The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
The
Burning
Bush2 issue # 3 July 2012
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
The Burning Bush 2 issue three contents Editorial Brian Kirk Cal Doyle
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Paul Perry Doireann Ní Ghríofa
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Colm Keenan Kevin Graham
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John Saunders Jeffrey Hecker Stephanie Conn David Stone
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Miceál Kearney Hedda Hakvag David Gardiner
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Joseph Horgan Susan Kelly Desmond Swords Kevin Higgins
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J. Roycroft
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Tryst Lines for John Berryman Untitled Ticknock Solitude Frida Condemned The Pigeon House The Ghost House Luck Better Reasons the Shuttle Program Ends 3511 Tsvetaeva Recent History Ancestral Memory Lost and Found in The Mental Health Act, 2001 Water Albany Gap Lawrence The Man Made Out of Shipping Containers Dying Wish The Blacksmiths (trans. from middle English) Historically Sensible Innocent Atlantic Highway
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Editorial Welcome to issue number three of The Burning Bush 2. If you read issue #2, you’ll know we had an idea to showcase the work of new and emerging poets from Dublin in issue #3. In the end, however, while the idea was not entirely abandoned, we decided to adopt a looser approach and, alongside up and coming poets from the capital like Kevin Graham and Brian Kirk, we’re pleased to present the work of exciting new voices like Cal Doyle from Cork, Stephanie Conn from Antrim, Doireann Ní Ghríofa from Clare and others from across Ireland, the UK and North America. Of course, as usual, we also have the work of several poets who have well and truly emerged. We’re glad to have them – they are an essential part of the mix that will make / makes The Burning Bush 2 a magazine worth coming back to. Also in this issue, for the first time, we present work in translation: Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s poems appear both in the original Irish and her own English translations and we have a translation from Middle English by Desmond Swords. Thanks are due, by the way, to Michael S. Begnal for his help with the Irish language texts. That’s it - enjoy this one and we’ll be back with the final issue of 2012 in November. Take it easy.
Alan Jude Moore July 2012
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Brian Kirk Tryst At the edge of night by the side wall of a pub masked by the blank stare of a broken street lamp hands buried in pockets he waits kicking small stones from under his feet Unseen he watches a door swallow men one by one a slurred racket escapes now and then clouting his cold ears like the dull clang of an ominous bell intoning his future Past shuttered shops and boys who make catcalls she walks to the spot where they meet feeling the cold of the town in her stomach but not on her legs which are bare He steps out of the gloom dark as the devil his cold hands on her face as they kiss bring a queer warmth that is not from within as the night sucks them in one on one to the wall
Brian Kirk is a poet and short story writer from Clondalkin, Dublin. He was shortlisted for Hennessy Awards in 2008 and 2011 and the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Awards in 2008 and 2009. He won the inaugural Writing Spirit Award in 2009. His works has been highly commended in the 2011 iYeats Poetry Competition and the 2012 Bare Hands Poetry Competition. His work has appeared in The Sunday Tribune, The Stony Thursday Book, Southword, Crann贸g, Revival, Boyne Berries, Wordlegs, Bare Hands Poetry, Cancan Poezine, The First Cut, Abridged, Shot Glass Journal and various anthologies. He blogs at http://briankirkwriter.com
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Cal Doyle Lines for John Berryman As a child my Mother sang songs to me: you’d marry girls young enough to be your daughters. I swear to you that there are ghosts in blackface, vaudevillians, today, tossing lines beneath a broken tent. The child wrote stories on an electric typewriter you just don’t know a man until you see him cry. Do I still arrive in the middle of the night? You need an activity, boy, like drinking, to break in the evening. Here in Dublin I wrote fifty, no, I destroyed fifty of them here. No. I forget. Could have been a cottage, somewhere west. Fifteen, no, sixteen years before you were even born.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Untitled or, My Debt to Frank O’Hara To the film industry in crisis: chin up. It is difficult we know, but just think of those kids re-seeding you back into the soil while they bathe in the light-blue magnetic light from whence you came.
Cal Doyle has published poetry both in Ireland and the UK, most recently in Southword and the e-book anthology 30 Under 30. He was selected to read as part of Poetry Ireland's Introductions Series in 2012. He lives and works in Cork City.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Paul Perry Ticknock From here the view of the city is a right An undulating wasping chimera Man on a hilltop Or woman or child As once I was bedded In the mountain furze Yielding The city then is the grave And the contours and slopes of the hills is its opposite Magic and hidden and mythological I am not the only one to say so But I will be from now on Let it be a protest and the rising hawk a sign A flag of some kind of return The cars career careen and un-sow The seams of the hills The city’s spell broken Rapacious – swarming with death If after all the city is a grave The wind moves through the forest Smell of pine – up up up Into the air into the past and future Be here the stones cry The mountains moving farther inland The sea all roiling Filial embrace like the noise Of a blue light as if it were A ship set sail lost unanchored Making its way up to the foot of the hills To the spine of whatever god has summoned us here
Paul Perry’s latest book is The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance, (Dedalus Press, 2010).
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Doireann Ní Ghríofa Solitude Deirtear Gur dhíol sé móinéar thoir feirm a mhuintir Leis an dtógálaí áitiúil Mar mhalairt ar chás airgid Agus bos beo le seile cuaiche. Deirtear Gur cheannaigh sé bád A bhaist sé Solitude. Gur chuir sé ar snámh í Tráth, ar Loch an Bhúrcaigh Ach ní fhacthas ó shin í. Deirtear Go bhfuil sí sa bhaile aige Suite seascair i gcúinne Bothán na ba, maisithe Le síoda damhán alla, A cabhlach doiléir Le deannach tiubh, Dubh.
Solitude They say That he sold the haggart of the family farm To the local builder, for a pillowcase of cash And a palmful of cuckoo spit. They say That he bought a boat, named it Solitude. Sailed it once, beyond on Bourke’s Lake Never been seen since. They say That it sits among blooms of cobwebs In the corner of the calves’ cabin, where Deep dust dulls its hull. (translated from Irish by the author)
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Frida “She lived dying” — Andrés Henestrosa, 1925 Idir bás agus beatha Luíonn Frida ina leaba Malaí mealltacha mar éin allta A scaipeann sciatháin scáthacha Sa spéir thar a súile.
Frida “She lived dying” — Andrés Henestrosa, 1925 Between life and death, Frida lies in her sickbed. Her beguiling brow is A wild bird, Spreading silent wings Like shadows In the sky Above her eye.
(translated from Irish by the author)
Doireann Ní Ghríofa grew up in County Clare. She holds a Masters Degree in Modern Irish Literature. Her poetry has been published in Feasta, Comhar, Prairie Schooner (Contemporary Irish Writers Issue), Causeway, Cyphers, Ropes Anthology, Revival, An tUltach, Crannóg, The Stony Thursday Book and An Gael. Further poems are forthcoming in Melusine. Doireann was among the prize-winners in the emerging writer category at the Oireachtas literary awards 2010, and was shortlisted in Siarscéal 2012 and in Comórtas Uí Néill, both in 2011 and 2012. The Arts Council has awarded her a literature bursary. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2012. Her debut collection, Résheoid, is published by Coiscéim, and her forthcoming collection Dúlasair will be published in 2012.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Colm Keenan Condemned Word echoed off a door closed, blurred mettle, First Communion, practice session, tabernacle touched, desire in knowing gold’s texture, fingerprint, panic-stricken, heckled away by suggestive cough Cemetery visit, just first class, games of tig, cops and robbers, open space around poplars, too guilty to play, walked across grave and shuddered at deadly trespass, two mortal sins in one day: No chance now, not even a snowball’s of redemption, never mind Communion Stayed in at lunch to confess to teacher, teethgrinder-feetstamper-chalkbreaker-childshrieker inspectorlicker-parentricker-priestclicker, the second sin, first too sacred, Altar-of-The-Lord, to be mentioned You walked across a grave? – Yes, Miss Brady. What year was it? – The writing was faded, Miss Brady, but I think it was 1879. A cackle and Go out and play. Went out, didn’t play, was it a sin or not? Tongue lolled by infant’s hand, end of lunch, brass peals never to everyone’s liking Got in line, alphabetical, middling surname, sudden gust blew up teacher’s skirt, saw frilly knickers, everyone grinned, and she said there’d be extra homework Rustled papers, crusts and rind: field mouse in bin added drama to afternoon, laughter and squeals, wonderment, till teacher pulverized it with broom handle And when Lena Foran asked the teacher if she’d seen her pencil, George Harrington, the Special Boy, Cookie Monster, leapt from desk, smacked wrists, hopped up and down, trademark fit, proclaimed how pencil was down below, lost forever in flames, property of Old Nick, until set upon by teacher and walloped back into place and listlessness, recital of European capitals, incapable of one-plus-one In whom could I’ve confided back then? All sang from the same sheet, same hems and haws, matter of breviary If only I’d known a gentle voice that would’ve whispered: Fingerprint on tabernacle? A sin so serious, it’s overcome by the vestrywoman’s cloth. Footprint on grave? A sin so serious, it’s overcome by the growth of summer.
Colm Keenan was born in 1981. In 2010/2011 he studied an MA in Creative Writing at UCD. He is from County Kildare.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Kevin Graham The Pigeon House after ‘The Pigeon House Fort, Dublin Bay, from Clontarf’, 1877 by Robert G. Seymour Like a battleship interred by the elemental tide it holds sway, compresses dust in stone buildings and weeps oblique smoke into watercolour sky. Out on Wharf Road a prodigal boy is beginning to piece together the possibilities afforded by distance and time. A horse and cart labour in the sand, leave rutted tracks to be licked slowly from the land by the bruised scrap of the sea. At a glance it is all memory, a pastel shot snatched out of the past; a world we would inhabit but for the knowledge of the future we possess: how the soft horizon has turned brash with the business of enterprise, man-made hazards raising their ugly salutes to the rest of the republic, who sit waiting on a knife-edge.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
The Ghost House In the garden ivy climbs the border wall; trees jostle to leave but give up and stay. The roof is book-ended by two giant chimney pots who bend moaning wind down their chutes, into a dead living room. Wallpaper peels away like skin to reveal dates and spidered initials. The empty doorways are fleshy black holes secreting the stench of rotten mulch, old violence. It feels secret, but something happened here. Upstairs a bed is skewed; the impression of a hand lingers on a vanity mirror. Fear is knowing suspicion exists to be confirmed, which is why down the street the grand piano you didn’t see strikes up an impromptu concerto.
Kevin Graham lives and works in Dublin. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The Shop, Southword, The Moth and others. He was chosen to participate in this year’s Poetry Ireland Introduction Series.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
John Saunders Luck (For Nalini ) She washes the rag so that it can be used again, tidies her hair in the stippled glass of shame, makes good her small place of work and life. She screams a million screams, cannot believe the unbelievable, imagines her grandmother’s spirit is looking down on her, urging her to be strong, that luck comes to the good. She hides her scarred face as they enter, smiles as they leave, wishes them a worthy life. On a good day she has enough to eat and drink, is able to pay the dark haired hot money men, can ignore the groaning pain, shun salted weeping. She knows that tears are only the indulgence of those who haven’t suffered enough.
John Saunders’ first collection After the Accident was published in 2010 by Lapwing Press, Belfast. His poems have appeared in Revival, The Moth Magazine, Crannog, Prairie Schooner Literary Journal (Nebraska), Sharp Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, Riposte, The Smoking Poet, Minus Nine Squared, The First Cut and Weary Blues. John is one of three poets featured in a new collection entitled Measuring published by Dedalus Press in May.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Jeffrey Hecker Better Reasons the Shuttle Program Ends Agnostic astronauts re-enter atmosphere exhibiting Catholic pizzazz. Big Dipper is 3-D & contains hominy. Cyrillic numbers prove to be shadows of bunga bunga sex. Domesday Book -- who alive reads it cover to cover? STS-135’s entire crew. Engineering chief rocks an eye-patch TV. Fireballs aren’t supposed to follow you. Galilean moons Callisto & Ganymede swap quadrant. Hubble telescope’s computer sings double double toil trouble sometimes. International Astronomical Union’s singular slogan: May flower bring meteor shower. John Glenn only travels by Eskimo umiaq. Kepler’s 4th Law of Motion postulates breeding woolly-enough-to-ride sheep. Libra< Bingo. Moon River > Moon. New science admits each star is a scratch on our ocular scrim. Orbital Mariner 10 transmissions reveal a floating five-fanged jackal. Picnics attract space junk. Q*bert banned from mall arcade when test pilot shouts “ain’t called Q*bert in Wing J!” Rival software companies settle on ennui. Simon Says Fuck Math. Trivial Pursuit Quasar Edition sells 100 units U.S., 1,000,000,000,000 units Hong Kong. Ultra violent radiation’s a turnoff. Voltage keeps Tycho Brahe’s castle dwarf Jepp alive. Wormholes break but don’t bend. XMRadio on MIR station is hypnopatriotic. Yearning reduces to the turned knob. Zeus has a hoarder mama. Jeffrey Hecker was born in 1977 in Norfolk, VA. A graduate of Old Dominion University, his debut book, Rumble Seat, is published by San Francisco Bay Press (www.sanfranciscobaypress.com).Recent work has appeared in altdaily.com, Plural Turtle, Cannonball City, and The Waterhouse Review (where he was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.) New poems forthcoming in the Los Angeles-based Zocalo Public Square and London’s La Reata Review. He lives with his wife Robin in Olde Towne Portsmouth, Virginia.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Stephanie Conn 3511 Tsvetaeva (Asteroid discovered October 14, 1982) Having lost you in the earth, having left you alone in the cold clay, they assigned you to the stars. They looked to the zenith, found you orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Mars. For the way of comets is the poet’s way. Turn your back on the chair in the entrance hall of the heavens, bear witness to the night. Watch as a storm rages in the skies, as metallic bodies collide to produce the fine dust of zodiacal light.
Stephanie Conn is a primary school teacher from County Antrim. She developed and teaches the literacy programme, ‘Passport to Poetry’. Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines. She is currently completing her MA in poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University, Belfast. Recently, her poetry was shortlisted in the Anam Cara Poetry Competition and highly commended in the Doire Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. She has just been awarded a bursary to attend the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
David Stone Recent History I paid cash for the restored cabin. Stranded faces streamed outside, avoided overstaying night stories, swam in winds. Munched caws herded cell welts in woods. Owls and weasels avoided the oil stream, strummed winged instruments. Tagged shoes, puddles, shovels, iced lips tangled in metal links. The calculations of recht shifted in the voice stream.
(Reference: Paul Celan's poem 'Todtnauberg'/ Heidegger's hut in the Black Forest)
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
My Ancestral Memory for Michael S. Begnal Hope began somewhere in north Africa in some unknown crystalline provenance where battered pirate vessels cruised and surfaced beyond the Iron Gate. Tobacconists, taxidermists and drivers studied glyphs, glued tokens, etched bark, stayed in the village. Meager migrants labored eras. Ratchets, bayonettes, fashions, armored divisions landed in darkness all night. Crucible steel, sintered with stolen heat, transformed the soul of the earth without sun. The gods laughed in the uncertain sound paths the fire ate in the grain fields armored divisions divided rocks rockets parted everywhere. We fell falling failed felt Pluto in tall fields. My memories are scorched and burned in Heraclitean fire.
David Stone was born in Chicago in 1949, studied philosophy and literature at the University of Illinois, Tel Aviv University and DePaul University in Chicago with graduate studies in phenomenology. Editor of BLACKBIRD, Stone has been writing and publishing poetry since the 1970s. His new collection, NIGHT TOWN, with illustrations by Belgian artist Guido Vermeulen, will be published by Phrygian Press in 2012.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Miceál Kearney Lost and Found in the Mental Health Act 2001 The Gardai have the power to take you into custody, if they believe you have a mental disorder — and they did. More than once. E.C.T will help you get better. Most patients recover from a mental disorder within the first few weeks; some take longer. We’d be playing fun when the knocks and telephone calls could come; always at night. We looked forward to them. Holidays. Not that we didn’t care, just we were never told anything; ever. Sundays were quite long car journeys in itchy mass clothes to state-of-the-art Victorian buildings, bull bar windows and retina scanner doors. You may want to leave, you can discuss this with a member of your care team. Sitting strange in smoke flavoured big rooms, out-of-date magazines and padded pens. Tablets and lies falling out your ears. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ — Here? E.C.T will help you get better. We were never told anything; ever. Any wonder the apple grew on the breast.
Miceál Kearney, 31, is from the west of Ireland. He has been published in Ireland, England and America. In 2009, he read as part of Poetry Ireland's Introduction Series. Doire Press published his debut collection, Inheritance, in 2008. His second collection, Cartograph, is forthcoming.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Hedda Hakvag water thrown into sea cold water submerged under water under surface bubbles breathe cannot breathe cannot keep head above water cool calm rational cannot breathe crime
accomplice to adultery
phlegmatic disposition loved to make amorous potions create more liquid alliances believed in fluctuation believed in jojoba spoon moved clockwise nine drops of jasmine orange musk brewed under moonlight roses candles and cosmopolitanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ten ways to secure his heart argument does not hold does not hold water evidential body cannot float cannot keep head high sinking like a stone
Hedda Hakvag is currently based in Dublin. She writes poetry, plays, and creative nonfiction and has previously been published in the Canadian literary magazine Dandelion.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
David Gardiner Albany Gap Following Bloody Bill Anderson across the Missouri in my mind for ten days—flight out of KCI, trains from New London, road trips to Springfield in October tornadoes. It’s 1864 in my home & my head. The only scalp I carry is my own. The road & all these shallow rivers Are my own now. Alone & upright, I feel why so many were shot. In the saddle, I thought wax-plugged six-shooters impervious to Union forts & know why “Jackson” is a county in Missouri when Johnny Cash sang off Grandpa’s stereo; his own father “dead ignobly” & his own too, stretching back—like I like to say— “wreckage” along these rolling flats. Now I’m driving back towards Rulo, NE., with a stop to be made at the lawyers & conciliation Court in Douglas County, some percent of my “take home” awaiting me…. But the world and you too might wait for me the way the late sun glistens off that silver Elantra I’m passing, or the sweat off of Bill’s horse as we rode hard into Albany gap.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Lawrence We rode into Kansas’ bastard land, looked over the streets of Lawrence & once & for all decided to bring God & Quantrill before them. The streets were dry & men scattered like chickens. The three saloons didn’t even empty. We meandered back & forth, old union jackets on & smiling as they fell. I thought of the farm, the saddle I stole, all those looks they’d give us passing on through & with every shot those thoughts disappeared, the dust on the road settled with their blood; The couple of scalps I took seemed just right, seemed to make the fire in my head go out, seemed to make the sun set more quiet behind me.
David Gardiner lives in Chicago. From 2006 - 2010, he edited the journal, An Sionnach, while professor at Creighton University and Trinity College Dublin and visiting scholar at Boston College, New York University and the University of Ulster. Since 1989, when he attended University College-Galway, he has commuted between Ireland and the U.S. He has lived in Dublin, Coleraine, and New York City. He has written five books, edited ten and authored over sixty journal publications. His most recent poetry publication is Downstate (Salmon Poetry). His forthcoming work is The Chivalry of Crime.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Joseph Horgan The Man Made Out of Shipping Containers I never knew I would forever be landing, would become the transport I arrived on. I am always here, newly minted like counterfeit, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know, if I am coming or going. And solace, such a predictable penance, I am almost weary each time I open the door. If my life were cut open this is how time could be told. By the rings on the counter.
Joseph Horgan is a past winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award and was previously shortlisted for a Hennessy Award. His poems have appeared in various journals in Ireland, Europe and the UK. He is the author of one collection, Slipping Letters Beneath the Sea [Doghouse 2008], and a book of essays, The Song at Your Backdoor [Collins Press, 2010]. A collection of poetry and pictures, with the artist Brian Whelan, An Unscheduled Life, will be published by Agenda Editions next month.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Susan Kelly Dying Wish His hands bound by rosary beads, mouth set beatifically by an undertaker, new to town who laid him out in Harris Tweed and silk-encrusted cherry wood. The priest wrapped him in incense and asked angels to guide him on an uncalled for journey. He had wished to speckle the bay and float on her home-coming tides.
Susan Kelly is from Westport, Co Mayo. Her work has appeared in Cyphers, Crann贸g, Revival, Abridged, The London Magazine and on wordlegs.com and was short-listed for the Writing Spirit Award 2010.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Desmond Swords The Blacksmiths (translated from Middle English) Black-smoked smiths in ash-smattered smocks, Drive me to death with the din of their blows: Such noisy nights man never had heard, What knaven cries and clattering knocks; The bent-nosed bumpkins crying Coal! Coal! And blowing their bellows so all their brains burst. Huff, puff, said that one, mmph, mmph, the other. They spit and sprawl and tell many tales, They gnaw and gnash, they groan together, And keep themselves hot with their hard hammers. With a bull-hide apron their bosom is covered, Their shanks shackled, safe from the sparks; Heavy hammers they have that are hard to handle, & stark-stroked they strike on a steel-stocked anvil. Bish, bosh, bash, their cacophonous clash; Such doleful a dream may the Devil destroy it! The master lengthens a little and lashes his lump, Twines him two pieces and sounding a treble: Tik, tak, hick, hack, tikat takit, tick, tock Bish, bash, bosh that! Such a life they lead, These mare-cloth armourers. Sorrowful Christ, None at night can rest for them burning their water.
Note on the translation: The original text is dated late 14C early 15C, in the British Museum, from the (Earl of) Arundel collection, with the full id being B.M., Arundel MS. 292, f. 72b.
Desmond Swords was born in 1967 and is from Ormskirk, Lancashire. He has been writing for twelve years and has lived in Dublin since 2004. He participated in the Poetry Ireland Introductions Readings in 2006. He created and hosted the Patrick Kavanagh Celebration in the Palace Bar from 2005 - 2007 and is one of the All-Ireland Live Poetry Slam Championships' regional organisers.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Kevin Higgins Historically Sensible You knew for a fact, they’d never allow a pair of mad eyes with a pistol near the Emperor and his wife; and when they did, knew the war would be done before the Christmas tree went up in Chichester town square; and when it wasn’t, that the Germans must be forced to pick up the bill, so they never did this again. You knew for a fact, the Tsar had a special place in the Russian peasant’s heart; and when he hadn’t, that the Bolsheviks wouldn’t last five minutes. And when they did, they were what you’d been praying for all along. Hitler was a joke with an Austrian accent who’d never amount to anything, and when he did, you knew for a fact he had no interest in Warsaw, Kiev, Coventry. You knew when the turbulence had done its worst, the Shah would still be sat on his Peacock throne, looking taller than he actually was. Khomeni? In five years’ time no one would remember his name. And that cowboy actor was never going to win the White House. The hijackers you envisaged always landed the plane and let the passengers go.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Innocent Read nothing into the night vision goggles I was wearing when they arrested me. I never met anyone by the name of Whittaker Chambers; know nothing about the boxes of counterfeit Dollars found in a lock-up garage the record shows was rented by someone with a name like mine. That isn’t me behind the ski mask. I was fifty miles away, having tea with the Dalai Lama, when my friends shot that policeman. Someone must have put that heavy water nuclear reactor in the garden shed when I wasn’t looking. I just want to tend my pumpkin patch. That isn’t me handing a leather satchel, contents, as yet, undetermined, to Carlos the Jackal, Dusseldorf, 1973. And if it is, I didn’t know it was him. I just want to watch the cat wander innocent among the dahlias.
Kevin Higgins’ most recent collection of poetry, Frightening New Furniture, was published in 2010 by Salmon Poetry. His fourth collection, The Ghost in the Lobby, will be published by Salmon in 2013. A collection of his essays and book reviews, Mentioning the War, was published this year, also by Salmon. Kevin is co-organiser of Over the Edge literary events in Galway and was co-editor of the first four issues of the original Burning Bush.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
J. Roycroft Atlantic Highway for Brian & Nataly Kelly Under sweltering awnings, wood sweats. Nails burst from flaky wooden beds. A zephyr whispers in the wind chimes, while the pent-up dog paces another turn in the heat. High up, the silver flash of a high-flown jet on the Atlantic highway. Its contrail a shivering fume, passes, like magic from smoke, to air.
J. Roycroft's work has appeared in Flaming Arrows, The SHoP, Tears in the Fence, and The Burning Bush 2, amongst others. Born in Dublin and educated at Queen's University of Belfast, he is at work on the companion novels, The Imitation Game and In Fiction.
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The Burning Bush 2, issue three, July 2012
Thanks for reading the Burning Bush 2. If you would like your work to be considered for a future issue, please read the submission guidelines, available on our website, www.burningbush2.com We will accept submissions for issue #4 until 1st October 2012. Please send all correspondence to burningbushrevival@gmail.com
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