Anu issue 32/ A New Ulster

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)

Featuring the works of Rehan Qayoom, Katie Lewington, Michael Mc Aloran, John Doyle, David McLean, Caliean Jack, Peter O’Neill, Richard Halperin, P.W. Bridgman, John Byrne, Strider Marcus Jones, Alistair Graham, Michael J. Whelan, Byron Beynon and Jack Grady. Hard copies can be purchased from our website.

Issue No 32 May 2015

A New Ulster On the Wall Website

Editor: Amos Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents

Editorial

page 6

Rehan Qayoom, Ophiuchos Found inscribed On ‘Speck of Blue’ Katie Lewington; Reform Us Bottom Education A Bellowing Michael McAloran, 8 poems John Doyle; Sirocco and Topaz Cool Cats Army Recuits, Curragh Co. Kildare, Circa 1900 Penrith, New South Wales David McLean; Anxious a nighttime Where words went Where devils were Unspecified enemy Futile peyote dance Cailean Jack; Lead in Red Hello Ween Bubble Peter O’Neill; Work Continuum Richard Halperin; Delicious Diamond Squares The Visitors For Miss Jeikes Matutinal

2

John Byrne; Despair Velvet Fingers Gale Marcus Strider Jones; I’m Getting old now

Notes of Scraps of Screen papyrus Symphonic Waste Life is Flamenco The Head in his fedora hat Composers and Mistakes Alistair Graham; Like a copper coin Blood Test Choir Boy Hedge their bets I’m your granny, mr Pieces of broken pencil Michael Whelan; Paradox of the peacekeeper in the holy land The cinder bus Arms Moral of the story Silent Convoys This is the day Jack Grady; Bosnia at War’s End Spider Finale on the Via Veneto Herculaneum’s Sideshow Barker of Curiosities Audience with a Queen Mother Tornado Tracks

On The Wall Message from the Alleycats

page 52

John Jack Byrne; John’s work can be found

page 60-62 3

Round the Back P.W. Bridgman; Even Unto My Death You Shall Be Judged

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Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 23 High Street, Ballyhalbert BT22 1BL Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 50 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/ Published in Baskerville Oldface & Times New Roman Produced in Belfast & Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland.

All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 77 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Cover Image “Predecessor� by Amos Greig

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“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” Aristotle.

Editorial I’m working on May and I’m reminded how important this time is for workers and indeed families we are where we are because of people’s sacrifices. This issue contains an amazing selection of work poetry, senru and artwork from around the world.

I’ve had work accepted in a dozen journals and anthologies so far this year. Also I provided the artwork for a crime novel due out soon it is well worth reading. I provide this magazine for free I put a lot of effort in for no monetary gain I believe that people need a platform for their work and A New Ulster is such a service.

Northern Ireland still bears the scars of the Troubles and we have started to stumble over Peace and Reconciliation there is an emphasis on the past and history here sadly that history can itself be biased and only helps pollute the future for other generations.

Easter is a time of rebirth and reflection and I find myself looking back at the beginning of this magazine a lot of time and effort has gone into producing every issue and while I look at the first issue with fondness I can see that the issue has grown and suffered teething problems along the way I do not seek to push an agenda or a directive instead I’m providing a platform for artists to share their work, to reach a global audience I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity!

Amos Greig

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Biographical Note: Rehan Qayoom

Rehan Qayoom is a poet, editor and translator educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work at international venues. He has published 2 books of poetry.

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Ophiuchos (Rehan Qayoom) I’ve noticed, the closer you get to the real thing in any bout of writing, the more formidable are the perverse interruptions, the deflections, tempting diversions and sheer obstacular incidents. The Alchemists were so familiar with it, they gave it a name – Ophiucos i.e. the Great Snake (no less!)

Ted Hughes. Letter to William Scammell. 2nd October 1993. Letters of Ted Hughes. Selected & Edited by Christopher Reid. (Faber & Faber, 2007). 648, 649.

The heart is husbanded with your deeply serious moon-bedrizzled eyes A mysterious dead-bright-diamond tear-crush ‘Shaken in a dice cup and held up to me’ Wine-lipped, it talks but does not talk It shares its grief with an innocence clean and pure as dead babies a Thousand lineaments and taut strings All late coming to the courts of God Girl, you do not question the life ‘out of living’ You do not question an embrace You hold it hot, feel all the shipshape heart fill up into it You feel it heave with blood-throbs It survives On shoots, leaves, air, guilt Curses and verses – As for me myself!

I dribble with poetry As black as does not trigger-rush a happy smile-child With a healing saliva because it cannot I am stuck in a rut, cockle, mucous-eating membrane I am daft with the drug that sizzles in a girl My art is being driven to the brim of a precipice and taught not to jump An Aunt Sally to frigid stoners Comical, curlicue-like mokomoki “He is not to be allowed to sleep” he hears the pick-a-pockets yelp “He is not to be allowed to weep (Or keep) For that would mean another life And he mustn’t be allowed to have that 8

You see, he is not to be allowed to live Except in disguise, of course He is not to be allowed to rise He is not to be allowed to give” he hears them beg “Or receive He just won’t be gone” Like That? On on on The the blood gush It is all good So not the devil but the devil disguised as the devil disguised And trying hard To be content to be just that O gape, enunciate, hawk up gobfuls

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Found Inscribed (Rehan Qayoom) I am in love With you I love you I want you(r) Complete

On ‘Speck of Blue’

'Speck of Blue' So beautifully true The evidence is you Her jewels (Were read) Red and blue We do not fear The tap root, dear We have been there

*

I know you won’t reply to me But when you get back And make yourself a coffee Remember what you lack

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Biographical Note: Katie Lewington

Katie Lewington is a student living in Hertfordshire, in the United Kingdom. When she isn’t studying she spends her time searching for a job although she does often tend to be distracted by the blank page and all of the ideas in her head clamouring to get out onto it.

She has previously been published in online magazine/journal After the pause.

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Reform (Katie Lewington) You’re searching for that one person To transform your life To put everything right You don’t have to repent They love you and every Last one of your regrets But you shouldn’t need to look far Take a glimpse in the mirror And there you are Change your life

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Us (Katie Lewington) I attend college you work a job We text words distance us Neither of us really concentrate On what we are tasked to do in the morning I would like to see you sooner And spend the night together My heart swells The chains are invisible The bond we share is too But you are irresistible You pull me in

I am caught in high winds I can’t look any further forward Than our first kiss.

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Bottom (Katie Lewington) My God That arse Snotty face Small rimmed glasses Tall pale pink neck Flat chest Tan coloured leather skirt Clinging to her backside An anal advertisement The shape of two very well rounded buttocks They dance with her hips As she walks

Let me get down on my knees And worship you.

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Education (Katie Lewington) Adults in the classroom Distracted by other things at school Back at it again College Sitting at a desk Lessons Phone on silent Pen in hand Heads cocked to listen to tutor We are children Seven years old Though we have wedding rings Car keys And coffee for breakfast now With wide hips We have trouble fitting into playground swings How many more of us Nodding heads like yes I understand this subject matter But I don’t do you I’m confused

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A bellowing (Katie Lewington) I have come to a halt Social media account got to a point I’m rushing it writing it I am drunk Do I have to keep posting Til my views add up Do we weigh up an impression enough?

Need to strap up my wounds I am writing in the privacy of my room I’m feeling more than lust Words, yes also L E T T E RS Those keys of the piano I am unsure of how to play but really, the font, Size, colour, count Can I arrange like a tea party R we heard What attracts us - smell sense scent, a quirk?

Words are so vulnerable Sanitized babies are no good/we want unkind coups Not an ample amount of subtle

By the way I am loving your blog.

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Biographical Note: Michael Mc Aloran

Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). He is the author of a number of collections of poetry, prose poetry, poetic aphorisms and prose, most notably 'Machinations', (Knives, Forks & Spoons), 'Attributes', (Desperanto, NY, 2011), 'The Non Herein' & ‘Of Dead Silences’ (Lapwing Publications, 2011/ 2013), 'All Stepped/ Undone', ‘Of the Nothing Of’, 'The Zero Eye', 'The Bled Sun', 'In Damage Seasons',(Oneiros Books (U.K)--2013/ 14); 'Code #4 Texts' a collaboration with the Dutch poet, Aad de Gids, was also published in 2014 by Oneiros. He was also the editor/ creator of Bone Orchard Poetry, & edited for Oneiros Books (U.K 2013/ 2014). A further collection, 'Un-Sight/ Un-Sound (delirium X.), was published by gnOme books (U.S), and 'In Arena Night' is forthcoming from Lapwing Publications...

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...(intro)

/ember absence ash emerge recede silence warp-ember absence emergence warp...voice non-stir utterance claim overture pulse magnet dry bone non-stir overture... absence bones flesh breath hollow echo sky crack claustrophobe intact scar risen...caress non-stir vocal silence ever-amber ember ash... overture tide silence silenced presence claim once claim other intact caress flesh breath...voice non-stir absent a... claustrophobe intact ever-ashen ember silence claim... absence ever-bone clad silence breath a-breathe foreign... echo hollow distance foreign...claustrophe scar silence non-vocal tidal utterance/ (outro)...

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...(intro)/ voice wordless dredge design subtle hollow break surface dead follow bled bleed nocturne out-step collapse...spoke less ever-speech cleft stun break point zero tint...collapse dread foreign wordless subtle break...less wordless hollow follow dread...absolute bled speech echo blind distance eradicate... claim once twice +1/ expel skins purpose foreign subtle breakage edge bone wordless stun break... once claim dread state unfollow bled speech absolute eradicate final ice...blind echo on speech-ever lack dredge wordless subtle breakage... voice...claim forgotten...ever-forgotten expel edge once twice bleed +1/ (outro)...

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...(intro) /collide broke tide ever voice breathe ice-dim vocalise claim speech jagged refresh collapse un-sight...dead tone vascular sky emptily vocalised...breath earth in-sound vibrate speech-claim un-sight speech erased... jagged silence collapse vibrant voice bled un-breathe dead tone speech-claim broke bones warp... dawning echo vibrate pissoir vascular endless voice un-dead solace empty...warp broken claim speech less empty solace record vibrate dead un-breath elect bone...elective dawning echo non-forage silence erased records dead stun elective absent absence...splice shale words discard silence absence all/ (outro)...

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...(intro)/ excise mark claim vocal tide pageant silence crack stillness breath abound...tide silence obscure trace vocal stone wind excise...breath non-spoken lapse collide fallen re-fallen waters bone sharp dislodge expire...crack voice filter dredge irreversible step one abound...fall drift emblem traceless obscure...once final edge excise... break stun inflex abort sever obsolete reclaim lack silence...expire void breath-bleed re-spoken spoken echo tint sever broke stun shatter trace collapse bleed foreign inflex...utters waste climb passage breath redempt invert collide ashen promise...shatter bleed foreign X...trace tint sky abort void expire obsolete/ (outro)...

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...(intro)/ flex beheld echo glimmer reflective...skin-clad mercury... dissonance traceless endless...bone flex rot climb terrain in-speech colour-trace echo-echo vibrate reflective...trace expound collapse in-trace vapour terrain dissonant...vibrate in-step carrion accolade bone flex warp stone emptily... subtle force gesture lack eradicate erasure tide subtle...erased voice climb dead pause absent landscape... eradicate gesture silence bound...flex non-breathe vocal entity trace emasculate redeem climb flex...pause absent landscape lack force eradicate gesture silence non-entity obscure/ subtle edge break/ sharp voice collapse/ (outro)...

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...(intro)/ vocal non-voice choke stun remnant collide...chamber echo splice hollow breathe demarcate wrang...stunt vocal ashen choke sky collide remnant...non-sung breathe sudden escapade collapse lack sustenance... chamber vibrate excise splice gutter stun echo sudden splice collapse...non-voice solace erasure... distance ever-lock clear shock sudden remnant...zone foreign malign interstice...vibrate lack echo-shock erased voice clear wrang dense expel...ever-lock interstice pulse clear remnant dissipate...distance foreign breath choke sudden vocal trace silence malign...voice clear dense expel dissipate interstice/ (outro)...

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...(intro)/ trace non-stir reverberate silence reclamation violent... silence permeate expel claim dredge undone...vocal non-stir penetrate claim ember trace lack-will...break stun trace reclamation...etch clasp weight expel final obsolete...solace lack permeate dredge undone non-stir...shard clasp bled echo echo tidal... echo echo tidal trace penetrate obscure excise collide trace non-trace...collide trace silence etch silenced vocal lack... lack trace echo solace malign claim dredge non-will erasure...bite lock break...permeate clasp weight expel final obsolete...non-stir bound edge +1...tidal trace echo collide trace silence silenced/ ...(outro)...

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...(intro)/ zero attribute claim crack severance edge lapse... collide non-step exert shimmer bled lack...lapse attribute un-spoke silence barrage crack lapse zero absolve...non-step recede recession blind traceless catascope absence redempt...(steps back into)...blind zero aptitude exert sky-lapse silence breath non-stir... voice-traipse absent recollect collect...barrage silent... attribute of...silence spoke...lapse resolve of zero crack zero closed non-wound...non-closed wound zero...it...desolately wound collapse un-dread...silence silenced silence silenced silenced spoken non-spoken...utterance out...bails out erased pageant exert/ spoke none/ (outro)...

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Biographical Note: John Doyle

John Doyle, 39, from County Kildare has recently returned to writing poetry after a considerable absence. He was educated at N.U.I. Maynooth, and is influenced by a diverse range of writers, many of whom do not adhere to canonical peccadilloes.

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Sirocco and Topaz (John Doyle) Sirocco and Topaz are siblings evenly divided above beach shaded lowland channeled between tear-blue axis;

Down at the seaside El Masnou edges close pulling other delicate linguists from summertime drifts

Topaz and Sirocco so jealous they snarl while artists' easels burn

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Cool Cats (John Doyle) Foggy-eyed felines holding court on cool tin roofs.

It is where that word "congregate" transcends whispering Latin quill a screeching Serengeti vertebrae hoarding root-meaning that newcomers inspect sure as dawn un-cackles its zip there are more inquisitors licking clean their padded fists as they leap monster-green drumlins swishing their arriving din; Later they bathe in cooling purrs cumbersome sentient chat and the one who must make that nimble leap sees Heaven glint brilliance on watered greys children meme-ing their adolescence to tight furry adult dusks

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Army Recruits, Curragh Co.Kildare, Circa 1900 (John Doyle) Terms such as spit and polish rough around the edges march their meaning in rounds of thin-skinned suckling tribes a boy, 17 or so, bowl fringe and tenement scowl hugs his gun, stiffened from his sergeant major's bark while die-hard ruffians sneer in chings of Victoria's pennies

How many of them speak Irish? have mothers who wobble to mass, exchanging chat as slugs land near bedazzled furze? fathers who pour watery stout, an archer's slant eulogising their tilt?

Sahara brown shoes shunt night time's grip from morning stars across Brownstown, Nurney, peeling stares do not attend to a camera's command they are watching some H.G. Wells freak with a loaded biro take aim at their lives instead

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Penrith, New South Wales (John Doyle)

1. Where Richie Benaud's clumping feet took split-second intervals conjuring mists around Penrith, Cumbria;

Its hairy stinking Celts, pummeling

new roads, pre-Roman routes to Scottish forts

2. Benaud's Huguenot coat of arms will soon avert cannon balls hearing their impotent ceasefire,

on similar hard-bastard carved roads

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Biographical Note: David McLean

David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dogs, Oscar & Costa. In addition to various chapbooks, McLean is the author of seven full-length poetry collections. The last four of thse are from Oneiros Books and called NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO HEAVEN BUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO DIE (June, 2013), THINGS THE DEAD SAY (Feb, 2014), OF DESIRE AND THE LESION THAT IS THE EGO (May, 2014) & ZARA & THE GHOST OF GERTRUDE (Oct, 2014). MHis first novel HENRIETTA REMEMBERS (2015) is also at Oneiros Books athttp://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneiro sbooks/henrietta-remembers/. More information about McLean can be found at his blogs http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/

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anxious a nighttime (David McLean) life falls over them like light might anxious a nighttime. it is wire and cables a variable structure loveless. their sanity is made of medicine and maybe they are without faces or roots wherever time might be, memory and Gramme Friday. there is no forever without even trying.

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where words went (David McLean) & here the place where time goes soon enough, where words went to join unsleeping dreamers their evident heaven

it is not logic stopping but failing application screaming at marzipan moon unthinkable,

obvious the not. we are sleeping here essentially, a hole full of worlds where words once were

we have nightmares & scars, absences to share

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where devils were (David McLean) where devils were was furniture knots in wood & the obvious impossibility of any absolution ever because nothing had ever been wrong// & yet pain there was possible & avoidance behavior predicated on the undesirability of sleep just watching devils flourishing in flaws in the wood// it is children full of every conceivable absence they never needed either death or drunken boasts about resurrection or the uncertainty of memory the foul scents we associate with digestion & sex

where devils were there is plenty/ & i was next

unspecified enemy Doubtless, the present situation is highly discouraging (Deleuze & Guattari)

it might be children, the not specified saboteurs or deserters might be me, children or madmen, it might be a sleeping kitten or a tree devising cunning new cocoons of innocence wherein to conceal all the evil/ here is the voyeuristic policeman they have concealed within the sly skeleton/

the machine rolls on, rumbling war like Sparta waking up at night sweating, all waking together & screaming, the modern inane the eyes the camera they are watching the children the prisoners the madmen in the distorting mirrors of this disgusting Panopticon, gross as their god is, their sodden conscience washed in blood and loveless// nothing is as nothing does/ to it is illegal to dream today, there is nothing so anxious as the prospect of freedom// eyes are for spying with, not seeing

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futile Peyote dance (David McLean) and it is the futile Peyote Dance resurrected again for all the madmen hanging like bats from the rafters in some disingenuous midnight temple. they have torn the scabs from their arms to wall up the seven devils dead and eternally protected accordingly, they are losing all their memories to be; they are forgetting memory and learning to be – they want to be everything, but no body really wants to be free

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Biographical Note: Cailean Jack

Born in the death throes of the eighties, Cailean Jack writes poems while longing for the death of disco and avoiding the Archers on Radio 4. His influences are Steve Harris, Vincent Furnier and Don Van Vliet. Whilst writing since his early teens, he is only starting now to publish his work which ranges from lyrical, protest to experimental.

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Lead in Red (Cailean Jack) I fell into a ha-ha dug by a nation.

Where is ubuntu?

Where is the now, lost in ennui, down the tar pit in a lull, a lullaby sung, still to tame like a pup, castrated shih-tzu, ugly and dumb.

No wonder we compel men with antidisenstablishment agendas to make the word go ‘hush’.

Take your agenda and take your men, all flaccid and empty, out.

Take them to the acid bath, to the acid jacuzzi and let them drown in the despair of everything.

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Hello Ween (Cailean Jack)

Change the font Change the typeset Change the size Change the radio station Change the record Change your car, your credit card Your interest rate Change the walls of Jericho, the Keeper of the Seven Keys Change pink bubbles go ape chameleon master of the rings the time of the oath better than raw the dark ride rabbit don't come easy the legacy gambling with the devil 7 sinners straight out of hell, my God-given right

Bubble go pop pop pop poop poppy pop pop he he pop hep up pup pup puppy dog pupa pa papapapapapa Patagonia gone go

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Biographical Note: Peter O’Neill

Peter O’ Neill was born in Cork in 1967. His debut collection Antiope (Stonesthrow Poetry) appeared in 2013, and to critical acclaim.

‘Certainly a voice to the reckoned with.’

Dr Brigitte Le JueZ (DCU). His second collection The Elm Tree was published by Lapwing (2014), ‘A thing of wonder to behold.’ Ross Breslin ( The Scum Gentry ). His third collection The Dark Pool is due to appear early in 2015 (mgv2publishing), and a fourth Dublin Gothic (Kilmog Press) is also due to appear early 2015.

As well as being a regular contributor to A New Ulster, The Scum Gentry, The

Galway Review, Danse Macabre and mgv2publishing, his work has also appeared in: Abridged, Bone Orchard,Colony, Levure Littéraire, Outburst, Paysages Écrits and Poetry Bus. He has edited two publications for mgv2publishing: And Agamemnon dead. The Mauvaise Graine Anthology of Early Twenty First Century Irish Poetry (March, 2015), and Transverser issue 81MGv2>datura – Transversions of Early Twenty First Century French Poetry. He holds an MA in Comparative Literature (DCU) and a BA in philosophy (DCU). He is currently working on his tenth collection.

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Work Continuum (Peter O’Neill) I Heidegger's conception of metaphysics is to be found in the idea of aletheia, or disclosure; the revealing of the event momentous, Be-ING preceded by a series of factors allowing for the fortuitous encounter, everything leading up to it Be-ING enduring, Endurance being a key component In the revelatory nature of Self, Fidelity also Shown in the striving For the event to happen.

Heraclitus's dictum, nature loves to hide Underscoring it all.

All such notions being taken up again

by Alan Badiou in his monumental Being and Event.

II

"So what!" I hear you say.

"How in the name of sweet Governor Fuch can any of this help us in our Day to day?"

A fair point.

Well then, you can apply all of this to any situation, this is its beauty.

Take your wife, or husband... Or whosoever you share your life with, 40

to such a degree that you practically cease to see them as they really are, through habit!

Such is non-being, living in such a delusion that you have forgotten how to be stimulated by them again.

Until... one day they dress up to go out and on see-ING them, all the old fever returns, causing the blood to burn, and the force of their beauty is immediately restored to you again, though you hardly deserve it.

III

The idea of the Muse comes from such encounters, even if this idea might appear funny to some, living as we are in a world of hyper technology, a world becoming all the more literal.

She is metaphor itself, representing a being greater than ourselves there is divinity in such a notion.

Be-ING outside ourselves!

Anyone who has fallen at the feet of another will understand this notion.

And those who do not...

Ha! Well, (1) they will either perish alone... or, end up kissing the ground upon which that Other walks upon.

Ok. That's it.

Go back to living your own day to day shit.

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Biographical Note: Richard Halperin

•

Richard W. Halperin's full collections are published by Salmon Poetry Limited, Cliffs of Moher: Anniversary , 2010; Shy White Tiger, 2013; andQuiet in a Quiet House, listed for Autumn 2015. His shorter collections are published by Lapwing: A Wet Day & Mr Sevridge Sketches; Pink, Ochre, Yellow; and The Centreless Astonishment of Things, all 2014. Two poets whom he admires without measure are C.P. Stewart, who is published

by Lapwing; and Macdara Woods, who is published by Dedalus.

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Delicious Diamond Squares (Richard Halperin) My mother left Belfast in 1922, nobody’s finest hour.

Once emigrated, she never spoke of it, save for a few phrases ‘Black and Tans,’ ‘curfews,’ ‘delicious diamond squares.’

At various points in her subsequent seven decades as an exotically accented New Yorker, when asked where she came from, she’d say ‘Belfast’ or ‘Kent,’ mood depending.

When asked, because of her face, if she was Irish, she would say enthusiastically ‘Yes’ or ‘English,’ mood depending.

In the 1970s when someone asked her what she thought of the news, she said ‘You mean Saint-Laurent’s pants suits?

I think he’s a genius’ and meant it. The rest might have been happening in Thermopylae.

When she died, she had her ashes scattered near Montego Bay where in the 1950s she had lifted a glass with Eva Gabor and other immigrants.

The Caribbean reminded her of Bangor, which if the truth be told, she always missed.

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The Visitors (Richard Halperin) They drop in occasionally. Just making Sure, I think. ‘Did you know this or that About your mother?’ they ask. Well, yes, I say, she and I are both about the same age now, about twenty, and besides she never hid anything. ‘Why don’t you write a novel?’ they say, ‘you’ve led such an interesting life.’ All those characters one has to be, I say, I’d be afraid I’d lose my soul.

‘Oh,’ they say. ‘Do you know Marjorie’s just got divorced again?’ Marjorie’s a walking divorce, I say, I’m not surprised. ‘Sundays are tough,’ they say. Not always, I say. ‘Oh,’ they say, and leave. Other calls to pay. Just making sure.

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For Miss Jelkes, Honey (Richard Halperin) A beach.

I put my book aside, my companion Arthur Waley.

Has anyone ever handled the English language as well as he?

I am looking out at the horizon which means I am looking at nothing since horizons are only constructs of the mind to help us not lose our minds while looking.

The sea is actually rampant, given on what it stands.

Shores may be a construct of the sea’s to keep the sea from losing its mind when looking.

A nice hot cup of camomile tea for the sea, please.

Out there I see little boats with dark red sails One of them has my name on it.

Nearly time to take it.

‘There’ is an unnecessary word,

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Matutinal (Richard Halperin) I scratch with my pen, scratch scratch.

I miss my mother. Yes, this still happens.

Maybe look at some poetry, the laughing mirror.

I am about to meet some friends and thank God for that.

Soon it will be over but soon does not exist.

Now is, so settle into it.

Don’t look at the newspaper even though it is Sunday.

Some new goof is driving Apollo’s chariot (I speak of government) and we shall all die in flames.

But death is not the end, or so I feel.

What is the stars?

Ten thousand years of us, the beast du moment, are pegged on four words and one italics of an inspired writer, a country I love also pegged on it.

Something just a little off and, seen through the breach, infinity pity love.

A wee hole in the hedge.

But who is behind one when one is crouching peeking through it?

Forget the beautiful garden.

Turn around.

Have a hamburger with someone.

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Biographical Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne

John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://john-isleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Despair (John Jack Byrne) I loosen the tie on my arm and wait for the hit, which does not disappoint me, and delivers my daily rush of despair A floating numbness which once again explores my body, searching out a place to unload it’s intoxicating despair I lie half sitting half crouched like the freak I have made of myself an outcast of a decent society a harbourer of raw despair A desolate soul ,searching for a final ultimate high that astounding thrill of a lifetime, instead I get the poison of despair Will this be the day to cast off this leper’s yolk, and rise above the monster I have become, a monster riddled by despair Or am I to become another wretched bony corpse, in the alley of human misery, who has succumbed to despair .

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Velvet Fingers (John Jack Byrne) Oh! joy to you sweet daffodil, with whom sunshine always lingers, swaying and dancing on the breeze on stems of velvet fingers.

A sign that winter’s left behind, bright colours all aglow, filling hearts with happiness, across the valleys far below.

How great to see your comrades snowdrop and crocus too, heralding spring and all her gifts, white clouds and skies of blue.

A taste of love fills the air and for sure it always lingers, with trumpet sounds the daffodil on stems of velvet fingers.

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Gale (John Jack Byrne) Today you dance upon the clouds I gaze in awe and sigh I hear your song on the mountain top a song which makes me cry I see you make the tall trees sway and the wires to hum a tune you even play with the garden gate by the roses yet to bloom You hurry waves across the sea that run high upon the beach striking fear in lover’s hearts where no human hand can reach Your temper reaches greater heights against those which make a stand in the end they always lose no match for your great hand So angry wind play your game blow strong loud and wild in the end your tantrum’s spent and you quieten like a child

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Biographical Note: Strider Marcus Jones

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford/Hinckley, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusjones1. He is a maverick, moving between forests, mountains and cities, playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.

His poetry has been accepted for publication in 2015 by mgv2 Publishing Anthology; Earl Of Plaid Literary Journal 3rd Edition; Subterranean Blue Poetry Magazine; Deep Water Literary Journal, 2015-Issue 1; Kool Kids Press Poetry Journal; Page-A-Day Poetry Anthology 2015; Eccolinguistics Issue 3.2 January 2015; The Collapsed Lexicon Poetry Anthology 2015 and Catweazle Magazine Issue 8; Life and Legends Magazine; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Amomancies Poetry Magazine; The Art Of Being Human Poetry Magazine; Cahaba River Literary Journal; East Coast Literary Review; Nightchaser Ink Publishing Anthology Autumn Reign; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu Issue 27/29/31; Poems For A Liminal Age Anthology; In The Trenches Poetry Anthology; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; Writing Raw Poetry Magazine;The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section8Magazine; Danse Macabre Literary Magazine and The Lampeter Review.

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I'M GETTING OLD NOW (Strider Marcus Jones) i'm getting old nowyou know, like that tree in the yard with those thick cracks in its skinbark that tell you the surface of its lived-in secrets. my eyes, have sunk too inward in sleepless sockets to playback images of ghostsso make do with words and hear the sounds of my years in yourself. childhoodriding a rusty three-wheel bike to shelled-out houses bombed in the blitz, then zinging home zapped in mud to wolf down chicken soup over lumpy mashed potato for teawith bare feet sticking on cold kitchen lino i shivered watching the candle burn down racing to finish a book i found in a binbefore Mam showed me her empty purse and robbed the gas meterthe twenty shillings stained the red formica table like pieces of the man's brains splattered all over the back seat of his rambolic limousine as i watched history brush out her silent secrets.

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NOTES ON SCRAPS OF SCREEN PAPYRUS (Strider Marcus Jones) notes on scraps of screen papyrus, symbol songs of our belongsinspire us in the coffee smokes of day where the fire was in humid heats ash trayinside us far away. the new consensus doesn't show nomads in the census of its blow whose glow glads the past they left too slow: and the falling befalling where we now need to gomisfits the steps of the facefits in this trough of peaks and parapets. so we want wildly the wilderness that isnt fearcut off, empty, smiley, pallet clearthe colours changed so rearranged and us not here.

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SYMPHONIC WASTE (Strider Marcus Jones) a quiet night. even the candle flame isn't flickeringthink i'll just blow out its light and turn down the radio bickering. symphonic waste between the two goes back space for what is trueand the same discontented self dismantles every shelf of previous obsessions contaminated with old confessions. then your persuasions window walk in panes of pillow talkinside this how, in here, in nowwhere no mortal elements can darken our consoled consents with ribbons of ripped repents that leave membranous scars: and when they do, they are no more than me, or youeveryone is subservient to the stars.

LIFE IS FLAMENCO why can't i walk as far and smoke more tobacco, or play my spanish guitar like Paco, putting rhythms and feelings without old ceilings you've never heard before in a word. life is flamenco, to come and go high and low fast and slow-

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she loves him, he loves her and their shades within caress and spur in a ride and dance of tempestuous romance. outback, in Andalucien ease, i embrace you, like melted breeze amongst ripe olive treesdark and different, all manly scent and mind unkempt. like i do, Picasso knew everything about you when he drew your elongated arms and legs around me, in this perpetual bed of emotion and motion for these soft geometric angles in my finger strokes and exhaled smokes of rhythmic bangles to circle colour your Celtic skin with primitive phthalo blue pigment in wiccan tattoo before entering vibrating wings through thrumming strings of wild lucid moments in eternal components. i can walk as far and smoke more tobacco, and play my spanish guitar like Paco.

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THE HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT (Strider Marcus Jones) a lonely man, cigarette, rain and music is a poem moving, not knowinga caravan, whose journey does not expect to go back and explain how everyone's ruts have the same blood and vein. the head in his fedora hat bows to no one's grip, brim tilted into the borderless plain so his outlaw wit can confess and remain a storyteller, that hobo fella listening like a barfly for a while and slow-winged butterfly whose smile they can't close the shutters on or stop talking about when he walks out and is gone. whisky and tequila and a woman, who loves to feel ya inside and outside her when ya move and live as one, brings you closer in simplistic 56

unmaterialistic grooved muse Babylon. this is so, when he stands with hopes head, arms and legs all aflow in her Galadriel glow with mithril breath kisses condensing sensed wishes of reality and dream felt and seen under that fedora hat inhaling smoke as he sang and spoke stranger fella storyteller.

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COMPOSERS AND MISTAKES (Strider Marcus Jones) when I see the evening, with it's ordinary sounds and shapes so full of unbelieving composers and mistakes coming insomething wakes, and I begin. what I can't affect is getting colder as I grow older, retreating insideI could be your wreck if I was bolder and called you over, over this sidethrough the honeysuckle arch of midnight, moon like a lid bright shield in the sky; on the grass where footsteps last in this lightmaking a cast where you walked by.

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Biographical Note: Alistair Graham

Alistair lives and works in Belfast. He has two published collections; War and Want Streets of Belfast Both published by Lapwing. He is currently working on a third collection which is approaching completion

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A Copper Coin (Alistair Graham) A woman stood in her denim skirt at the traffic lights, waiting to cross Like a young bird, she nodded up to the lights down to the push-button, up to the lights; her pretty face, waiting its turn She marched towards the green man, her left arm, like an oar in a boat race, swishing by her side The quick red car jumped the lights, smashed into her long legs in tights, flipped her body and her world like a copper coin

to land face down in the pooled blood, on cold concrete of ground

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Blood Test (Alistair Graham) He gave her his arm; she took his blood into her syringe, filled it, like a tall glass; wine tumbling down inside, rising to the brim.

He placed his lips anxiously on the rim (in his mind) to drink it down, to test the sugar, for himself.

She confirmed the results would be ready in five days. “I will phone you,” she said, if that’s ok?” “I’ll wait for your call,” he replied.

He closed the door 61

behind him on the way out; in his mind, he saw his lips, on the rim of the cup at the alter in St George’s, the day of his confirmation.

Choir Boy (Alistair Graham)

Clad in armour; cassock, surplus, ruffle. ChoralEucharist heart to tongue, organ grinder, shovel, fuel, mouth, furnace

Pounding out from pipes to chancel, up to prod 62

persistent skin, on painted panel ceiling in, a bid to flee inquisition

Having shared in blood and body, I defrock the day then leave, to be driven home with evening visitation head of seed; Magnificat Nunc Dimittis, parish of St George

Hedge Their Bets (Alistair Graham) I watch them file their bank statements their complaints their tax returns their nails I watch them file for their divorces I watch them file 63

into the house of god to hedge their bets

I’m Your Granny, Mr (Alistair Graham)

The voice on the phone said, “it’s because you weren’t alive, in the nineteen forties, lad, no brutal wars, did you survive

You don’t know what it’s like to live on rations and in fear, to see your city bombed to hell, watch your loved ones disappear

Your generation, lad got it so good, it’s thanks to us you got a start; education, homes and food”

I held the mobile phone away, a distance from my ear, considered the receiver,

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imagined words I couldn’t hear

I said; “I was born in sixty eight, heard the guns from my mother’s womb, I could sense the fear and panic; my future, I presumed

As a child I walked, broken-bottle streets alongside barricaded roads I fled from shops with hysterical humans, heard the screams; it’s going to explode!

I did without bread, milk, school and electric, learned to count tit-for-tat on the news.

I tried to keep score, the task was impossible; the numbers morphed into empty shoes

I knew where I could walk 65

and where I dare not wander I learned to discriminate gunfire from firework I grew up with a head placed on my shoulders, a furnished residence, where minds go berserk

I rose from my bed hours before breakfast, to the sight of a soldier at the foot of my door A common occurrence for a child in a battlefield, the car parked nearby, a bomb for a war

While out at play I jawed with the army, posted at our post office to guard the cash I sat on the bench in the armoured vehicle; shiny black boots, 66

silver cigarette ash

In the high church in High Street on Sundays, I donned my cassock, surplice and ruff As head boy I sang the Benedictus, prayed to god; Enough is Enough

In sixty eight I came out of this world, into a war-torn city with bullets and bombs I wept as I watched my brothers and sisters go the way I had come; into the ground they thronged”

I paused, then said to the voice “don’t tell me, what eggs I should buy; if I should buy any at all 67

And please, don’t tell me how I should suck them, I’m your granny, Mr; I talk straight and walk tall”

Pieces of Broken Pencil (Alistair Graham)

We could tell the sun was up.

We could feel the heat seeping in Below the curtains.

We couldn’t Get from under the duvet, couldn’t Bring ourselves to rise to the occasion.

In the end we did, together in unison, Like a couple of doves Released from a wicker basket.

We found our legs, gathered up Our thoughts, then like greyhounds, Sprung from a trap, doggedly We seized the day and won once We prized open our eyes, With pieces of broken pencil

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Biographical Note: Michael J. Whelan

Michael J. Whelan is a soldier-poet, writer & historian (Curator – Irish Air Corps Aviation Museum) living in Tallaght County Dublin. He served as a peacekeeper in South Lebanon and Kosovo during the conflicts in those countries, which inspires much of his work. He was 2nd Place Winner in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2011, Shortlisted in 2012 with a Special Commendation in 2013. He was 3rd Place Winner in the Jonathon Swift Creative Writing Awards 2012, shortlisted in the Doire Press and Cork Literary Manuscript Competitions and selected for the Eigse Eireann/Poetry Ireland Introductions 2012. His work has appeared in the Hennessy New Irish Writing 2013, Poetry Ireland Review, the Red Line Book Festival and other literary magazines and newspapers. New poems appeared in a new anthology titled ‘The Hundred Years War’ published by Bloodaxe UK in May 2014.

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PARADOX OF THE PEACEKEEPER IN THE HOLY LAND (Michael J. Wehlan) I am forever walking upon the shore betwixt the sand and the foam.

The high tide will erase my footprints, and the wind will blow away the foam, but the sea and the shore will remain forever Kahlil Gibran In Lebanon I sought redemption like the pilgrim at the crossroads of Heliopolis, on the Bekaa’s great range where Bedouin caravans met and Romans laid their bodies down in supplication to their gods, to Aphrodite and Jupiter, and long before this peacekeeper came on what seemed a fools errant, whose only armour was the feeble weave of a blue flag, before these wars for modernity and religion where the new city’s shadows fall like dead soldiers on the broken steps of Astarte’s Temple, where the priests of Baalbek burned incense, lay themselves prostrate with tribute and homage beseeching fertility over the land and on warriors on the eve of battle and the same priests parcelled out her favours to believers who built new columns to the sun god on her ruins, before all this there was blood on the stones and in the dust of Tyre, of Sidon and in Byblos, and the gods looked down from the heavens and laughed for they knew that man knew not of their fallibilities, their eyes kept the storms that belief constructed – the defence of Masada by Jewish zealots against ramparts, siege-towers and battering rams of enemies - never giving in, the caliphs who ordered the conquests of Bilad al-Sham, Helen who setting forth from Constantinople to Jerusalem in search of the Cross set beacons ready to burn along the way and Constantine, her son, converted his empire in promise to his mother who lit the path for Crusaders and the burial places of a thousand years under these skies of mumatus clouds that hang like fronds of fruit 70

above the hills at dusk, who rest like relics with Saracens and Mamluks, the swords of east and west, the holy books of Abraham, Mohamed and Byzantium, where Gilgamesh cleaved the cedars for his ships and where now the free man might dig with trowels once more, adjure in the Temple of Baachus, revere the flake-bones of gladiators under the triumphal arch of Al-Minah - the hippodrome at Tyre, where fishermen still cast their nets on the same Phoenician shore in Galilee beneath the stirring sands of Jordan and camels sometimes carry scholars through the Quadisha Valley like in the old days passing slopes of red anemone, wild tulip, oleander and poppy and young girls might seek the damask rose in the gorges of forgotten ambushes, where sultans and kings slaked their pious thirsts – slew their enemies and exiled the youth of many futures – those pawns who lay penitent at the altars, who laid down in the Temple of Aphrodite like the peacekeepers lay down now, yes we who lay down with our wives and lovers like knights with sacred talismans and far away they lie down with us under the same different moons, they wait and pray looking up upon the many faces of the gods who see us only as a fleeting moment on the pages of passing civilizations, the rising and setting of the sun and we know the signal fires are burning, the funeral pyres rise up in pillars of ash in the marches between the watchtowers along the border wire and we know that so much metal has been fired in this cauldron from arrowheads and spears to icons and the corrupted jagged shards of bombs, shrapnelled landmines and bullets. On a rainy day we can almost smell it weeping through the red mud tracks of an army and we must watch our step.

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THE CINDER BUS (Michael J. Whelan) Palestinian West Bank Above me a jet leaves a long scratch on a perfect sky.

The crowds pour out, the shutters come down, the town changes shape.

Then comes the shouts, the stones, the bottles and bricks smashing into shuttered shop fronts and the patrolling Israeli soldiers channelling through the streets in a slow verse of history, into the familiar well-rehearsed ambush, this arsenal of new rubble, this old battleground, this biblical reverie of rubber bullets and smoke, laden down, nervous and young, hands stuck fast to guns, helmets hanging on the backs of their heads, chin-straps between their teeth like a horses bit, frothing at the mouth, invisible bridles strung out pulling armoured chariots through the hail like tired scriptures.

No glory descends on this broken road as they pass the cinder bus once more, the sun casting long shadows.

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ARMS (Michael J. Whelan) During the war in Kosovo a lot of ordnance was dropped, the ground sewn with a deadly liberation.

The children didn’t understand, the merchants never cared.

They would come almost daily, in all weathers and none, filthy and cold, traipsing deep puddled footprints in the melting snow, smiles empty, arms filled with cluster bombs and unexploded shells of one kind or another, from one side or the other, for the tin merchant close to our base.

If we gave them money to stop they just brought more, ignored them and they tapped on the wire for hours with the contents of their hands.

Outside the base was a UXO pit our engineers regularly destroyed when it filled up with the ticking harvest.

It was hard, some of us had kids at home.

UXO + Unexploded Ordnance

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THIS IS THE DAY (Michael J. Whelan) Balkans

Narrow lines of yellow tape stretch up into forest hills marking places where it’s safe to trek between unexploded bombs and dead refugees waiting to be rescued.

This is the day a peacekeeper is blown to bits clearing a path to a suspected mass grave near an empty village, where booby-trapped doors wait to be opened, made safe before it might live again.

His friends finishing the search before gathering all the parts of him, zipping him into a dozen body bags, each soldier sweating in his own skin as the dead look on, relieved it wasn’t them.

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MORAL OF THE STORY (Michael J. Whelan)

A convoy of three Mercedes cars and a pick-up truck fleeing the retaliations of the Israeli backed militia, which they have just ambushed, bombs down the hill towards a U.N. roadblock in the narrow chicane of a sun trapped checkpoint manned by Irish peacekeepers.

Full to the teeth with Hezbollah Resistance, fighters armed with rocket propelled grenades and automatic rifles, and not having time to stop in the stifling heat of day, the convoy opens up spraying the checkpoint with bullets and shrapnel.

And the moral of the story?

Peacekeepers in Lebanon may not always hold the centre ground but they are always caught in the middle!

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SILENT CONVOYS ( Michael J. Whelan)

Playing fields and roadsides still hide their prize, flat packed strata in the hard coveting earth, layer upon layer, limbs and possessions mingling in an overcrowded place.

Sometimes we watched from silent convoys, listening for the word to come, the searchers digging for what once were boys and men, longing to feel the day’s breath on their bony faces, to hold up their skeleton arms and call out to those who love them still, “Here I am, here I am, come, take me home.�

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Biographical Note: Jack Grady

Jack Grady is a member of the Ox Mountain Poets, based in Ballina, County Mayo, with local members from North Mayo and West Sligo. An Irish American, he now resides in Ireland, after having worked for several years in the Middle-East. A past winner of the Worcester County (Massachusetts) Poetry Contest, he has had poems published in Crann贸g, Poet Lore, The Worcester Review, The Real Stuff (an anthology once published at Worcester State University), and in And Agamemnon Dead: An Anthology of Early 21st Century Irish Poetry.

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Bosnia at War’s End (Jack Grady)

lamp that still flickers pistol uncocked in a clay pot where a flower blooms

pale neck viewed through a pane of glass with a slanting crack

soldier with one boot on the doorstep

moan light as a whisper

tremor like the flutter of moth's wings

arched back chill of joy surrender and release

a crow suspended on the bed of the wind

a good night's sleep 78

Spider (Jack Grady) I watched you as you weaved your web like a fisherman focused on mending his nets.

I never noticed the flies you drained of life, though I saw the aftermath you left like streamers hoisted on the halyards of a ship.

I enjoyed greeting you every morning and saying goodnight to you while the sun still shone in summer.

Though you had grown fat, your only kill I witnessed was your last: a wasp more massive than you.

Later, I watched you angle your plump berry of an arse over the rigging sheets of your web and shit out digested remains in dark viscous drops.

Soon, a giant of a wasp (perhaps your victim’s mate) took you from your web like an owl hooking a mouse out of an open field. .

I did not see the lair where its larva consumed your still living, paralyzed body, but I saw your web as a ship abandoned, adrift in a gale, sails torn, stays and shrouds tattered ghosts unspinning in the wind.

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Finale on the Via Veneto (Jack Grady) This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T S Eliot, The Hollow Men Before the curtain drops on a buzzing hive of swarming Lambrettas, Time’s end glows in the face of a Fellini clown as his red bulbous nose blows in on itself with a clown’s bicycle horn sound.

That nose is the heart of the universe imploding.

It swallows all laughter in its cries and all cries that linger in the stardust trail of its laughter.

It swallows streaks of black-painted tears that drip from the clown’s disconsolate eyes.

It swallows clown and all as the curtain falls forever on the Via Veneto.

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Herculaneum’s Sideshow Barker of Curiosities (Jack Grady) Your skull, smooth as melted plastic, frames the sockets that once held eyes, vaporised in the same instant as your flesh in a pyroclastic avalanche of gas and ash.

Now, you are sentinel and silent barker at a gated sideshow of death.

The two shaded orbits of your cranium beckon me to your barren garden of the grotesque, then ungratefully demand the password for my presence and arraign me for the visual rape of your resting place.

But I am not the only one, I tell you.

Each day, scores of us are lured by your two dark hollows more commanding than eyes, perhaps legions of the living drawn to view your seared, skeletal remains and those of the hundreds lying strewn behind you.

When I can no longer bare your unflinching stare, I move on with a shuddering wonder at who and what you were.

Serf, slave, working man?

Soldier, seamstress, whore?

Left behind, left as payment— price for a boom town that hugged a volcano’s hem and whose bones and ruins repose now unearthed as freak show of the Big Top named Vesuvius, as museum of the endless and grim circus of death.

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Audience with a Queen Mother (Jack Grady) Sunlight sifts through leaves of the lindens sparkles of topaz.

Sunlight dusts the grey headstones with flickering jewels.

These headstones are crowns, crowns of the dead, the solemn dead, reigning in silence, carried on coffined litters beyond time and space, robed in earth and manicured grass, Persephones in the pageantry of another palace.

And you beside me, you who chose to come here, you who urged me to kneel before my mother's grave, you, her choice for me, had she met you.

And I, half expecting the ground to sigh or boogie to the bacchanal my mother would give us as her blessing.

What I feel instead is the lullaby of your breath and the tender of your hand to mine. .

I sense a wellspring overflowing the reservoir of your eyes as I rise, suddenly Sir Jack, knighted and alive.

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Tornado Tracks (Jack Grady) …nor trees break Except for the will of this blind thing…

—Mark Van Doren, King Wind The day Spring came sprouting tornadoes like tulips from Kansas to New England, I felt wind box my car like a speed ball in a giant’s gym.

Later, I heard that a twister bloodied a boys camp in the neighbouring town.

What was it I had felt then, there in the car?— a distant tendril of the tornado’s rage that I was not in its track or the passing breath of death from the twister’s mate that teased but never touched down?

I looked for the camp where two boys were whipped in a whirl and hurled into trees.

Beheaded, serrated stumps were a clue beside a cornfield’s remains, swept high over a road in a reef-break wave of husks, cobs, and leaves as if caught in a snapshot or frozen in time like Dali’s Still Life Fast Moving.

A friend as a boy left home only minutes before such a blind beast rived it to rubble.

But the wind would not forgive his absence, and it hunted him again when he was a man on bivouac near the Mississippi.

Rumbling down in the night, its monstrous snout sniffing out his tent, it gave him the wild ride of his life, then dropped him on a tent post almost impaled.

When I told him of the dead boys, the trees and the field, he pulled open his shirt and proudly revealed the deep impression aimed for his heart, the mark, he said, of the wind’s final mercy or the scar of his own victory— the silence of his shudder declared he would not dare to guess which.

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If you fancy submitting something but haven’t done so yet, or if you would like to send us some further examples of your work, here are our submission guidelines:

SUBMISSIONS

NB – All artwork must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Indecent and/or offensive images will not be published.

Images must be in either BMP or JPEG format.

Please include your name, contact details, and a short biography. You are welcome to include a photograph of yourself – this may be in colour or black and white.

We cannot be responsible for the loss of or damage to any material that is sent to us, so please send copies as opposed to originals.

Images may be resized in order to fit “On the Wall”. This is purely for practicality.

E-mail all submissions to: g.greig3@gmail.com and title your message as follows: (Type of work here) submitted to “A New Ulster” (name of writer/artist here); or for younger contributors: “Letters to the Alley Cats” (name of contributor/parent or guardian here). Letters, reviews and other communications such as Tweets will be published in “Round the Back”. Please note that submissions may be edited. All copyright remains with the original author/artist, and no infringement is intended.

These guidelines make sorting through all of our submissions a much simpler task, allowing us to spend more of our time working on getting each new edition out!

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MAY 2015’S 2015’S MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:

Happy May Day! Upatree Press are proud to announce the release of debut novel “In the Canyons of Shadow and Light” by talented young author Emily Donoho. Released 12th May – excellent summer reading. Upatree are still on Facebook, but are no longer accepting submissions. If you missed this one, then why not Like and Follow them to be ready for the next intake?

Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone.

Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.

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Biographical Note: John Jack Byrne

John [Jack] Byrne lives in Co. Wicklow ,Ireland he has been writing for almost 6 years mainly poetry; Traditional and Japanese short form and has had some published success in UK , USA, Ireland in Anthologies, Magazines ,Ezines /Journals his blog can be found here: http://johnisleoftheharp.blogspot.ie/

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Only through love by John Jack Byrne

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Your Goodbye by John Jack Byrne

Strolling through by John Jack Byrne 88

Irish Spring by John Jack Byrne

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Biographical Note: P.W. Bridgman P.W. Bridgman is a writer of literary fiction living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has earned undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in psychology and a degree in law as well. His short stories and flash fiction pieces have won prizes or been finalists in several competitions, both in Canada and abroad. Some have been included in anthologies published in Ireland, England, Scotland and Canada. His first book of short fiction, entitled Standing at an Angle to My Age, was published by the proudly independent Canadian publisher, Libros Libertad Publishing Ltd., in 2013 and can be purchased at bookstores across Canada and, online, directly from the publisher and Amazon.

You can learn more about P.W. Bridgman and his writing by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.

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EVEN UNTO MY DEATH YOU SHALL BE JUDGED

By P.W. Bridgman Edna couldn’t see the heart monitor. It was positioned behind her head and above it, perched on a tall metal stalk beside an I.V. pole. The monitor’s cursive green display continued inscribing the final chapter of her life in a jerky, irregular hand onto the inside surface of a cathode ray tube, each sentence decaying, then vanishing, before the next was written. Deus ex machina, it had also begun to display a “low battery” message concurrently with the sounding of a bright tone, partially obliterating the green trace that charted the quotidian struggles of Edna’s failing heart. Had she been able to see the “low battery” warning, she would not have failed to appreciate its irony.

The bright tone sounded again. And again. And again, minute by minute with a relentless regularity, punctuating nothing at all, really, save the inattentiveness of the overworked duty nurses and Diana’s heavy breathing—the breathing of the chronically sleep-deprived.

Edna watched the rising and falling of her daughter’s Henny-Penny bosom. There was no differentiation, no visible separation of the left breast from the right. It was a matronly, bench seat of a bosom, she thought, where bucket seats should have been. Poor thing. Only 37.

A “Code Blue” announcement penetrated the room from a hallway loudspeaker located in some distant precinct within the hospital, well beyond the swinging doors that opened onto 3-South. Diana did not stir. Nor did the three other cardiac patients from whom she and her ailing mother were separated by nothing more than a dangling wall of cotton. Edna looked up at the clock—it read 3:36 p.m.—and then over at Diana. Dead asleep. Dead. Asleep.

She took stock of the awkward way Diana’s head had now lolled to one side, and of the way her big hands were folded primly in her lap. As had been the case throughout her illness—throughout her whole life as a mother, really—Edna’s gratitude for Diana’s faithful attention to her every need was alloyed with a deep, dark, unforgiving pity. Those faded print dresses wrapped loosely around those big hips. That maddening, quiet passivity. That lack of ambition—in her 20th year at the library, contentedly re-shelving books. That lack of any apparent desire to move into her own apartment and start living her own life. What to do?

This dutiful daughter had the large bones and thick fingers of Ward, her father. And she had Ward’s clomping walk, his broad, flattened nose and, perhaps, even the weak heart that had snatched him away from them both before he reached his 45th year. It was a pity that his other attributes—the sharp sense of humour, the desire to outrage, the ability to write poetry, commit broad swatches of it to memory and then recite them at the least provocation—seemed not to have descended to her from him too. It was a pity that nothing at all seemed to have descended to her from Edna herself, she allowed herself to think in her more vain moments. Whatever will become of her?

Edna’s quickened anxieties translated briefly to the heart monitor, the partially obscured green scribble becoming more compressed and jagged, the per-minute beat tally adjusting upward by several digits and then gradually subsiding again. This, too, went unremarked by Diana who remained caught in the soft tangle of sleep and reverie, her dreams thick and clotted with memory—with memory of Luisa whom she had never dared to mention to her mother and to whose warm, intoxicating bed she would soon return with a poem in her heart and another in her purse.

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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS RECENT and NEW TITLES 978-1-909252-50-9 After August x Martin J. Byrne 978-1-909252-51-6 Of Dead Silences x Michael McAloran 978-1-909252-52-3 Cycles x Christine Murray 978-1-909252-53-0 Three Primes x Kelly Creighton 978-1-909252-54-7 Doji:A Blunder x Colin Dardis 978-1-909252-55-4 Echo Fields x Rose Moran RSM 978-1-909252-56-1 The Scattering Lawns x Margaret Galvin 978-1-909252-57-8 Sea Journey x Martin Egan 978-1-909252-58-5 A Famous Flower x Paul Wickham 978-1-909252-59-2 Adagios on Re – Adagios en Re x John Gohorry 978-1-909252-60-8 Remembered Bliss x Dom Sebastian Moore O.S.B 978-1-909252-61-5 Ightermurragh in the Rain x Gillian Somerville-Large 978-1-909252-62-2 Beethoven in Vienna x Michael O'Sullivan 978-1-909252-63-9 Jazz Time x Seán Street 978-1-909252-64-6 Bittersweet Seventeens x Rosie Johnston 978-1-909252-65-3 Small Stones for Bromley x Harry Owen 978-1-909252-66-0 The Elm Tree x Peter O'Neill 978-1-909252-67-7 The Naming of Things Against the Dark and The Lane x C.P. Stewart 978-1-909252-68-4 Increasing the Denominator x Martin Domleo 978-1-909252-69-1 From Dawn Through Dark x Rose Moran RSM 978-1-909252-70-7 Ladies Who Lunch x Fiona Sinclair 978-1-909252-71-4 Mature Student & other poems x Aubrey Malone 978-1-909252-72-1 Muse x Joseph Fagan 978-1-909252-73-8 Chiclit & Poses x Dawn Rock 978-1-909252-74-5 A Wet Day & Mr Sevridge Sketches x Richard Halperin 978-1-909252-75-2 Entropic Elegies x Craig Podmore 978-1-909252-76-9 Voices of the Benares x Pauline Rowe 978-1-909252-77-6 Pink,Ochre,Yellow x Richard Halperin 978-1-909252-78-3 Flash Words x Paul Tobin 978-1-909252-79-0 The Mask x Anthony Costello 978-1-909252-80-6 Bright Water Over Grey Stones x Rosy Wilson 978-1-909252-81-3 the centreless astonishment of things x Richard Halperin 978-1-909252-82-0 Undisturbed Circles x Bethany W.Pope 978-1-909252-83-7 Startled by You x Maria Ní Mhurchú 978-1-909252-84-4 Pictures from a Postponed Exhibition x David Walsh & Michael Bartolomew-Biggs 978-1-909252-85-1 There's Enough Blue in the Sky x Janette Fisher 978-1-909252-86-8 Poverty Street & Other Belfast Poems x Thomas Carnduff (reissue) 978-1-909252-87-5 The Way It Is x Niall McGrath 978-1-909252-88-2 Animal Sanctuary x Michael O'Sullivan 978-1-909252-89-9 Shadows Waltz Haltingly x Alan Morrison 978-1-909252-90-5 Landscape of Self x Aine MacAodha 978-1-909252-91-2 He Robes Me Royally x Helen Long 978-1-909252-92-9 Conversations in the Dark x Valerie Masters 978-1-909252-93-6 Frequencies of Light x James R. Kilner 978-1-909252-94-3 Broken Hill x Keith Payne 978-1-909252-95-0 The Trouble with Love (From Trouble, With Love) x Fern Angel Beattie 978-1-909252-96-7 Smithy of our Longings: Poems from the Irish Diaspora x Tim Dwyer 978-1-909252-97-4 Speck Poems 2002-2006 x Alice Lyons 978-1-909252-98-1 The Last Fire x Helen Harrison 978-1-909252-99-8 The Immigrant Woman's Tale x Csilla Toldy & Fil Campbell All titles £10.00 per paper copy or in PDF format £5.00 for 4 titles. £12.00

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