), Skylight 47, The Poets’ Republic, Three Drops From a Cauldron and Algebra of Owls.

Image: Sea shells (mainly the whirl shell, Zethalia zelandica) in a rock pool at Te Arai Point, Auckland, New Zealand. CC-By-ND: Avenue

‘Poet Mother’ and other poems by Felicia McCarthy

January 30th, 2018

Reading the Omens

A chorus of voices called, No!
when I reached for the latch
Don’t let her out, she’ll die.

A monarch hatched from the rafters.
Her orange and black wings a mirror
to the hot coals that waked her.

A trail of twisted cobweb sported flies
as if it were a kite tail tied with bows
and she ready to be launched to the sky.

Though we turned away,
she is with me still, as
I plan for the days ahead.

Take this as written:
when my time comes,
to hatch from this body

I want you to open the window.

First published in Boyne Berries 18, in the autumn of 2015
Published online at Trevor Conway’s website; Poems in Profile #17 (April, 2016-07-15)

Let Morning Come

(after Jane Kenyon)

Let the street lamps blink out,
the lights of Ballyvaughn grow dim,
as darkness gives way to day.

Let the shush-shush of the tides
slide into your dream, beckon you awake,
to open your eyes. Let morning come.

Let the sky lift her grey skirts,
draw up her shawl of cloud, the way
the curtain must rise before the play.

To the heron strutting along the shore,
to gulls drifting above the bay, to lovers
still in their beds, let morning come.

Let the gold disc deliver on its promise.
Let the wind come up. Let the fishing boats
sail from safe harbours. Let morning come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
keep yourself back. The world begins fresh
each day, so let morning come.

Skylight 47, issue 8, 2017

Poet Mother

(for Liz)

Don’t let the baby swallow your words,
the ones that arrive in the night
while you swaddle her, humming.
Sing into her small ears the lines
you will write in the morning.

She won’t mind what it is as long
as you talk softly and rock her gently
in the rhythm of your next poem. This
will keep the words from stifling you,
from choking her.

She loves all of your creations.
The lines you remember at dawn
become the maps she will take
away from these sweet days
and nights in your arms.

Skylight 47, issue 7, 2016

Where I’m From

(for Margaret McDonough)

I am from corn, hot Ohio miles of it. And the smell of ether
seeping from a black leather bag stashed on top of the fridge.
I am from pony men and card sharks, drunks and steam train drivers.
I’m from blue pencil marks on galley proofs, created on an upright Royal.
I am from screen doors slapping against armies of Canadian soldiers
every June. I am from the dog days of August, the ice storms of winter,
the frozen mud trenched roads of spring.

I am from a lake that died and a river that burned,
from The Erie, The Cuyahoga, and a town called Ashtabula.
I am from ore boats and the fog horns sounding long and lonely
as they herd the hulls of boats into their lanes. I am from the Bascule bridge,
the brick yards, the railway yards, and a back yard that was the lake.

I’m from The Mother of Sorrows, The Confraternity of Christian
Mothers, and the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary.
I’m from a ham-fisted man with a fedora and a black skirted priest;
both with whiskey breath and an enviable reach.

I am from among her effects:
The loose powder box made of pasteboard,
stuffed with letters from her Iowa mother,
My dearest girl, she wrote, and Dear grand girl.

I am from Mayo’s Foot of the Reek
to the Allegheny farm on the Black Creek
still walking on from the Great Famine of 1845.

Jenny, YSA online journal, 2016

Felicia McCarthy practices the arts of poetry and healing in the West of Ireland. Her poetry has been published in Boyneberries, Skylight 47, as well as in The Sea, An Anthology by Rebel Poetry. She was a featured reader for December 2015’s Over the Edge. She has also read her work at Belmullet’s Festival of Words and Letterkenny’s Northwest Words. In 2015, her work was shortlisted for the Bailieborough Prize. In summer 2017 her poetry was shortlisted for the Dermot Healy Award, The Red Line Book Festival Poetry Prize and the Over the Edge Writer of the Year award. Her poetry was published online in September 2016 in Jenny, while four poems were published in the UK ezine, The Blue Nib, issue 14. Felicia is also an Energy Medicine teacher, speaker and therapist with a specialty in cancer support. Her articles on Energy Medicine have appeared in Perspectives in Healing, The Living Link and Positive Life.

The Blue Nib

Image is © Mark Waters

‘The World Reduced to a Sound’ and other poems by Anne Tannam

January 6th, 2016

Unfinished Business

On their wedding day his father said
I’ll forgive you everything if you do right by this girl
the unfinished education
the empty table setting at Christmas
the family name unpolished, unloved.

I never met my grandfather
a man who lived under the glare of his wife
but I remember my grandmother, a small woman
her mouth eternally disappointed with life.
Dad bringing us down to visit her
to the small dark house on Bulfin Road
where the furnishings took themselves too seriously.

Later in that same house, I found a studio photograph
of the polished family; my grandfather, something familiar
in the way he’s leaning against the table
my dad, a beautiful child about three years old
sitting beside his brothers and sisters, and there
my grandmother upright and disapproving
staring into the camera, daring it to blink.

That blonde haired little boy
the man who loved his wife for sixty years
couldn’t wait to cycle home from work
gave up his wages every week
cooked our fry on Saturday mornings
scrubbed our nails, polished our shoes

still wonders if he did enough
still wonders if he’s been forgiven.

Published in Spring 2015 Edition, Skylight47. Editors Kevin O’Shea, Susan Lindsay and Nicki Griff

At Sea

I’m watching a film.
There’s a scene at the end
where the leading lady gets into her car and drives.
The camera, a bird’s eye view of highways and roads
follows her progress until the journey slows
curves along the edge of sunshine and sea
before braking to standstill on gravel and sand.

I’ve seen this film before, a light-hearted affair
no hidden meaning or sudden twist at the end
but this time, I’m sitting on the couch, trying not to cry
wondering why the sight of the ocean at the end of a film
feels like someone close just died.

As the credits roll, I let the waves run in to shore
until my breathing calms and I am more myself again
forty six years old and counting
acknowledging the sadness
of continents and planets unexplored
of a single self who got side-tracked early.

I think of childless friends
who speak of emptiness and longing
the inconsolable sea inside
and that defining moment
whether through age or circumstance
when only one reality remains
and grief shows up to fill the void.

Published on-line on HeadStuff website Poem of the Week, June 17th 2015, Editor Alvy Carragher.

Groundhog Day

I laugh at 1950’s woman
tied to the kitchen sink
hair in curlers, head filled
with cleaning products
and ways to please her husband
after his long day’s work.

Yet sometimes
lying awake
juggling roles
adding items
to a list of never ending tasks
to be completed

I hear in the darkness
the kitchen sink
shuffling towards me

and her laughter
as she applies coral pink
lipstick to her smiling mouth.

South Wall

We walked the full length
sat on rocks
backs to the lighthouse
looking out at the lazy sea.

The air hummed dusk and evening
water turning from gloss, to satin, to matt
sky and breath descending.

Headed back in silence
footfall into the arms of Dublin bay
its familiar outline softening
night, a short car journey away.

The World Reduced to Sound

Lying in my single bed
a childhood illness for company
the world reduced to sound.

Behind my eyes the darkness echoed
inside my chest uneven notes
rattled and wheezed.
Beyond my room a floorboard creaked
a muffled cough across the landing
grew faint and faded away

My hot ear pressed against the pillow
tuned into the gallop of tiny hooves
then blessed sleepy silence.
In the morning
steady maternal footsteps
sang on the stairs.
I loved that song.

Published in collection ‘Take This Life’ (WordOnTheStreet 2011)

Consolation

In a claustrophobic room
just off intensive care,
he outlined the facts.

‘She only scored four
on the Glasgow Scale.
It’s not looking good.’

Even as he said it
I knew this moment
defined ‘before’ and ‘after’.

I hyperventilated.
My mind looked on
as my body drowned.

We sat by her bed.
The word ‘coma’
came and sat beside us.

That evening she awoke.
Everything had changed.
She saw her daddy cry.

But a lifelong disease
is so much better
than no life at all.

When we got home
the house has moved
to another galaxy.

Published in The Moth Issue 2 Editor Rebecca O’Connor

Both a page and performance poet, Anne Tannam’s work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and abroad. Her first book of poetry Take This Life was published by WordOnTheStreet in 2011 and her second collection Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor will be published by Salmon Poetry in Spring 2017. She has performed her work at Lingo, Electric Picnic, Blackwater & Cúirt Literary Festival. Anne is co-founder of the Dublin Writers’ Forum.
.
Anne Tannam’s website

‘Leda Revised’ and other poems by Celeste Augé

June 17th, 2015

Ode

More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy’d…’

—JOHN KEATS, Ode on a Grecian Urn

You lie across my thighs as I write,
my bone-warming hot water bottle,
pure latex, guaranteed to delight the most
discriminating women, mottle their thighs
as they lie deep in their beds, pretending
this rubber sack of warm water
could never replace their lover.

The women of Ireland drive with you
across their laps, hand-knit covers
helping to keep you warm. More love,
the patterns passed down from
mothers and grandmothers, still enjoyed.
They knit covers for each new bottle,
battle the cold, inside and out.

Every woman remembers her first.
I was twelve, three hours after landing
in Ireland, in Granny’s front bedroom.
You are the best invention after
hot water on tap, and when old age hits
and you warm through rheumatism—
not period pains—I hope to bits
I will have more to hug than my hottle
(Granny’s word for hot water bottle).

Women Improve With the Years

after Yeats

I am worn out with diets—
those rain-worn, concrete goddesses
among the skinny streets.
All winter long I look at magazines
and try out each new fad
I find in each new book.
Pretending: I am a future beauty, too.
But I’m pleased with myself,
to have the power of all four limbs,
eyes that can read the headlines, a body
that has grown a baby, loved on a whim.
Women improve with the years;
I switch on the light, don’t mind
who sees my stretch marks. If we meet
at my burning age, watch out! I grow
ludic in the rain—a diet-worn, fleshy
goddess at play among the shops.

Leda Revised

There’re worse things than being fucked by a swan.
Try going in—a young woman, full of life—
to give birth to your firstborn—that perfect
fleshy egg. Sim-fizz-ee-otomy. I’ve learnt how to say it,
properly. A slice here, a slice there, my pelvis opens up.
The next day a young nurse teaches me to walk.
Instead of nursing my crying baby I had to learn
to walk again. A big egg, they said, much later. Too big.
Our Lady of Lourdes was worried that if they did one
they’d end up doing ten C-sections on me.
As if my husband wouldn’t keep his hands off me—
and not a condom allowed within these holy shores.
They must have pictured me pregnant for decades.
Like I could let him near me again. Pain too strong
to let me hold my baby, even. Waddling everywhere.
Fuckin Zeus. Him and his big shoulders.

Always Sligo Rovers

for Shea and Sam

The ancestors at Garavogue Villas
don’t care that we can’t pay the rent.
Their stone circle is still here, disguised
as a roundabout. Lichen covers the stones.
In the middle, the Blessed Virgin Mary—
in an all-white strip—protects the ancestors,
prays over them, right on the spot
where their bones used to lie.
Their 5,000-year-old tomb is gone.
Parked cars hide the touchline
where we used to play kerbs. Sometimes,
late at night, I pass Whitewash Mary,
always praying, always quiet,
that half smile playing around her lips,
her curves dimly lit by streetlights—
lone mother of the night—and I want
to kick the stray football to her, shout:
‘Get up to it, Mary, nod it back!’

At the Showgrounds, the mountains surround us,
ancestors everywhere—on Knocknarea,
Keelogboy, the Ballygawley Hills, Ben Bulben.
The sky is thick with ancestors—
there isn’t too far you can go in this town
without someone knowing what you’re up to.
Bohs are in with a chance but we’ve got Joseph Ndo
who brings a kind of stillness to every
pass of the ball, as though he’s surrounded
by a different type of air, the ancestors at his feet.
And sometimes when it’s a good night
in the Showgrounds and no one
has cursed the result, that same kind
of force field hovers right around the grounds,
around the signs for Tohers and Jako,
energy conjured up by the ancestors—
who else could it be?—watching over us.

A minute’s silence for the ancestors, for their protection,
everyone up on their feet, a minute’s silence for any help
the ancestors might give tonight, the night when
Rovers line out against Bohs, the night when Uncle S
brings his newly-fatherless nephew to see his first match
in the Showgrounds, when Googe brings his future wife
to see what she’s letting herself in for, when
Seamus brings his young son to the only place on earth
where he will be allowed to swear loudly
at each lost tackle, wrong penalty,
missed chance, the ancestors watching over them,
that blessed moment before the whistle blows,
a moment’s silence, please,

and we remember

our pasts, our people returned to us for tonight—
as though their spirits could come back to earth,
touch down right there on the pitch.

Friday

Today is Friday and I’m out of metaphors—
the wind howling though the trees outside
is just the wind that knocks down the wheelie bin
which is just a bin blown over that scatters
egg cartons, yoghurt pots and plastic bottles
over the gravel stones outside my house
that are simply stones (though a lot of them)
and my house is a house, rectangular,
white, four walls and a roof, nothing more.
This pen I hold writes only words—
blue words. As in the colour blue.

Somewhere else a five-year-old boy picks up
a fragment of a cluster bomb (where it might
be windy, too)—they aren’t metaphors either
(neither the boy nor the bomb).
My own son is with my neighbour,
(somewhere out there in a black Ford)
both of them flesh and bone, representing
themselves (their best and their worst selves).
I sit here and I mean nothing more than
woman sitting on a couch on a Friday afternoon
writing and waiting.

Gym Poem #1

Tracksuit

My muscles and tendons stitch along my bones
like a comfortable tracksuit that knows the shape of me,
my life, the limited shapes of the work I do.

These poems from Skip Diving (Salmon Poetry, 2014) are © Celeste Augé

Celeste Augé is the author of Skip Diving (Salmon Poetry, 2014), The Essential Guide to Flight (Salmon Poetry, 2009) and the collection of short stories Fireproof and Other Stories (Doire Press, 2012).

The World Literature Review said that “Celeste Augé’s poems are commendable for their care, deep thought, and intellectual ambition”, while the Anna Livia Review said that “Fireproof is a remarkably strong debut into the world of short stories and will begin to build what is undoubtedly going to be a strong readership for the author”.

Celeste’s poetry has been shortlisted for a Hennessy Award and she received a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to write Skip Diving. In 2011, she won the Cúirt New Writing Prize for fiction. She lives in Connemara, in the West of Ireland.

“the bird keepers” by C. Murray

July 20th, 2013

I know three places that they go,
and the birds wait in congregation
on pitched roof, tottering lamp-post
in the tree-chorals. They wait mute,

gull and urban-pigeon, rook, starling
wood-pigeon and magpie, all wait.
Sparrows await the later crumbs,
the blackbird desires garden-apples.

I saw a bird-keeper once.
With her bird-eye. Her empty bag,
her melt into the crowd anonymity.
I saw her just leave a squake of gulls

in her wake tearing at the good bread.
She directed her gaze onto me and
I thrilled with the recognition. Each day
at the right time she had walked to

a reach of grass at the four roads
opposite the park where herons. Her
bag later stuffed into her ordinary jacket
her streaked hair, her impassive gull-eye.

I lost her image in the crowd. Those others,
the bird-keepers of unlikely corners at
the meeting of roads, and roundabouts
carry a backpack, a trolley. One a man,

the other a woman. She is old now.

the bird-keepers is © C. Murray , first published in Skylight #47 2013