After Hirst’s Ordinance (2018) Mary Melvin Geoghegan

After Hirst’s Ordinance (2018)

Perhaps, in a manic impulse – the artist caught the butterfly wings with colours never mixed on a palate. He assembled those hypnotic rings.

Iridescent, at the centre of each orbit all the intricacies of the universe concentrated in a solitary yellow butterfly. Almost, as a cosmic mandala in a staggering expression of light.

Fresh from the atlas of waiting to be celebrated beyond all prejudice just awe – Mary Melvin Geoghegan

Ode to Ara

Ara, what do you mean you never heard this word that floats along the western seaboard

sometimes you’ll see her wander angry, alone mostly she leads others, sets the tone

lends herself to times funny, boring or awful a grammatical Birdseye potato waffle

Ara is less of a word than a mood the teapot in which a sentence is brewed

if words were bread, she’d be a toaster and if they were mugs, she’d be their coaster

the shrug of shoulders in a quiet room or the pin popping a bullshitter’s balloon

Ara is an exorcist when spirits are broke or planning permission to tell a joke

she’s a sinner walking into a box of confession or three little letters that could hint at depression

she’s the prodigal son’s head ‘round the corner, the look of disgust at a poor pint of porter

Ara can be the icing on a christening cake or the plate of cigarettes passed around at a wake

the fat lady singing when victory is gone she’s our tongues equivalent to an emoticon

but as accents dissolve in transatlantic spray I wonder how long will Ara remain? Stephen McNulty

Halloween Safari

In late September they appear, moving in long dribbles against the straining light of evening young boys with bright eyes and mottled faces. Scouts, cycling ahead, whistle and whip the band along the chosen line. Freewheeling through whispering stalks of grass, they clamber over bedframes and discarded bikes to lay bare their prey, pulling the lifeless rubber from the heap. Tyres too heavy to carry are rolled and dragged, coaxed along the trek home, rucked over pallets onto the waiting pyre. There they lie in anticipation of a bottle and a petrol-soaked cloth - a sacrificial flame climbing into the night sky, as surrounding houses cower in the exaggerated shadows and residents peek through net curtains, while shivering in the heat. Maurice Devitt