A New Ulster 111

Issue 111 February 2022

A New Ulster FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF.Joseph Murphy, Michaël Boyle, Gavin Bourke, Saeed Salimi Babamiri, Alisa Velaj, Enda Boyle, Patricia Kamradt and Fiona Sinclair EDITED BY AMOS GREIG.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 111 FEBRUARY 2022

UPATREE PRESS

Copyright © 2020 A New Ulster – All Rights Reserved.

The artists featured in this publication 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) Edited by Amos Greig Cover Design by Upatree Press Prepared for Publication by Upatree Press

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by Joseph Murphy, Michaël Boyle, Gavin Bourke, Saeed Salimi Babamiri, Alisa Velaj, Enda Boyle, Patricia Kamradt and Fiona Sinclair.

CONTENTS Poetry Joseph Murphy

Page 1

Prose Michael Boyle

Page 3

Poetry/Prose Gavin Bourke

Page 9

Poetry Saeed Salimi Babamiri Page 30 Book Review Alisa Velaj Prose Enda Boyle Poetry Patricia Kamradt

Page 32 Page 43 Page 50

Prose Fiona Sinclair

Page 52

Editor’s Note

Page 56

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Joseph Murphy Joseph Murphy is 18 years old and has been writing infrequently over the past few years but since the beginning of the pandemic writing has gone from being his hobby to his passion. While he has never been published before he is excited to share his work with a wider audience

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A Moon Gone By: Of little things The song did sing It's voice upon A spinning rock.

Those waters brought Unseemly thoughts That rest beneath Deepening seas.

A moon gone by With treasured lies And its face a Bright, Golden hue Can bring about An end to doubt And a balm for Pain forgotten, The promise lied As the sweet tide Withdraw from Hopes lonely shore Listen's closely to singing seas And matches them With swelling tunes Of ages gone past, When joy could Forever last.

(Joseph Murphy)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MICHEAL BOYLE

Michael Boyle is a native of Lavey, Derry, Ireland .His poems have appeared in the “The Antigonish Review”. “ Dalhousie Review.” “Tinteain” and “New Ulster Writing.” He was awarded “The Arts and Letters” prize for poetry in 2014 by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Michael has also written articles for the Irish language magazine “An t-Ultach. He is currently completing his first poetry collection “Whin Bushes from Drummuck.” In June 2017 he presented a paper in Magee College, Derry, on the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. In 2018 he gave a talk entitled “Echoes from the Barn Barrel.” to The North American Celtic Language Teachers Conference in St. John’s, NL. He currently lives in St John’s NL where he conducts a historical walking tour. www.boyletours.com

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AMAZING ESCAPE FROM DEATH. ‘Come quick little Meehawl has fallen in the well” sounded the alarm.

You would think it being my own story that it would be easy to tell. Not so, because I was two months shy of my third birthday, when this event happened. And I have compressed into my memory all the countless retelling of this climatic event. Many of the people in the story sadly have died and indeed the old well has been cemented over. Still, I often wonder why I always carry in my wallet a well-worn yellow paper newspaper cutting. The headline reads.

“From Drummuck comes the thrilling story of a child’s escape from drowning at the weekend.”

This event is a well-known family story and retold at many family gatherings. However, I am now hearing newer versions of the story, which are seem slightly different from the original event. Adult memory can be a faraway place and this event has had an effect on my later life. So do we really know what happened?

One bright May afternoon the season rhythm of farm work took my father Paddy Joe and other workmen to the moss to cut turf to burn in our hearth for the following winter. Meanwhile my mother got ready to go to Miko McGlade’s in Knockloughrim to buy groceries. Before she went she gave clear instructions to Ethnia the babysitter to look after my older brother Sean and Meehawl.

“Don’t worry about drying the eggs, because I tell you that looking after Sean and Meehawl is a full time job.” My mother continued, “And they could be up to any kind of devilment if your back is turned. Keep them away from the half door. I’ll back in a couple of hours.”

The closed half door had a dual role in keeping the young children safe indoors and it prevented a roaming sow or a young calf from tramping into the kitchen.

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I have been told that in local parlance Ethnia was slow on following orders but made up for this by being a good worker. Our mother slipped out the back door and locked it securely and got on her bicycle.

This day everything seemed calm and quiet. The lonely bleat of the goat in the front hill broke the silence of the afternoon. It appears my mother had hardly reached the end of our long lane when Ethina got totally immersed into drying the eggs for market. She was so much involved in her task that she was completely oblivious to anything else in the world. After roaming around inside the house my brother Sean and I made a few attempts to get outside and we tried the back door and found it locked. We pushed the half door a few times and then we had little difficulty jimmying it open. We escaped and then we were free into the yard or as we called it the street. First, we wandered into the pig house and peeped through the railings to see a sow with her litter of small suckling pigs.

My brother warned me not to go close to the sow. We ran up to the milk house, but we could not get that door open. We chased some ducks but we were afraid of the chirping Rhode Island hens.

At last, we came to the top of the street between the hawthorn tree that was coming into bloom and the one hundred year old ash tree, which towered over the well. From what I have been told workmen had recently sunk a thirty-foot well. They were waiting for a new pump to be installed the following week when they got the parts from Ballymena. As a temporary measure a rusty sheet of zinc covered the entrance to the well.

Of course, don’t you know, my brother and I wandered close to this yet as undiscovered hazard?

Both of us ran to the edge of the zinc cover. Having no idea of any possible danger. I was roaring and singing as I jumped up and down on the zinc. Suddenly, the zinc gave way and I fell down with it into the well. There was about eight feet of water in the well and before the sheet of zinc could reach this water it ledged across the well with me in roaring and bawling my lungs out.

My brother Sean, who was only about six years old, raised the alarm and alerted Ethnia who was still in a robotic trance drying eggs. She had not realized we had been gone and only heard Sean 5

when he pounded on the door. Sean ran over to the front hill field and Ethnia followed. They both shouted and roared out to my father and the men working in the moss about three hundred yards away. On her way Ethnia grabbed a white sheet from the clothesline to let folks know there was an emergency and to come immediately. Within three minutes my father and the workmen sprinted up the moss lane to help rescue the screaming Meehawl from the well.

Everyone was shouting and roaring and in panic mode, but my father got a tether from the hayshed. There was no time for elaborate plans, but the men put one end of the rope tied around the ash tree to act as an anchor hold. My uncle John stepped forward threw off his hob nailed boots and tweed cap. He grabbed the rope and made an improvised harness for himself. Then, he crouched down on his knees holding a side of the well. He edged his feet first into the narrow entrance and for a second kept all his weight on his hands. He directed the other workmen to ease out the rope and then he gradually took the full taut of pressure, as he was lowered further and further into the well. My father and the men held the rope tightly and they were glad to hear me still screaming. They released the rope slowly to avoid it jerking or indeed breaking. At first my Uncle John swayed back and forth until he straightened his perilous decent towards me. I clung to my zinc canoe, which was wedged some twenty feet below. John edged closer and I stretched out my hands.

Years later John told me, “I was afraid you might fall off the zinc and drop away from me, I could see you standing up and stretching out your hands. I took a deep breath and lowered my feet to the edge of the zinc and I had my hands free so I could scoop you up into my arms. You clung tightly around my neck .I felt the rope tightened as we were both pulled slowly upwards.”

It took four men to pull us to the surface and then there was enormous relief and celebration as they were able to pull my uncle and me to the surface. In the meantime the local priest and doctor had been summoned to come and attend to a possible tragedy. Some water had got in my “gutties” and my short trousers. I had no time to celebrate my rescue because folks were concerned I may have hit my head or swallowed some water. I was taken inside and put to bed in the lower front room just beyond the hearth. People say after all this Ethina once more resumed drying eggs again. Meanwhile, my mother was on her way home through the village Gulladuff. She was flagged down by an over anxious Miss Nancy Convery, who startled my mother 6

by blurting out.

“Looks like some thing bad trouble happened down in Drummuck way for Father Mc Glynn and Doctor Johnston have just driven through.”

My mother had a sixth sense that something was wrong. Even with the heavy grocery bags swaying across her bicycle she speeded up O’Kane’s brae and freewheeled down the plantation towards the house. Dr. Johnston came from Maghera even though he only did a cursory examination he was satisfied I was all right. Father McGlynn blessed my forehead and told me to rest.

Marie Mc Crystal our next-door neighbor met my mother at the foot of our lane and recounted what has happened and reassured my mother.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Boyle. Meehawl is fine.”

My mother left the grocery bags and bicycle with Marie and she ran up the lane to see how her little boy was recovering. She scolded and blamed herself for not going to the shop earlier in the week and in not getting a more sensible child minder. It has been said many times by those who were there that as soon my mother came into the kitchen I jumped out the bed and ran down shouting.

“Any sweets for me?”

My mother didn’t laugh or cry, but she grabbed me up into her arms.

Back then even in an age without phones, texts news of the rescue travelled all over the country.

The local “Coleraine Constitution” had a detailed paragraph describing what happened. Members of my family today are still in awe of the last line of this report “On examination it was found that the child was none the worse of his terrifying experiences.”

Indeed a local treasure hunt had my rescue as a rhyming couplet clues for their car rally event.

“Nearby a lad mishap had.

Which might have had an ending sad.”

When I went to school I came more fully aware of this story, which has never left me. On my first 7

day at school tall girls and boys in the senior classes tossed and rumpled my curly frizzy red hair and they regarded me as with some oddity and would say.

“You’re Paddy Joe’s wee fellah that fell in the pump. Hi .Did you see any monsters down there? “ Also some relations or good meaning folks referred to me as the wee boy that fell in the well and they would slip me a half a crown. In a sense taking pity on me “the poor little thing”who had an amazing escape from death. So even from an early age it seems that my very existence was truly a miracle.

(Michael Boyle)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: GAVIN BOURKE

Gavin Bourke grew up in the suburb of Tallaght in West Dublin. Married to Annemarie living in County Meath, he holds a B.A. in Humanities from Dublin City University, an M.A. Degree in Modern Drama Studies and a Higher Diploma in Information Studies from University College Dublin. His work broadly covers nature, time, memory, addiction, mental health, human relationships, the inner and outer life, creating meaning and purpose, politics, contemporary and historical social issues, injustice, the human situation, power and its abuse, absurdism, existentialisms, human psychology, cognition, emotion and behaviour, truth and deception, the sociological imagination, illness, socio-economics, disability, inclusivity, human life, selfishness and its consequences as well as urban and rural life, personal autonomy, ethics, commerce, science, grand schemes and the technological life in English and to a lesser extent in the Irish Language.

He was shortlisted for The Redline Book Festival Poetry Award in 2016 for A Rural Funeral. Unanswered Call was published in the September 2019 issue of Crossways Literary Magazine. Sword Damocles, Falling was published in the October issue of A New Ulster in 2019. He was invited to read at the Siarsceál Literary Festival in October 2019. Louisburgh, County Memory was highly commended in The Johnathon Swift Creative Writing Awards 2019.

Our Tree and Getting On were published in Qutub Minar Review International Literary Journal in 2019.

His first book of poetry (sixty pages) was shortlisted for the International Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK) Full Fat Collection Poetry Competition in 2019. The Power in Abuse, Beyond Bone, While the Jackdaws Watch On and Fair Trade were published in 2019 in A New Ulster. He won the international Nicely Folded Paper Trois International Poetry Collection Competition in 2020 for his book Towards Human which will be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK) in 2022 worldwide.

The Past is Present Tense, Transcending Mind Movements, The Breaking Waters of Catharsis, The Never Heard and The Death of The Shepherd were published in the Decade Edition of A New Ulster in 2019. Aloneness, Underneath A Wicker Cross, A Life in Our Times and At Mercies featured in the April 2020 issue of A New Ulster. Shivered featured in A New Ulster in Spring 2020. A Rural Funeral was published in the U.S. literary journal Writers in the Know in 2020. Before and After Johnathan Swift Was Born, Malaises, My New Eyes, Turning Corners and The Mornings After Admission were published in A New Ulster in 2020. A Life in A Time was published in the U.S. 9

journal Tiny Seed Literary Journal in 2020.

The End of Their Affair and Beyond Bone, While the Jackdaws Watch On (2020 Version) were published in Poesis Literary Journal as well as In the Dead Heat in July 2020. Dream of Consciousness was published in E-Ratio Postmodern literary Journal in 2020. A Mourning Burial, Through the Rain and several other poems were published in Prachya Review Bangladesh 2020. The End of Their Affair and The Past Coming Through to The Present Moment were published in Qutub Minar Review in 2020. Before Love Was Legal was longlisted for the Ken Saro-Wiwa Poetry Award in July 2020 and was featured in a Maynooth University anthology published in November 2020. Off Life-Support was published in an anthology created by the Siarscéal Literary Festival 2020. His third poetry collection Answered Call (81 Pages) was shortlisted for The Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK) Selected or Neglected International Poetry Collection Competition in May 2020. Dreaming in The Liminal and What If were published in Poesis International Literary Journal in autumn 2020. Looking for An Eye in The Sun was published in Chiron Review November 2020. Anew was published in Iris Literary Journal in Texas U.S in 2020. Travelling Community and Eye Opening were published in Qutub Minar Review International Literary Journal in 2020.

In the Dead Heat, The Slowest Walk, Dreaming in The Liminal and Our Child were published in Poesis Literary Journal in 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in Writers in The Know Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in October Hill Literary Journal New York City in October 2020.

Sea Change was published in Litterateur Defining World literary journal in India in September 2020.

Aloneness was published in the American Literary Journal Brief Wilderness in September 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in Writers in The Know, U.S. 2020. Cut with Blunt Knaves and Inflow appeared in The NonConformist Magazine in September 2020. His ninety-page manuscript Anew has been accepted for publication

by Atmosphere Press as well as his manuscript What If? in North America for publication in 2022 worldwide.

Towards the Headlights, As the Evening Fell and Dovetailing were published in Poesis Journal in Autumn 2020.

Eyes Gone Black was published in From Whispers to Roars Literary Journal, An Arts and Literary Magazine 2020.

As the Evening Fell appeared in Tiny Seed Journal, U.S. The Heavy Weight Champion and Crow Lives On were published in The Non-Conformist 2020. Cut with Blunt Knaves, Inflow and Broken Dolls appear in the Autumn Edition of the U.S. literary journal Harbinger Asylum 2020. Was So Sudden was published in The Non-Conformist Magazine, U.S., December 2020. Purely Malignant, What If, Overhead and Dreaming in The Liminal were published in A New Ulster in 2020. Living with Death was published in The Non-conformist in Autumn 2020.

He was shortlisted and subsequently commended in the Jonathan Swift International Creative Writing Awards for The Night She Held My Hand in October 2020. Enduring Beasts was published in the U.S. Journal Shift A Journal of Literary Oddities 2020. His epic poem (Eight Pages) Unremarkable was awarded a place for the Proverse International Poetry Prize Hong Kong 2020 and is published in a university anthology in China, published April 2021. Dublin is Here A thirteen-page epic poem is published in Modern Literature in India.

Gavin was highly commended and awarded second place for an unpublished manuscript in the Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK), Local Dialects International Poetry Manuscript Competition in November 2020. Confucius For King was published by Litterateur Defining World in India in November 2020. Still Birth was published in Poets Choice India in 2021. Two Way Mirror, The Lighthouse, on The Green, Rain at Night, The End of The Summer, How to Be? 10

and Let the Day Begin were published in Modern Literature in India 2021.

The Most Brazen Wins was published by Harbinger Asylum Press (U.S.) in 2021. Hadn’t Noticed the Birds for Years was published in Autumn 2020 in Wingless Dreamer (U.K.) and was a finalist for their International Poetry Award 2020. Endless was published by La Piccioletta Barca in February 2021. First Tour featured in Better Than Starbucks in February 2021. The Night She Held My Hand was published in Writers in The Know Minneapolis, U.S. in 2021. Living with Death was published in The Non-Conformist, 2021.

Late in The Day was published in The Non-Conformist 2021. Mirroring in Time’s Eyes and Continuums were published in Poesis 2021. Morrison Archetype was published in October Hill Literary Journal New York City in February 2021. Gavin was shortlisted for a single poem international poetry contest with Hedgehog Poetry Press UK 2021. Crossed Lines, Looking Back, Bone Dead and Soon Gone and A Meeting with The Riverman were published in A New Ulster 2021. To See If I Was Alive was published by South Dakota State Poetry Society in February 2021.

He had the following poems published in Modern Literature India, 2021, So I Shot Myself in The Face, A Snapshot and Delicious Apple Tarts. His poetry was selected for Rattle poetry critique of the month twice, livestreamed in March 2021 and October 2021 (United States) Through Drying Eyes was published on the blog for WINK Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States in 2021. When the Healing Begins, To That End and Covered were published in Poesis Literary Journal (U.S.) in Summer 2021. He was a semi-finalist in Tatterhood Review (U.S.) International Poetry Competition in March 2021.

I Dreamt of Clocks and Open Door to the Dreamworld were published by Poesis (U.S.) 2021. Before and Defaulted are published in The Hong Kong Review in the current issue 2021. Rhapsody for the Future, Purely Malignant and The Prettiest Little Things were published by Aura Literary Arts U.S. in 2021. Childhood Watersheds was published in Poet’s Choice India in Spring 2021. The Writer, So I Shot myself in the Face, A Snapshot, Mattress Mick and Inhuman were published in A New Ulster in 2021. I Took the Train Today was published in The Meath Chronicle in April 2021. Working A Shipwreck was published in the The Seattle Star, (U.S) 2021.

At The Edge was published in Harbinger Asylum (U.S.) 2021. A Disused Railway Line in Navan Town was published twice in The Meath Chronicle in May 2021. Gavin was a semi-finalist in The Button Eye Review (U.S.) international winter poetry contest in May 2021. The Spectacular Spire, Black Art, Treasure Chest, The Wonders of Weaving, Sawn, Your First Summer’s Love, Between the Lights, Down Memory Street and My husband Had A Miscarriage were published in the U.S. poetry journal Poesis in 2021.

At The Tallaght Parade was published in the Echo Newspaper in June 2021. He was shortlisted for the Wingless Dreamer International Poetry Competition June 2021 for Broken Dolls. His poetry features in the current issue of Chiron Review, New Haven (U.S.) Your Right To Live is currently published on the WINK blog Minneapolis, Minnesota, (U.S) Private Oratories, The Getaway Lake and Lakeside and back and The Sound of Bereavement were published in Poesis Literary Journal (U.S.) 2021. He will have a forty-poem collection published in India in 2022 for worldwide distribution.

He featured as a spotlight artist with Aura Literary Journal in Autumn 2021 (U.S.) The Sacred Hill of Tara was published in The Meath Chronicle in Summer 2021. Because the Night Was Over was published by Wingless Dreamer in 2021 in an anthology. (U.K.) Times and Time and Covered were published by Sortes Magazine, Philadelphia U.S. in 2021. A Genuine Hector Quine, Stuck for Now, Revolutions of a Cycle, Memories Matter, One 11

Summer Evening at Donaghmore Church and Round Tower, Seaside, Private Oratories and Lakeside and Back will be published by Poesis International Literary Journal (U.S.) in 2022. Molly Malone: A Dublin Statue Poem was published in Poets Choice, India, 2021. Addiction is an Illness, In Darkness, Down by The Ramparts, Anna Livia’s Home and Alternative Life were published in A New Ulster 2021.

Mobile Home and Vacancy for A Lighthouse Keeper were published in Poesis International Literary Journal (U.S) in 2021. Poolside was published by Wingless Dreamer (UK) in 2021. Long poems Getting Through and Other Sides were published by White Wall Review, Toronto, Canada in 2021. Upon the Sword of Change an epic poem was acted and performed as part of the No Bars Community Project Competition, Leicester (UK) for poetry on the theme of incarceration and is now available on Instagram and was published in an anthology in September/October 2021 available for purchase on Amazon worldwide.

The Apex of Never, Sea Saws and Mirroring in Time Eyes were published in Poesis Literary Journal (United States) 2021. An Autumn Evening in Navan was published in September in The Meath Chronicle. It is currently published on the Meath Chronicle Website. He is currently awarded a place in a major international poetry competition based in China for his poem The Tusk which will feature in an international anthology in 2022 published in China.

Gavin was a finalist of the Dream Stones of Summer Writing Contest 2021 with Wingless Dreamer (UK) for his poem Poolside. One Autumn Evening in Navan, A Night Away and To the End will be published by Poesis International Literary Journal in 2022. Times and Time and Tires were published in the most recent issue of Sortes Literary Journal, Philadelphia, USA, they were also read by the editor at the launch event in October 2021.

His poems One Autumn Evening in Navan and Closest to her Heart will be published by Poesis Literary Journal in 2022. He is currently a semi-finalist in a major international literary competition based in China, for his full-length poetry collection manuscript (145 Pages) ‘Evangelical Heart’. He was shortlisted and subsequently Commended for The Johnathon Swift International Poetry Award for his poem When He Went In. He was shortlisted and subsequently Highly Commended for The Manchester Irish Language Group Poetry Competition 2021 for his poem in the Irish Language Ár Dubh Linn, Ár Baile Átha Cliath. His poem In The Company of a Clock will be published by Flat Brush Review (U.S.) in 2021. On the Nightshift is published in an anthology published by Wingless Dreamer as is Bonfire Night. The Constant Candle and The Duke of Somewhere were both published by Wingless Dreamer, India in Winter 2021 in separate anthologies. Today, Happenings and Waiting for Words were published in A New Ulster in December 2021. Christmas is Coming to Navan was published in the special Christmas Edition of The Meath Chronicle in December 2021. Paltry Trade will be published by Writers in The Know, Minneapolis, Minnesota in Spring 2022.

He is currently working on his tenth poetry collection. Gavin is also a multi-instrumentalist and has been a songwriter, composer and guitar teacher for the past thirty years. He plays Classical/Spanish guitar, acousticelectric guitar, bass guitar, jazz guitar, electric lead guitar, banjo and bouzouki. He has written songs, music and lyrics, recorded albums, collaborated with many musicians and songwriters and has performed in venues all over Dublin.

He begins an M.A. Degree in Philosophy in 2022.

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13

After Hemlock

Post-partum conium maculatum, dived deep through the noise and rope twisting around the bloody veins like vines jagged-edged thorns piercing myelin sheaths poison was not the cure for the poison I never took that done away with Socrates after tea black leaves on wet cement feathers and pain drawn deep into the palest skin with the blackest ink never ending hair of the dog, unending detoxification, played games with fire strangers ran from the overtures so horrific, the Medusa resemblance crab fishing baskets, dead eyes full of black holes disappearing into tunnels leading to Hades depicted in The Phaedra the dead shall have their day eventually the gall of impotent fashion-doll heads the arrogance flushed down drains empty bus-shelters, fresh sharps and needles, the seagulls started to die lay down flat in the streets like geese or swans regurgitating dead fish-heads in the skies raining blackbirds snuffed out the candle with two wet fingers stitched the portholes with nautical clocks and stories of drowned sailors was the blackest of says today held the cartridge of black ink to the village lantern until it turned dark blue threw the dogs to the wolves to leave in bad circumstances for stealing the light from the brightest eyes 14

heard the dark notes first in the old concrete driveway of a small house the downy feathers made their own way through the synthetic material along with the pungent smell of hand gel the alcohol, the ethanol cleansing the skin of plague juice and endless words projection, diversion and wilful transference to hide morbidly selfish rage stabbing pages madly with fountain pens exercises in futility, carefully curating self-images hiding and running from cruel reality unsuccessfully with filtered bias finding meaning and purpose in among the ashes of burned down houses pig iron melting with karma’s promises the veins bleeding blue ink in drops to be dragged from the heart to the split silver metal nib pouring species and energy into rainbows, mirrors, gravestones reflective surfaces and raindrops the black dogs hang by their necks on clotheslines boar’s heads bloodied from barbwire headaches praying for a luxury death with no taste to follow or come before the shaken ink, stains the fingers giving life after metaphorical death cathartic, varicose, watching the skeletal survive and thrive poured like iron ore back into foundries to be refreshed in the cold and the ice rolled in allergic vermin, the dead flesh akin to hemlock tea to the mice, rats and mindless carrion lacking choice, will or consciousness sabotage by bitter will, controlled by evil and hatred, delusion, hallucination and the dark arts of treatment resistant derangement

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stitched the words with hemlock instead of the suicide tea for which there is no known cure plenty of time to walk the funeral fields with the dead and dying dragging the carcasses.

So, it is preferable to practice living well for as long as possible there is plenty of time to be dead life is not a waste of time, life is time, time is life we cannot conceive of anything, including life unless we are alive and conscious and functioning well with contentment and happiness as our goals as well as love for our fellow humans came out of the crack behind the closed and open eyes that lead to the heart and soul the shadows on the blinds resembling doves and kind soft shapes white, soft shaded out lines the music dictated the moods you can only tell black from blue and blue from black when they are side by side people are afraid of consciousness the undulating ebb and tide-like flow, behaves like water unpredictable, uncontrollable, unfettered glorious and wonderful the truest essence of being, living and breathing wondrous consciousness married to time’s inexorable forward movement

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seeking alignment of all possible clock movements for unity of time and purpose moments and meaning making perfect sense to begin living with, living for others as well wiring more than money globally for higher purposes than simply selfish patterns of conspicuous consumption as a methodology of existing on a continuum which will end at some point in your own time in time concluding the individual experience of your lifetime somewhere or anywhere let go from the perimeters of nothingness as before to the eternal bliss and utopia of being without an existence in spatial terms as a conscious living entity on land or water there being no need to understand death to appreciate the great gift of life and the beautiful experience of living enjoying the freedom where freedom exists to be on your own terms witnessing personally, the autonomy of the self for the greater good careful of the requirements of ecosystems as curators of the planets and moons suns and solar systems during our anthropological duration here wherever here is whatever now is fundamental concerns and questions require sufficient answers

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maximising the light through the pupils, irises, beams through cracks holes and tears in darkness in black walls of the opaque and impenetrable to release the tension of the real for comfort with the human scenarios and situation overall loosening the taut, tense, tungsten wire often rattling to reveal pure unadulterated showers of golden light to be savoured best to live life in the light as opposed to the dark requiring a shift or change in perspective or perception for ultimate harmony of minds, bodies, hearts and souls to attain the highest most optimum position possible in time the programming that has taken place to have taken what we are this far is anything real, therefore?

Flirted with the shadows to get higher than high as if high was not enough it never is laws of diminishing returns where is God in all of this?

Pictures worth thousands of words.

(GAVIN BOURKE)

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Writing Time

The power in the process, withdrew the negatives to find the space where I can do magic the positive version, the best outcome for reality where the light is black in white, white in black, black in black, white in white, parallel with sensation eyes, vision, perception, reality, have to compare it to something for contrast and comparison always has to be a frame filtered by time, rain or water the giver of life the needle-prick for a new-born to test reality in the first tears, waited for a flurry or run into the nightlights from the mind and heart to the pen, the words forming first, the sounds followed by the sentences, opened a hole for the eye to see through and through again a gateway to transcendency, the place where everything flows perfectly, organically as if meant to be, the zone where it all falls into place, to step back from life to do something extraordinary, buds, flowers, leaves, trees, symbols of nature in action metaphors for generative force in motion, turning hurt inside out to face the warm wind to interact, to create a balanced beneficial interplay, creating time out of time it connected with people because it was real, because it happened, because it is history part of memory, I wonder will I ever feel it again for the first time, chasing dragons escapees of the mind, of the past, of consciousness, now merely phenomena out of the eye of the mind, sunshine, sand and seashells, time that never stood still despite pleas to a god or the heavens, running out of the bright lights of younger years disappearing like dust from a palm, dandelion flowers floating around on gentle breezes prescribed addictions, the excitable that keep us going, the voids that slow us down we carry with us, the pointlessness of over-examination of the now

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of the investigation of every second, all we have is time, the railway tracks and the stations the passing destinations, the expected and unexpected, the real and the imaginary the desired and unwanted, you could say anything is a crisis of epic proportions or not everything being subjective, regardless of objectivity, a standpoint or position to it so that all is interpretable no matter what, versions of reality with positive spins on them so the needle never has to scratch the record in its revolving motion, clear in direction and continuity with the universal purpose, much of what we concern ourselves with being hardly worth thinking about in the broadest sense of the words we cannot control our own consciousness, the organic nature of thought processes watching car crashes in slow-motion, mimicking the way it goes, for now, the reasons for anything going forward, almost like an over-provider, the organic stream of consciousness, sometimes you can’t do things differently, they go the way they do that is if they do at all, minds borrowing minds, for mind sake, young eyes coloured by emotion, stream of consciousness probes, art opening up new eyes in the day to look through the god of disdain, fogged up glasses and unattended classes grading gradients and other natural forces, of grace or graceless, in the scheme of things imaginable, neutralising malicious forces with kindness, to see the sun as nothing more than the sun, relative to anything, positive weapons, less with the quality going higher talking to the wall, the ticking clock does not wait, skin reversal, emotional registration marking meaning to keep going, lightning flashes, commoditisation of flesh and bone alone chased a dead bird to its death with years of built-up spite, a black dog will leave in bad circumstances, overwhelmed, hopefully dead for good, time on the wall for the little gammy man with two club hands born without a throat like a stoat, seasoned oarsmen lost at sea under hairy thumbs with nautical devices, the ego, the will and the right way to go forth knowledge, power and Foucault before interactive conscious flow with artificial reality,

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as standard practice, they often say it is catharsis even when it is not, association and dissociation, styles of interpretation, movement, molecules and cellular reactions boring repetitive news programmes, to see how many times you can use the same words with a straight face and great lips, treated and treated, chronological change and measurements of changes, acceptance and denial, the inside out, the outside in gradually alkaline battery power through epic blue lagoon pupils, wonders and wonders, mathematics and philosophy returned together after a few hundred years apart what is worth wondering, the balance of a self at the time, the inner and outer lives combined, slowing down slowly, the hurt illness can cause unintentionally to loved ones, pigs best sent to market, they are all laughing at you, things can happen and when they do they do, then they have happened, then they are in the past like anything that occurs whilst passing through the processes, processed and unprocessed, manufactured and unmanufactured the neutrality of fruit and vegetable markets in the early morning with the forklifts driving and the palettes stacking, what is meant to be and what is to be, intended or unintended under the influence of, tapping into the crying, drying well to soak up the remaining dust after everything is on or gone, connected to death, fizzing, always on, they become what they do, like murderers, intertwined, embodied, drunk on rewards, drunken reward systems in operation, splitting down the centre, some people have no friends, fall in love with substitutions, two sides to a story of addiction to virtual reality who you are, who you are not, who you would like people to think you are regardless of whether or not it is false, it is, make believe for mood elevation, affirmation, validation, second-hand living, time for nothing, nothing for nothing no need to wait for negative impact, endurance, stamina, sustainability the saboteur at the end of a dark enclosed tunnel, second winds in night-time kingdoms visits by the dead, passing through the mind this time, snatched from memory

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singing from the same glass hymn sheet, exaggerated features and exaggerated reactions all plugged into the new universe, meta-vision, continuums and stages, phases and timely outcomes, uncontrollable consciousness, lack of regulation, wild rivers of the will let loose, unfettered with free reign to power, through money, only money can make money, the turning wheels pay for our days, fed by the gears and the grass meal artificial reward systems and consequences.

(GAVIN BOURKE)

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When I Opened the Tin of My Grandfather’s Carpentry Tools For The Very First Time

When I opened the tin, I took out the newspaper covering the tools dating back to 2004.

With bread soda and vinegar, I began cleaning the wrenches and the brass box ruler before proceeding with the wooden chisels.

Beneath the layers of grime on the surface, I discovered his signature on a few of the handles.

After the old wood plane, I finished with the brass grease gun and the stainless-steel plumb bobs attached to twine, this time discovering his initials etched into the metals.

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From his hands to my hands, unknowingly I had opened-up a portal of new memories.

(GAVIN BOURKE)

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What Comes to Mind

Passive death wishes things being amiss today being a new day putting on faces brightening presences presentations countenances atmospheric changes and transformations feeding seagulls inland encouraging frenzies the spaces between love slow moving canals passers by grey light mid-November riding waves into unknowns emotional and cognitive reactions to perceived stimuli everybody deserves to be happy levels of functionalities and comprehension comparisons and realisations dreams and the unconscious trying to tell us something work and wellbeing looking back on today in time screaming from slaughterhouses running with the wolves properly acknowledging the passing of time opening portals to higher plains closing doors opening others closing open doors opening closed doors withdrawal conscious or unconscious loneliness returning to communal thinking compass points carved into vertebrae tunnels leading in funnels sicknesses that cannot be hidden behind false grins all addictions taking much more time than they are willing to give complex cognitive emotional and behavioural processes the black hole

waiting opening into something else

letting the cars pass sometimes the only difference is difference appreciating privileges in all forms dreamt of rain that never came 25

sea gravel standing between the hours opening new doors spinning ideas with words what you can see more clearly in the dark toy swords and high-minded acrobatics.

(GAVIN BOURKE)

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Time Out of Time

Fell into the night’s decadence, felt its subtle embrace, drawn to the dark, sworn to the black blood heart bleeding furiously, time on my mind again, always running out of my own road picture frames creaking in an empty house, split skeletons in half with a butcher’s cleaver to find the marrow of the species in evidence to justify the name of a lane where the seagulls roam observing the struggle to be something or anything other than predestination, the route down which many neighbours go from which there is often sadly no return, we communicate with the invisible blind, out of ectopic mood brooding for company we need each other whether we like it or not, human puzzles making sense of uncertainty, the unpredictable nature of it, slowing down time hours, minutes, seconds, stasis, frozen, static pendulums, when we talk to the blind and sing to the deaf, our consciousness not ours to control but to live with sold the horses downstream all at once, there are no messages in the water in the flowing streams, passing by I spied an angel’s face when I closed my eyes by the riverside by the old bridge, holy catharsis brought on by stimulants twisted night-frames, melting candle-wax lamps, what we are told and what we interpret what we are told and what we believe, the sale of timelines, lip services, the time it takes to reach considered opinions, connections, disconnections, binaries, can be so impenetrable so we wait for the cracks in the plaster to form to see the truth in the light of day reception, receptivity, semiotics, sounds and brainwaves, overloaded circadian rhythms the emotions and their own logic, running away with organic connectivity sense and madness, foolish decisions coloured by the emotional being, life, the dangers of magical thinking, dreaming into dreams, urban landmarks etched into everyday thinking sounds and memories rekindled together so as to be transportational in place and times 27

lost in moments less likely to commit the sins of dreams, signs of healthy minds placement of grievances upon common targets, levels of comprehension and distressed dispositions and positions, viewpoints filtered by emotional landscapes uncontrollable psychologies, everyone has been here before up to now, up to this point painting around houses, tripping on wireless leads, unpredictable drifts how the eyes can be made to look, fixed beliefs and expressions walls that cannot be broken through, reasoning, reason and reasons, flashbacks passing images, false memories, imprisoned by consciousness and the limitations of the comprehension of reality, butchered by human nature, blood crazed baying mobs, threaded through the history of time and space high on feeling to get lost in words, absorbed in magic, time and time again comparing reality with reality noting differences, requited and unrequited over the lifespan patterns and random happenings, it was all already in there from the beginning getting access to higher planes where the best words in the best order come naturally with little effort, gruelling challenges everybody needing meaning in their life for some sense of it all the selfishness that can come from being the boss of yourself arrogance and hubris, the self-interest of always putting yourself first in all circumstances, untempered, unchecked and unchallenged, introspective extrospective, some don’t look in or out, living vapidly no one is really ever alone anymore, there is no silence unless we are absent at the mercy of the unfairness of reality, the choking ropes at different heights the nooses and snoods at the ready if we are unfortunate, bruised flesh surrounding ourselves with circuses to appease the head and the heart or others of our part in the great human race with a finishing line at different times

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of ribbon or guillotine blades to enable or cut down, prime for the gallows last dance, the cruelness of transience when you have had your eyes opened to it killing hearts stone-dead with the weight of expectations that cannot be matched perception generating perceptions against night glass tearing a hole in the wall of reality to find time to slow down time to create time out of time together we are in time.

(GAVIN BOURKE)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: SAEED SALIMI BABAMIRI Saeed Salimi Babamiri: Kurdish translator and poet. His published books in Iran are Kurdish translations of “Half an Apple” and “The Mouse's Wedding” a play and a story in verse, both for children. He has many other translations waiting to be published. His major long translation from Kurdish into English verse is “Mam and Zeen” by Ahmad Xanee. It is known as “Kurdish Romeo and Juliet” which is ready to be published.

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Motherland

I know a woman who everyday runs through rocky words of the hard people in this city, She's a river with a great celerity.

And everynight she repairs city ruins brick by brick, She in loving this dear land is so quick.

She in our minds do stand, And her nice name is motherland!

By: Karim Dafee, Kurdish poet.

Translated by: Saeed Salimi Babamiri, Kurdish translator and poet.

(SAEED SALIMI BABAMIRI)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ALISA VELAJ Alisa Velaj was born in Albania, in 1982. She holds a Ph.D. in Albanian Language and Literature, which she has been teaching as subjects at university level, while writing poetry, prose, essays, articles, and research studies. Velaj was shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in UK in June 2014. Her work has been published in over 100 international online forums, printed magazines and antholo- gies across many countries (USA, UK, Sweden, Australia, Israel, India). Alisa earned an Artist-in-Residence Scholarship in February 2019 and attended the AIR Litteratur Västra Götaland Program in Villa Martin- son, Jonsered, Sweden. Velaj is the author of the poetry book “With no sweat at all”, (Carvena Barva Press, 2021), translated into the English by Ukë Buçpapaj. In 2020, she won The National Prize in Poetry, awarded by the Albanian Ministry of Culture.

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ALISA VELAJ A NARRATION WITH A VIEW OF THE WATER (Impressions about the book “Monte Carlo Days & Nights” by Susan Tepper) The book “Monte Carlo Days & Nights” by Susan Tepper provides for the reader a narration with a view of the waters. Even though the book is fragmented in several narrations with a telegraphic writing style, we can say indeed that it is a single narration, where the narrator stops at each fragment as a breathing stopover. The first narrative station opens with a not so common description:

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“This hotel has bird chirps in the halls. The walls papered in green vines with perching parrots. Guests are expected to suspend reality and believe the wallpaper parrots are making the chirpy noises. It’s strange.” Parrots everywhere.

The man in front of the woman (who narrates in retrospective) will also take the features of a man-parrot along the subject of the text. In the fourth narration “The One”, he says the exact words which he uses to end the last narration “Dinner” with: “We should get married, he says. But I will never marry. But if I were to ever marry, you’d be the one.”

But what does this repetition of phrases presuppose in the psyche of a male? Lack of love, avoidance from love, or masculine fears turned into cliché? Actually, the repetition cliché is an inevitable reference of spiritual emptiness. The male character is simply there, and he reports about himself with the same indifference as a chronicler with an icy voice would report on necrology pagesthe death of someone (or many people) by a current tornado. The difference here is that the chronicler narrates about himself and not about the others. He is icy in a fire zone. Let’s say that the fire of love of the narrator burns only her. The other one passes nearby without understanding how to even warm himselflet alone his partner.

He is Eros and Thanatos, whereas she is Eros and Love. He lacks feelings, actually he has never known them, while she understands from the beginning that their relationship is hopeless.

However, even though she has understood that he is a man-parrot, the vague hope for the sake of feeling puts her in a dilemma whether she should be the first to say goodbye or to wait until the swamping arrives. The context where the events happen is also very important to understand the psychological and symbolic dismounting of the characters and the situations they are thrown in.

The author herself uses the words “wet nightmare”. When she understands that he cannot carry love and that love cannot carry him (the partner) either, she gets wet from the nightmare of a dream without future. Of an awful dream she will run away from with the same rush, as we run away from the nonsense squeak of parrots.

The story has water/waters/sea in the background. Waters have so a triple function: first, waters are an indication of the erotic passion; second, as a wet nightmare that invades the unexpressed anger of the female, and third, waters as a flooding of a man. The flooded man is a nightmare which she escapes from, whereas to himself, the flooded man is simply an unmanly man, a man-child and a man-parrot, who in the war between Eros and Thanatos, gets swallowed with pleasure by the latter. A narration that mustn’t be missed, as it mustn’t be missed the love for our soul and our body.

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Susan Tepper BIO: Susan Tepper is a twenty year published writer and the author of nine books of fiction and poetry. Two more books (a novel and a poetry chapbook) will be published next year by Cervena Barva Press. Tepper writes in all genres. Her stories, poems, interviews, essays and opinion columns have appeared worldwide both in print and online. Awards and honors include 19 Pushcart Prize Nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ which is adapted into a stage play and will be presented Off-Broadway in late 2022 as ‘The Crooked Heart.’ Additionally, Tepper was shortlisted in the Francis Ford Coppola ZOETROPE Award for the Novel in 2006, and her story ‘Whores’ from Monte Carlo Days & Nights was named Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review. Her story DEER has appeared onstage at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, and was nominated for National Public Radio’s Writing Aloud series. For a decade Tepper curated and hosted a reading series called FIZZ at the KGB Bar in New York City, as well as hosting an Author Interview Series in the infamous Algonquin Hotel Lobby, also in NYC. Prior to taking up the writing life, Tepper worked as an actress, singer, flight attendant, airline marketing manager and overseas tour guide. She lives with her husband and her dog Otis in the New York area.

More information on this Novella and her other books can be seen on her website at www.susantepper.com

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Monte Carlo Days & Nights, a Novella by Susan Tepper 4 chapters

Hotel

This hotel has bird chirps in the halls. The walls papered in green vines with perching parrots.

Guests are expected to suspend reality and believe the wallpaper parrots are making the chirpy noises. It’s strange. The halls are long, narrow, winding. Stuffy and airless for such a fancy hotel.

Left-turning right-turning halls. He jogs them to and from the elevator.

Is this a Monte thing? I ask him. Bird noises in the halls?

People who go to Monte Carlo a lot call it Monte. It’s an insider thing. This being only my first time but I want to belong.

He’s looking across the room at me. I’m still in bed. He’s slumped in the deep leather chair near the open balcony doors. A light breeze blows the sheer curtains. We’ve just finished having before-dinner sex.

Bird sounds? I really don’t know, he tells me. I’ve only stayed in this particular hotel.

But how many times have you been here?

Ten or so, he says.

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In the same hotel?

He nods.

Don’t you long for a change?

I have a change, he says. You.

Then he comes back to the huge bed and does me again. He’s fast but one of the best. He gets you there in half the time most guys take. I tell him and he laughs. It must be the jogging he says.

Dinner is alfresco on a small stone patio surrounded by dense hedges. He says we can eat inside the restaurant if I prefer.

I look toward the restaurant which also seems lovely. It’s nicer out here, I say, it’s a beautiful night.

Your dress is beautiful, he says.

Thank you. I bought it in Bombay on a layover.

The purple gauze and gold threads suit you, he says. I like the strapless, you have the shoulders for it. The gold flat sandals are perfect. Did you buy the lizard purse in Bombay?

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No, I bought that in New York. I rub my hand across the pale flat lizard purse in my lap. I don’t mention I bought it at sixty percent off. I just say I thought it would go well with everything I packed since it’s a neutral color.

You’re a fashion plate, he says.

This makes me dizzy. Or maybe it’s the gin and tonic I drank so quickly. The salty humidity. I feel nervous. I don’t feel nervous during sex with him. Only during normal.

Peach

After dinner we take a stroll through Monte’s ancient streets.

When we return to the room, I place our breakfast order for the next morning. Would you mind doing that? he had asked me. Of course not, I answered back.

I dial room service and set it up to be delivered at 9am. He likes when I order him a peach – my calling it a fresh peachto room service. He smiles, fingering his long beard, says how nicely I order and that it makes him happy. It would never occur to me that calling a peach a fresh peachcould make a man happy.But, I’m happy to hear that. Because secretly I’m afraid. I’m afraid of most men who have achieved a pinnacle of success that I will never reach.

I have just come off a month of cleaning planes. Right in the middle of summer the union airplane cleaners went on strike. We, the stewardesses, became the strike cleaners. The real cleaners broke all the vacuums and destroyed most of the cleaning equipment. We had to drag brooms down the plane aisles and through the seat areas. It’s hell pulling a broom over sticky spilled soda and dry hardened-on food.

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People smoked on the planes. We had to reach into the little arm-rest ash trays and empty the butts into plastic garbage bags. It was pretty gross. The galleys even more gross. The lavatories the most gross. I wore a mask and rubber gloves when cleaning the lavs.

One hot afternoon I had to drive the biffy truck that went under the plane where the toilets emptied. That day I wore a football helmet and mask and goggles and gloves. And a damned good thing. I came out splattered with blue biffy liquid. All too horrible for words. The strikers stood by the runway fence heaving cans and bottles at us. Curses. Then it was over.

Now I’m on the French Riviera. Ordering him a fresh peach. Why don’t you get one too, he asks. But not really. He doesn’t say that. I get what I want. It’s assumed. He has arranged a mani-pedi, massage and mud masks for us. The day I arrived in Monte, a shopping bag from Hermes sat on the bed. In it was the most gorgeous long silk scarf. He called it my welcome gift.

The luxury everywhere here is undeniable. Yet I would have liked him to suggest that I get a fresh peach, also.

Monte

It’s been decided that we will breakfast in the room every day. A nice view of the sea from our 7 th floor balcony. Then up to the roof top pool. All are his suggestions, which I agree to. A lot of the women go topless, he says. Will you?

Too modest, I answer.

I don’t mention that the only swimsuit I packed is black and strapless. But I wouldn’t go topless anyway.

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The roof top pool is mobbed by the time we get up there. We find two chaise lounges to the rear of the crowd, almost pushed to the railing. I like being back from the throngs of people tanning themselves dark. It’s nice to be able to look out over the railing at the sparkling Mediterranean. Each time I want to take a dip in the pool, I have to thread my way around a lot of chaises. Men look up but I pretend not to notice.

When the pool waiters come around he orders Perrier for us. He says it’s important we stay hydrated. He orders so many little bottles of Perrier I have to keep using the toilet. It’s embarrassing. I combine it with a dunk in the pool after, hoping he doesn’t notice where I detour first.

Poolside, lunch is light – a salad for him. I bypass all the heartier food on the menu, things I’d really like to have, and order a crab cake. It comes on a bed of white curly lettuce. Afterward I still feel hungry. I don’t order dessert because he doesn’t.

He suggests a stroll around Monte. We go back to the room and change out of our swimsuits and almost have sex.

I admire Monte’s cobblestone streets, the way the little town is built up in steps, like climbing low mountains. Yes, it’s lovely here, he says.

In the shops he buys lots of gifts. Cartier perfumes in the red box. Watches for secretaries and assistants. Gucci for the less important, a vintage Cartier tank watch for his top assistant, Marcella. With hers he takes a long time deciding. Gold or platinum? he asks the saleswoman.

Definitely the platinum, Monsieur, she advises. He doesn’t buy me a watch. I love the Gucci sport with the colorful striped canvas band.

For each night’s dinner he has chosen a different restaurant for us. He says it’s arranged so they build. Clutching two shopping bags, he says it’s time to go back and get ready. He says the clothes I brought are great.

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The room has two closets. Mine is on the left. I think about him looking over my clothes, maybe while I was showering. Wondering if he slid the hangers, one by one, to get a better look.

I’m glad to be having dinner soon. I’m feeling very hungry.

He says he can’t get over how I managed to fit so many gorgeous things into one suitcase.

We airline gals know how to pack a bag, I say.

Profiteroles And Tea

Early in the summer, before the plane cleaners went on strike, he took me to the home of his parents. They have a big manor style house in Westchester County. Both are respected neurologists.

He and his mother are close though I heard them arguing a few times. Once when I was skimming bugs from their pool. An argument over nothing. I believe they may have had sex at some point during his childhood. Why I believe this, I can’t say for sure. It’s a feeling I got while being there.

Of course we had sex in their house. We always have sex. But we were in an entirely separate wing of that huge place. He told me to scream if I felt like. I did feel like and I screamed.

He is that kind of lover. I don’t scream here in Monte Carlo. I don’t know how thick these walls are though he says they are thick enough. That I should scream if I get the urge.

In the manor house I screamed. He seemed to be super-charged sexually there. I was all over him and screaming and he told me to scream more. And I thought Well he wants them to hear. It cooled me down a lot.

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Now, here in Monte, we have just finished having sex. He knelt at the side of the bed in front of my body. It’s the most power I’ve ever felt. But now it’s over and he’s back in the power mode and I’m in the bathroom.

I check my face in the mirror. It is an undeniably good face. I’m happy to have it. My breasts are good, too, and my shoulders. Right down to my toes. All nice. It takes the pressure off.

Women with less nice have to work harder at everything. Especially hard to gain entrance into the rich world. The Monte world.

He comes into the bathroom and we shower together. He shampoos my hair. We take turns soaping each other.

Let’s go out for profiteroles and tea, he says as the water cascades down.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ENDA BOYLE

Enda Boyle was born in County Derry Ireland in 1994. He was educated at Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast. Previous poems have been published in small journals.

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Goddess of Eloquence

Calliope goddess of eloquence deserts us at precisely the least opportune moments she delights in withholding her best gifts at the exact moments when we need them

Fickle as a cat, she visits us on her own terms rarely bothering to announce her intentions instead, she will discreetly brush against you and your tongue will be spontaneously unbound

Once she offers you phrases, they can’t be ignored They will intermittently buzz at the back of your skull until you use them, you will become her mouthpiece her clerk, taking dictation whenever she demands it.

Over time your antenna will become better 44

attuned and you will detect the must subtle of her messages Scrambling to write whatever she whispers down Ever fearful that this will be the last time she visits

Flighty, playful and found of a joke she singles out One of her previously favored and deselects them Often, she condemns her chosen to patient silence Until she decides to shower inspiration upon them (ENDA BOYLE)

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Love Songs of The precariously Employed

Waking up to the kiln heat of late August The world slams into life all around you A bin lorry bellows past your tenement The noise batters against your window On queue you are treated to another instalment of The Erotic Adventures of the Couple Upstairs To drown it all out you reach to turn on the radio Instantly saccharine syrupy pop music seeps out Anesthetized by easy sentiment you settle down adjust your pillow and roll back onto your side as the memory of your old job leeks from your head your contract has expired, your last wages were paid Life is now a yawn as you dangle between 46

contracts Gradually you rise from bed cook bacon and pancakes and hum along to songs whose lyrics you can’t stand.

(ENDA BOYLE)

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Mermaids

Before the sightings came the radar pings and the lovely songs on the whale sonar Then came the first fleeting glimpses.

Rumors were passed among fishermen of flickering figures on the wave’s crest

Eventually a mermaid was discovered on a busy tourist beach in summer it was flung up from uncharted depths and got stranded among marine litter It died when our rescue attempt failed

The corpse was an anatomical absurdity We found both lungs and gills, translucent membrane under each arm, a luminous tentacle and all down its back ran a ridge of jeweled scales in a red and blue pattern.

We removed the organs for further study and injected the body with formaldehyde This specimen was taken away to be stored 48

Some of our documents were destroyed and we all singed non-disclosure documents

Those of us who were there still share rumors of Mermaids caught in fishing nets off Maine or whole schools circling a North Sea Oil refinery We were able to verify a sighting of a freshwater variant among the sinking canal boats of Venice

Baffling marine biologists and mystics alike these mermaid sightings becoming more common Seemly without pattern and rarely leaving evidence Washing up among the waste we dump in the sea Their mournful songs sound like elegies for the oceans (ENDA BOYLE) 49

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: PATRICIA KAMRADT Patricia Kamradt was born in 1958 during the closed adoption period. As she got older Patricia sought out information on her Ancestry. Through modern d.n.a sources she discovered her Irish Ancestry and her family tree Patricia felt complete and wanted to share her stories.

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The single white dove sits perched on the wire Cooing its mournful call waiting for a response on deaf ears it falls lost in the wind the solitary dove has lost her mate who have flown together side by side throughout the seasons winter, spring, summer and fall year after year in unison Passing over verdant fields over streams and lakes, rivers and glens making sure their mate was within sight joyfully singing in harmony Resting together on tall pines calling out to one another when lost Lifelong partners on their spiritual quest taking comfort in each other Now the lonesome dove sits perched in solitude The sound of a cooper hawk screeching in the distance breaks the silence.

(PATRICIA KAMRADT)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: FIONA SINCLAIR Fiona Sinclair is a poet

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Sparrow Tree It must have rooted by stealth, grew up hiding in plain sight beside the bunkered sub police station, opposite the crazy roundabout, nourished by car fumes.

An evergreen with ample branches and dense foliage, an asset now as it parasols police sentries in the cauldron heat.

Crepuscular skies seethe with sparrows, no fancy murmurations but hoards returning from their pitches all over Luxor to roost in this tenement tree.

First comers win premium cover nearest the trunk.

Others budge up along the outer boughs where thick leaves still provide camouflage.

Full capacity reached, late arrivals must make the best of overflow trees that line the central verge, straggly specimens with sparce foliage, where clustering birds create their own cover.

And their racket, the same universal clatter as in our garden, here reducing the screeches of carriage boys hawking rides, the Adham’s rasping top notes; to undertones, then sudden silence like a choir’s clean cut off.

As night fills in the sky, beneath the tree police officers sag on squad car bonnets; draw on fags, chat, yawn, AK 47s slung over their shoulders like ruck sacks.

(Fiona Sinclair)

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High days Finally, our diaries align, we take a trip to Charleston Farmhouse.

Parking up, a sudden down pour plays percussion on the car roof.

We set about the picnic, silly with laughter.

An elaborate hopscotch, avoiding puddles, to reach the house. Coo at Vanessa’s gift for upcycling functional furniture into art.

Outside the sun has switched back on.

Squelching around the cottage garden we exclaim at the craft behind chaotic borders.

The satnav decides to augment the day, shuns the savage M25, takes us home on the tamer A roads through the Weald.

Gushed We must do this again soon.

I pan the internet for further treasure, but dates refuse to conjugate where work and family overwhelm and snatched free time is shared with closer chums. No schoolgirl sulks, rather an understanding that we are not in the first tier of each other’s friendships, but supernumerary, meant for these high days whose antics are still posted on our memories like indelible selfies.

(Fiona Sinclair)

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Why I don’t write about refugees No doubt it’s well meant but their Dachau dark stories are beyond even our fecund imagination, so, attempts at writing them are mere ventriloquism.

As exploitative perhaps, as the traffickers who sell promises at premium rates.

Our duty is to bear the rub of our own impotence, watching from sofas the squalor of camps where inmates with empty faces live in the awful limbo of now.

And as the TV news dishes up with dinner, the shocking scramble for boats designed for pleasure, not plight, it should be too much for our conscience to swallow.

Better to wait for their voices to be restored and memories recovered so they can tell their own tales, albeit in a borrowed tongue.

(Fiona Sinclair)

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EDITOR’S NOTE This was meant to be the February edition but the month turned into something of a nightmare for us, technology failures, we’ve three computers one of which is a backup machine all decided to stop working, parts needed to be purchased, installed and then software updates, Windows 11 installed itself and promptly stopped the version of Microsoft Office from working requiring a rollback to Windows 10.

There were health issues as well including several close contacts catching Covid which thankfully we managed to avoid. Several animals took sick and needed nursing back to health and to cap it all we have the crisis with fuel, electricity and the war in Ukraine.

I had considered not saying anything about it but I’ve friends working there who are teachers, who went from teaching their children about Math’s, Poetry and Literature to what to pack in the case of an emergency, how to read a map, what direction to travel in to cross the border lessons that most people wouldn’t ever imagine having to learn, yet here we are.

I’m a pacifist, have always held that war is wrong I hope that a peaceful solution is found soon and I mourn those who have lost lives and pray for those displaced by this madness. At least this issues contents of poetry, prose and even a review will lighten the dark days even if for only a little while..

Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS ‘IN A CHANGED WORLD’ Over the past number of years technology has transformed poetry publishing: shop closures due to increasing operational costs has had an impact, to put it mildly, shops are releuctant to take ‘slow moving’ genre such as poetry and play-scripts among other minority interest genre.

The figures given a few years ago were: we had 5000 bookshops in the UK-Ireland and at the time of the research that number had dropped to 900 and falling: there was a period when bookshops had the highest rate of ‘High Street’ shop closures.

Lapwing, being a not-for-profit poetry publisher has likewise had to adjust to the new regime.

We had a Google-Books presence until that entity ended its ‘open door’ policy in favour of becoming a publisher itself. During that time with Google, Lapwing attracted hundreds of thousands of sample page ‘hits’.

Amazon also has changed the ‘game’ with its own policies and strategies for publishers and authors.

There are no doubt other on-line factors over which we have no control.

Poetry publishers can also fall foul of ‘on consignment’ practice, which means we supply a seller but don’t get paid until books have been sold and we can expect unsold books to be returned, thus ‘remaindered’ and maybe not sellable, years can pass!

Distributors can also seek as much as 51% of cover-price IF.they choose to handle a poetry book at all, shops too can require say 35% of the cover price, which is ok given floor space can be thousands of £0000s per square foot per annum..In terms of ‘hidden’ costs: preparing a work for publication can cost a few thousand UK £-stg. Lapwing does it as part of our sevice to our suthors.

It has been a well-known fact that many poets will sell more of their own work than the bookshops, Peter Finch of the Welsh Academi noted fact that over forty years ago and Lapwing poets have done so for years.

Due to cost factors Lapwing cannot offered authors ‘complimentary’ copies.

What we do offer is to supply authors with copies at cost price.

We hold very few copies in the knowledge that requests for hard copies are rarely received.

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Another important element is our Lapwing Legacy Library which holds all our retained titles since 1988 in PDF at £4.00 per title: the format being ‘front cover page - full content pages - back cover page’.

This format is printable as single pages: either the whole book or a favourite page.

I thank Adam Rudden for the great work he has done over the years creating and managing this web-site.

Thanks also to our authors from ‘home’ and around the world for entrusting Lapwing with their valuable contributions to civilisation.

If you wish to seek publication please send you submission in MW Word docx format.

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS POETRY TITLES 2021 All titles are £10.00 stg. plus postage from the authors via their email address.

PDF versions are available from Lapwing at £4.00 a copy, they are printable for private, review and educational purposes.

9781838439804_Halperin Richard W. DALLOWAY IN WISCONSIN Mr.Halperin lives in Paris France Email: halperin8@wanadoo.fr 9781838439811_Halperin Richard W. SUMMER NIGHT 1948 9781838439859_Halperin Richard W. GIRL IN THE RED CAPE 9781838439828_Lennon Finbar NOW Mr Lennon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: lennonfinbar@hotmail.com 9781838439835_Dillon Paul T WHISPER Mr Dillon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: ptjdillon@gmail.com 9781838439842_ Brooks Richard WOOD FOR THE TREES Mr Brooks lives in England UK Email:richard.brooks3@btinternet.com 9781838439866_Garvey Alan IN THE WAKE OF HER LIGHT 9781838439873_McManus Kevin THE HAWTHORN TREE Mr McManus lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: kevinmcmanus1@hotmail.com 9781838439880_Dwan Berni ONLY LOOKIN’ Berni Dwan lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: bernidwan@gmail.com 9781838439897_Murbach Esther VIEW ASKEW Esther Murbach lives in Switzerland though she also spends time in Galway Email: esther.murbach@gmx.ch 9781916345751_McGrath Niall SHED Mr McGrath lives in County Antrim Northern Ireland, UK Email: mcgrath.niall@hotmail.com 58

9781916345775_Somerville-Large GILLIAN LAZY BEDS 9781916345782_Gohorry & Lane COVENTRY CRUCIBLE Mr Lane lives in England-UK and due to the recent death of Mr Gohorry Mr Lane will be the contact for this publication: Email: johnslane@btinternet.com

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