The Fish Tree
For Janine
A grandmother’s gift, the tree was planted in good soil, but spring brought no new growth, no lengthening of boughs, sparse leaves quickly blotched and curled.
One by one the goldfish fell ill, lay in their watery world, bow-shaped like dead leaves. Cried over, wrapped in tissue paper, we laid them to rest in shallow graves, around the dormant tree.
Next spring, as the sap rose, like a lazy stretch after sleeping, its boughs extended in new growth. Succulent leaves flickered on branches, each leaf’s underside a shade of gold.
Anne Mac Darby-Beck
The miracle of healing
Meant, the hurt gets washed away over time.
A kind of baptism and rebirth because you are never the same again, never will be. You don’t see it happening, you feel the weight lift, you go out like a kid unknowing what’s ahead.
See the scars, that time you walked behind the swing, knocked your teeth out, but they regrew, good timing dad said.
Skinned your knees, ramping over sunken sand dunes, but cuts heal, regrow, cover over and leave a mark, a reminder of that event, marks on skin slowly visible, like a crust forming over jam.
The invisible scars that stick in your throat, no one knows exists only you, your hurt, invisible miracles, as you hold the phone to your ear, transcending across continents, voices to your head. A car travels on the road, horseless.
Water evaporating from seas rises up, falls as rain. An inch of bog takes a thousand years to grow - all invisible, like the miracle of healing.
Paudrig Lee
dyad
san cristoforo's bells peal over twilit tuscany a joyful clamour from the acropolis in the church garden, a breeze stirs an ancient slumbering oak releases terpenes into the still-warm summer night ringing echoes dissolve to warbling faerie song an owl's eyes are second and third moons chiropteran shadows flit from tower eaves a prowling fox freezes, ears attentive, nostrils wide enthralled by two silhouettes under the umbral canopy hands intertwined, and between slender fingers light, a flame safe, from tempests and blizzards safe, despite burns and blisters safe, though flaring or flickering a dyadic promise: hold it close to your heart don't let it go out
Ronan Hart
Awakening
11.11
12.12
14.14
the clock winks
magic spirals
wake up the heart calls drown the doubts that swirl the mind close your eyes breathe sink through the labyrinth of synchronicities time to connect, to discover, to believe, to listen, to dream your life into being
Eliza Homan
Abracadabra
—Ah, but I thought I had seen the trick of a Blush. Was there a hint of the beyond, some rub
Red rush to your face, the loss of your soul, or
A ghost in the machine? Did you feel a
Call from the grave, suffer Satanic panic?
And did you hear the church organ orchestra?
Did the whole world seem to warp? Did it go mad?
Are you cursed to be trapped in my mania?
Believe, for once, or I’ll charm you to succumb!
Return like rabbits to my head of amour.
Allow me magic, my abracadabra—
Jack Power
Ripping presents
I
Waiting for Santa, I heard such a rustle that I plunged to the end of my bed.
Curled in a ball, I felt the raising of the blanket; he was watching me, and I would not lift my head.
He let it fall, my heart still pounding as I counted the moments; when I emerged, the gifts were waiting for me: an orange scooter and a snap-snap train.
I ran up to the kitchen and told him what had happened, like he didn’t know.
II
Here on the station bench, Dad cradles his Lidl bag carrying the essentials for the next round of his radio therapy— he is waiting for the next train.
We sit and talk askance while pigeons perch and peck on what must be empty
tiles. I want to look beneath, see what he brings each time, inside the cracked red of worn plastic. His bloodshot eyes
just smile as people and birds keep moving. He says the doctor tells him that everything is going to plan. Everyone else is walking away. The train home is called, he leaps up so fast and I rush to the exit before turning to shout Bye Dad! He looks around, cranes his neck, sees me, stands on his toes, and mouths a shout across the air: thank you: while I wait the far side of the gate, for just a little more
Tomás Ó Ruairc
Orbita
I am allowed to conjure you back at dusk, several steps closer to my never-known sister, in these minutes before stars arrive I set my voice to whisper into the half-light.
There are still people out in the dying daylight, but they don't see us here, talking to each other as if we'd never been apart. I channel your words into a pink horizon.
I go home, fade into cotton, sleep. I know you stay with me until the moon ripples towards dawn, sometimes I open my eyes before you've left. Every night, I celebrate the cracking of the sky.
Nina Lewis
made a bed
Rejoicing in each other, they returned to their bed, the old familiar place they loved so well. (The Odyssey, Book 23, lines 329–338)
He thought they were poems but all along it was a bed he'd made: each syllable hammered gently into the frame: phrases, dovetailed, red cords held a canopy, the legs cut from time and bliss and heartache.
He sanded boards smooth to carve with hieroglyphs for night, for joy, a river, a forest. Fiery constellations were etched into the grain, head- and foot-board fretted with the language of arrival and departure. Scattered shavings spelled out days and years.
Sheets were worn and soft, hemmed with whispers, the comforter she brought, of tender knots: the pillows’ perfume? All their dreams.
Martin Meyler
The Wee Cottage Nick Monks
Spider Silk
Spider silk is liquid first and solid the second it comes into contact with air resembling the ink and the line drawn from a pen
I’ve seen orb webs of such tenacity they held together the walls of a ruin on a hill’s peak
The walls if reassembled were a watchtower before the Japanese bombings
I hiked there with my grandmother each summer morning of my childhood We left her toyless house at five before the wetness in the day gathered up
The spiders had such round abdomens, so pregnant with silk, and colorful
They were phosphorus gems from the sea my reward after the climb
Their strings caught dews and dirt I beheld from the side The straight lines widened and hardened over time became isthmus
Janet Cheung
Dragonfly
By the hydrangea a dragonfly lands, needs to be seen.
Enraptured by its blue magic, its perfect stained-glass wings, the marvel of its globular eyes –you want to pause before it –stop thinking about the laundry, about the soiled spin of nations. Their greed, injustice, evil.
You long for the miraculous peace, its enveloping beauty, its luminous, transparent wings, immeasurable power,
splendid light enfolding you with a clasp of “Yes”.
Mary Lee
windborne that my brittleness might become supple and light windswept to something beautiful in flight
Olwen Rowe
When I had things to do
When I had things to do line of thread, you could say, with a place in the world's stiff tapestry, and I loosed myself, instead, on a bike. Went free as an arrow on my bike to pass concrete fence, slag heaps, enormous sky: thread-run where the railway works T-junctions with Inchicore in the given -back world I'm recommencing my belief in on Abercorn- brick soft as a face when two speak honestly. How rarely we've done that, how happy we've been, those times, to be alive. (Seeing such a wall, or face or anything of all you love or recognise).
Yvonne Cullen
Alchemy
James Price FRS, 1752-1783
My Lords and colleagues, I am honoured to share my knowledge with you by presenting this scientific process to your wondering eyes. For centuries, magicians and philosophers have chased a chimera, dreamt of the vast riches to be gained by changing cheap metals into gold.
I rest my honour and reputation upon my recent election to the Royal Society. Members of that august body will soon have cause to celebrate my work. Now, see, here we have two powders, white and red, and in this glass dish I pour some mercury.
I’m sure you are all wise enough to realise why I’d rather not divulge the constitution of my formula. Walls have ears and even scholars sometimes err. Instead, I’ll demonstrate the miracle whereby my white powder transforms mercury into shimmering silver, while the red creates a miracle of glittering gold.
Honoured colleagues, I hope you will forgive my recent absence. Wounded to the core by doubting minds and wagging tongues, I fled the public eye. Despite the evidence, you claimed that you were unconvinced by my assurances and even by the assayed gold presented to the king.
You have hounded me, impugned my honour, insisted that I reveal my secret formula and replicate the experiment here today. So I will concur with your demands, but first I’ll drink a toast to alchemy. Here’s to the fools’ magic of turning mercury into gold: ‘Gentlemen, Your health’.
I now regret to tell you that you never will discover the secret of this magic process, because the cup I’ve just drained to the dregs is already carrying the alchemy of prussic acid from laurel leaves, to course throughout my body turning my live flesh into a corpse, my life to …
Alwyn Marriage
Kepler
Little did I realise, lost in Graz, after catching the wrong train in Budapest that I was on your turf, where you once taught classes and just a few showed up.
Johannes, I was decent at mathematics but not enough to penetrate nature, find equations latent there, or triangulate the transit of Mars with cross-staff, compass but your quest for harmony in the cosmos the pitch of wheeling orbits, a divine plan we could unravel to understand, is a salve in our perplexing age, even though I recall yours was rife with witch trials, Holy Wars when thinkers risked being branded heretics. And when the Great Comet of 1577 blazed before your boyish eyes, your future
was inscribed across the skies. Johannes, amid the claims of your star tables, accurate to a few minutes of arc, how did you manage to rescue your mother, manacled in her cell for fourteen months, from the fate of being burnt at the stake? And how did you grapple with your soul when you noticed the planets didn’t move in uniform motion after all, had to allow for their elliptical shape beyond the parallax of a perfect faith, not to mention finding time to perceive the uniqueness of every snowflake?
Emily Cullen
Ode to Arotile
(forNigeria’sfirsteverfemalefighterpilot)
Come!
Arotile come.
Come in your divine paradox.
Come in your cotyledon magic.
Snatch these captives from the jaws of ghommids here in our home which today has now become the forest of a thousand demons. The pale-eyed spirits continue to thrive in your absence; they devour futures like overripe fruit, they gnaw on the bones of our heroes, and laugh through smokes of our anguish.
Come!
Arotile come.
Come from the womb of the wind; from the broken rib of a dying star.
Let the night unthread its omens for you.
Let them know a comet’s body is fire waiting to rise. So please rise, rise from the tombs within the sky; rise you falcon whose flight path the ghouls could never trace.
Come!
Arotile come.
Split the sky with your war cry.
Let your rotor blade carve runes in the wind, remind these marauders they can’t trap you in silence. The sky is your altar, write your name in vapor trails, tell them that a woman who conquers the air never dies, she only burns, becoming something untouchable, a meteor dragging the darkness behind her like a veil.
Oh Come!
Arotile please come. Come with wings carved from the moon. Come as tempest in the ribcage of time. Come riding the beast that drags the sun into the morning; crack the bones of the old order of the darkness. Let the mountains remember your footfall, let the rivers chant your name in silver; let the dead walk backwards into the future, and let the gods who abandoned us be forever ashamed of their abdication.
Yes Come!
Arotile, come.
SoonestNathaniel
Lee
On Meeting Apollo
Twelve years old, freewheeling down the steep hill from our house to the village on my mother’s black Raleigh bike,
veering a corner at high speed I braked with a jolt, a flash of white light–
there he was on the right at the foot of the hill pushing his bike. Three years since he’d left for secondary school
Jesus, I said, as I sped past, steadying my hands on the handlebars, keeping my feet firm on the pedals. A split second and I turned to look back, when a blast of sun hit my eyes.
I woke flattened on the rock where I’d landed, covered in blood, a gash in my head, stones toppled on the ground where my mother’s bicycle, mangled, was dangling against the wall.
I vaguely recall that out of the light, reaching through my concussion, he wrapped his arms around my body, carried me over a stile, onto the road and into a neighbor’s house, as I was muttering nonsense, swearing he was Apollo for sure.
Attracta Fahy
Anniversary Spin
In the misty morning queue, I spotted you at the bus stop to Shannon’s Industrial Estate,
hair tipping the astrakhan collar of a sky-blue jacket, when a car pulled up, lifted you away –but not before you turned to smile a bolt of lightning.
And with a little engineering, the stars aligned to explode a spell of thunder clapping hearts
as we first kissed to the vinyl spin of David Gates, If you believe the things that I do.
Some time back we took a spin to find no more a bus stop –Kincora’s once worn path
now a verdant verge of dandelions shooting stars as traffic rushes past the sundial of our decades.
Marie Studer
The Magic of One Bright Day
Eyes open in the greyed dark too early for the alarm but a summer dawning's fingers edging at the curtains brings that other dawn when we rose early to be wed, family and friends collecting to witness and rejoice, years of child-like antics since, of teenage longings and adult passion, of mature compassion, of surprise, and support, of joy and thanks, and as we grow older, pay the tolls for that privilege, the magic of that bright day still shines on us, on our love for the other, on the love that enchants us.
Anthony Wade
Gates of hell*
For my birthday she takes me to the gates of hell a portal between worlds a gap in a ditch, narrow and low under a hawthorn tree.
Too low to crouch or crawl we sit on mud and scootch along a rocky passageway into a darkened cavern.
Our torch beams flit like party lights to probe its full extent show a narrowing passage reach deep into the rock.
Here, grunt of pig and caw of crow signal an upturned world; through here red birds passed to lay waste the land.
We stand at a threshold, a pivot between what was and what will be, where garlic blooms in winter
Then we turn, contort ourselves, squelch and slide, emerge, giddy and mud-caked on the outside.
Liam Boyle
*Oweynagat in Co. Roscommon
Critical Mass
I step inside the stone walls of the Pro Cathedral.
The air is different here— the lingering smell of incense and reverence.
And such calm— a warm embrace in quiet defiance of the heaving bustle just outside its doors.
I used to hate mass as a child.
The Tracey Ullman show was on, and I had everything else to do.
There's all the damage they did, too— I gave it up years ago.
But now, it greets me differently— emptying out the shrieking swell inside, and kneeling feels
a blessing, not a curse.
There's something magical in stepping off the street and entering another realm— where I can breathe and be with God, the universe, or whatever you might call it.
Ann Byrne
In Our Hearts, Wild Creatures Live
Mass in the Black Abbey, such a beautiful church, such beautiful singing, and such a shame there's no wild nature here. As I walk up for communion
hawk wings sprout from my back and whoosh me towards the altar.
I seize the host in my talons and as I rise to the rafters, a wolf and a fox dart out of my heart, tear pieces from the body of the Saviour, slink away, to devour him in a corner.
Through hooded eyes I look at Christ.
He winks at me.
Paddy Doyle
Expecting
By next Christmas Easter Summer
By the next visit to Cork or reunion with the Hong Kong crew, psyching ourselves up before each trip practicing answers to inevitable questions.
By the time we run out of coffee beans or season three is released or I sit in the hairdresser’s and stare back at myself, yet again wondering how we got herefar from the romanticised scene I daydreamed about over and over and over again, the one I can barely catch a glimmer of these days.
I saved a Christmas cracker from two years ago hoping to place a scan inside, hoping to surprise everyone with our miracle. I close my eyes and hear their excited shrieks, see the puzzled faces of the kids until someone explains “you’re going to have another cousin!” But we are still waiting.
Waiting waiting waiting. Trying so hard to be present but always an underlying impatience, urgencya nightmare, purgatory.
Holding our dream so tightly I hope I have not crushed it to smithereens.
Caitríona O’Riordan
Déjà vu Nestled in each other’s back – no phones to barge the moment as they often do. On a whim you say, Teach Solais, then Lighthouse.
A breeze shivers our shoulder blades – a reminder the Indian summer has passed into October.
A sweep of light accents the Irish Sea.
An raibh muid anseo cheana? Have we been here before?
James Anthony
As you sleep, if you can let me ease you out of battered men, carry you home, where history is a comfort not a stain, is the umbilical tree in bloom, the fish that fed the sea eagle’s chick that year the monsoon failed to break.
Here, in my dream, a son grows into his grandfather’s shoes and with each step learns that to be a man is an act of compassion. Here nothing burns except the dawn.
Kate Fenwick
Two Comets in Dam City
I was watching a hairy, old dog circling – chasing its own tail; and I’m pondering this crazy way of being – a lonely, hopeless path that it appears some cerulean stars must journey on.
When I go (inside) I imagine more connected ways of living and I muse upon many shades of meaning as I contemplate us being fused together and flying in the face of chance – circling in a free-fantasy of spiraling, in a frenzy of dancing, jiving –
your red hair streaming. I’m one with this twirling – us revolving all night – before we hop a tram that takes us the long way home from a dazzling centre to its dark outskirts then back-in, again –
back in to the bright neon lights and beating heart of Amsterdam.
We had overshot our destination, missed our stop, by many miles.
Like two crazy comets launched . . . like rockets from the Melkweg we had been flying in a wonderful wacky-backy way of being, before
coming to the end of a line; before I wake myself up to find us both still hugging as we slowly return to planet Earth after looping . . . the loop like one, big insatiable ouroboros cursed with the munchies.
I seem to recall each of us trying to devour the other’s long, silvery tail.
John D. Kelly comet: Origin OE, from L. cometa, from Gk. komētēs ‘long-haired (star)’, from komē, hair; reinforced by OFr. co
Aill na Searrach.
She watches from the cliff top, as he mounts the majestic wave, the purple wall of living water, his long-awaited ‘Aileen’. His childhood dream.
Her only son, now silhouetted like a stick insect on a white surfboard, her breath cleaves to his descending form on ‘Aill na Searrach’; the ‘Leap of the Foals’.
Our Lady of the Great Waves, she whispers, déan trócaire orainn.
‘The Leap of the Fools’, she thinks wryly, as he spirals down the double helix of her D.N.A., in perfect harmony with the throbbing pulse of the gigantic ocean.
Our Lady of the Great Braves, she whispers, déan trócaire orainn,
She chants, like an incantation, as he carves out his life-lust on the molten water, like a young lover, cutting his passion on the heaving breast of his virgin bride.
She howls like a crazed banshee when he finally climaxes, crashing, like a perfect arrow, into the rocky shallows of the unrelenting sea.
Ach a Dhia, déan trócaire orainn.
Nuala O’Farrell
Athena Lindia, Dream #3
Maybe this is the dream; the feather on the pillow one, in which you come to me in truth, bright-eyed, not stone-faced but still wrapped too tight – a swish of tassels, like serpents writhing, as you flow faultless from the sky-high sanctuary, as water might along the track that snakes down to the city. You pass invisible to the sellers of honey cakes to the donkey men to the women laying out lace for sale to day-trippers and other involuntary devotees… of which I may be one; watching your descent it’s unreasonable not to be. A trick of the light maybe, but your streets are awash with gold spume this newborn sunrise. I could mistake you for the goddess herself barrelling home to spear me like a fish, but I know better. I will take the gifts you offer, no heroic entanglements, παρθένa μου; my return is a poor exchange,
a bloodless offering – here you are familiar with such; you deserve much more.
Patrick Lodge
παρθένa μου –parthena mou, literally, my virgin, is a term of endearment to the goddess
When Dreams Become Reality
I don’t often remember my dreams, but, last night, I dreamt of a man who goes shopping with his usual list, yet senses he is missing something, drifts from aisle to aisle in search of inspiration, picking up random items, hoping their livery or shape will prompt an epiphany. Nothing clicks and he trails home defeated, the empty container standing boldly on the counter. When I woke, I thought of writing it down, but got distracted: your bags in the hall, the look of thunder on your face and the realisation that I had promised to drive you, and you were already late.
Maurice Devitt
Online Language Lesson
We are all people from other countries.
Caped in a grey shawl, her dreams are emblazoned on the wall behind. A huge red maple leaf is a cover for the pocked plaster underneath. I want to tell her about a temp job I had, where the boss found my list of travel wishes. Scored each line so hard the paper tore, the nib broke. It bled a continent on the mouse-mat. We don't talk about her country. If it comes up, she looks to the left, is steeled by her own expression. She pulls the fabric tight, fist like a stone brooch over her heart and we talk about fiction instead.
Karen Hodgson Pryce
Portrait of a lymphoma patient as shapeshifter
Sometimes, in my dreams, I'm the gossamer bell of a jellyfish. Other times, I like to surf the vibrations of a house spider trying to catch the moon flipping its face like a coin. Perhaps, if bored, I'll ride on a tabby, feeling the jungle of its fur swish in my face like a scene from Indiana Jones. Or I'll be the cornfield cupping harvest mice as a barn owl swoops in for the kill. These are the best ones. I don't want to be remembered as waking up as a basking shark coughing up the unwanted krill of a cancerous bloodstream, or a maybug clanging into windows after a dose of radiotherapy. Let me dream of being a buzz cut cloud watching over the hills like a Star Wars force ghost. Let me dream of being rain turning every garden into pancake batter. Even the restless cicada mining away the days before breaching the surface would be fine. Anything but waking as the stick insect of myself: whatever might use me like a violin bow, abandon my uncertain music.
Christian Ward
shadow play
there’s a place that changes as you go a dream perhaps or the sticky underground of moss that raises at your feet a new kind of violence a chilling, the cold sores of sky as it breaks out in stars and a sudden madness
imagine their spires like long grizzled fingers and as eager to speak then marvel your hands into a fractured existence and breathe; you are your own wondrous thing an old hare running through the forest a silver seam, enchanted, wandering
Milla van der Have
Buffalo Stampede into The Eye of The Storm
Many a moon I tumbled
head-over-heels like Spilikins while a warp-speed Witch pursued
me down some lipless hill. / If she had berthed alongside me I would have remembered she was refractor, protector, human deflector. / Her sporran boiling potion-sprigs of purple
heather, rose petal, baby’s breath but no carmine, rat’s tails, eye of newt. /
Guardian under another guise this she-wizard-shepherd swept
away poison sumac, poison oak, poison ivy. / I should have stopped
hopped on, flew skyward on a besom-piggy-back to blether with my ghost-twin in womb’s airborne dromedary hump:
Mam aye said, I went where Angels feared to tread Into the unknown
Mandy Beattie
Buffalo run into the eye of the storm, which minimises time exposed to harsh conditions.
Which
I saw on Clapham Common winding cloth about herself. The small dog by her side eyed me for make-believe or madness or cynical relief, barking when I fell from grace by stealing a closer look as she wound the clear fabric round her body and face till she’d shut herself in air, closed it over her like a sheet of nothing. Which left only me and the mutt on the Common, barking.
Craig Dobson
WHEN THE MEN CAME CLOSE UP, THEY SAID: “WHERE IS THE FIRE?” BUT THE WOMEN REPLIED: “THERE IS NO FIRE.”
it is fitting to give these fables to the fire. —Cogitosus, “Vita Brigidae”
Look, it’s just as puzzling to me and I’m the one walking to St. Brigid's wells, listening to the shush of rising pigeons.
Brigit of Kildare is a mystery like taking communion each version of her story melting on my tongue. I take notes
The Women’s Doorway into her Cathedral is to the north, priests come and go through the South Door.
Brigit’s fire temple is in the churchyard beside the locked stone tower where monks hid with treasure during raids, and one school thinks a post-hole in an ancient floor stands first of all for a pupil in an iris the other thinks a post-hole is a post-hole, and so on—
believe what you want. Some say the three Brigits—sisters with fiery hearts, forge, hearth—fed dogs bacon from their father’s table, became
one saint who rekindles a cow, restores virginity, reverses a pregnancy. In Cogitosus’ first draft he writes St. Brigid said Heaven is a lake
of ale. A knife is a hoe—it uproots words—alone at his work the scribe scrapes away of ale, digs up herbal, plants miracles.
Lesley-Anne Evans
The Testimony of Bessie Dunlop of Lynn Convicted of witchcraft, 1576
When I am weak with childbirth, my baby close to death, my husband sick, I drive the cows to pasture, and behold, a spirit guide appears: Thomas Reid, dead these 30 years, disappeared in the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. He has the pallor of death with a straggle of grey beard. In a voice that chills my bones he proclaims:
Your seick cow will dwyne awa, but your husband will live.
He disappears through a hole in the dyke, a hole too small for a mortal man.
Thomas visits often, enhances my powers. I see Lady Thirdpart’s gold coins shining in the pockets of a thief. I cure Lady Stanley’s daughter with a poultice of Thomas’ making. I ask no reward. He parades me before the fairy court of Elfame, and I keep my silence as he requests.
Lairds and ladies have abandoned me. Oh Thomas where are you now? Do not forsake me for clinging to my Christian faith. They walk me up and down, night and day; strip me, prick me for the devil’s mark. My mouth bleeds from the slash of the inquisitor’s knife.
Thomas, Thomas, can you hear me? They will strangle me on Castle Hill, burn my body.
Jenny Robb
An Ode to Lilith
Effervescent, like miracle that constructs water
And sleeps between hills in the distance And distant hills
White horses
Woven like a lullaby Or a slumber
Or her gentle gaze
Evenings as seductive as rising apples
Anti-gravitate
Like the dead and the drowned Rise on the surface of water
Like her bosom and her womb
Etched in eons of enduring light
Set against the backdrop of A crucifix
A child
And napalm And ash
Her hunger reveals
Hunger abundant and hunger throbbing
Hunger absolves, and hunger redeems
Hunger hallucinatory
Hunger primordial
She feasts on her psalms
And weaves solitary spirals
Of faith misplaced
Licks her wounds
And fascinates those She refuses to lie beneath.
Lying beneath the aging Sun
Hunger redeems and hunger absolves She drinks
Effervescent, like miracle that constructs light.
Titaś Biswas
after Bulgakov
It was Behemoth he was laughin at, oh God the laugh on him.
Doubled over, face red, teeth misshapen: two crack-brown, one sharp as a fang. When first met I thought some teeth on him, fuck but when loved I thought nothing better than the teeth on him, fuck.
My da called me Jaws. When?
As a child. Why?
You know. Causa my teeth.
When does a laugh make you weightless? When does it ascend into a high ride, witching across a black-crack moon? When is it a tide, the highest, in spring? He knows about tides and their times.
I died once. How?
You know. Causa heroin. But you came back. I came back. Well, and? Well. And? There was nothin.
But it was Behemoth who really got him going, the human body-sized cat of the devil who talked Soviet, a cat sipping vodka and eating mushrooms, a cat wearing glasses, a cat who pays his tram fare, a cat who carries a camping stove, a cat cavorting onstage, a cat who orchestrates humiliation, in hilarity, a cat hosting the ball of Hell, a cat enchained and waiting to be loosed and stop clowning, we never stopped laughing at a cat like that, a clown cuffed and contracted, serving a morbid master (purveyor of worlds) by means of jest.
And at the end, unchained at the last and most-least humorous
moment, is it same as before?
Tell me.
Nothin again or?
Marianne Daigh
One last spellsong
Let us each take one of her stories inside us weight rolled from her body to ours /lightening her/
Let us each say our words of love for each word a knot untied for each love a string released /for her flight/
Cathy Fowley
Wax, Light, Waiting after Buddhist Lent, Vientiane
We melt the wax. The children pour it—slowly— into lotus shapes. One of them hums. One of them mouths a wish.
We are in a hotel courtyard & yet the air has turned holy.
The wax waits. So do the children, their small faces lit by patience.
A waiter brings lemon tea & sugar cookies like a blessing we didn’t earn.
Later we carry our candles through streets that smell of rain & marigolds.
The monks don’t ask us who we are. They just keep chanting until the dark flinches.
Our girls bow. The flames shiver. We leave the candles & walk home with hands empty, but something burning gently behind the ribs.
Fiona Murphy
Opening Lines
In a hole in the ground lived a universally acknowledged truth Where the April, cold clocks struck thirteen and we were Once harpooned to call that voice Ishmael.
Ships at a distance may hold our wishes onboard though Creation of a universe may be widely regarded as a bad move, Sylvia had every right not to know what she was doing in New York that sultry summer of the Rosenbergs’ demise.
Shall I compare thee or wander lonely as a cloud? In sooth, I know not why I am so sad as I think I Know whose woods these are and so much can be Yours if you can keep your head, when you are old and grey.
Is there anybody there? said the Traveller. Knocking, Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still….
David Kirby
The Magpie.
His monochrome form sets down on the pier He’s the closest I’ll ever come To seeing a seer He bows his head, I salute and submit To the forecasted sorrow, only he can admit.
And the comic in the paper, she laughed through the ink When she saw how he humbled the oracle And I would stress at the grey sky he hides Under his wings, but no— I’ll thank him for coming.
For what view can we be so sure of, But a bird when he lands And tells you of times You don’t yet understand?
Kate McGuire
Walkers
Morecombe 2
The sand sheens. Shallow water pools collect colours
Walking to not go anywhere
The wild vast spaces taste like iced lemon
Healed by sea air perfume
The fires of the Lune
The smouldering distant blue mountain shapes
You have arrived. Its utterly delicious
The space equates to oxygen
Two small figurines. Dark shadows
Inhabit the sands sweep with a mobile tiny dog
In the raw town eccentrics drink pop with straws
In cash starved seafront cafes. Tom wears a Vote Trump cap
And he’s going to be a father for the third time with His lover friend Susan. Who wishes to be a teacher one day
Tom is 48 and a retired ex lorry driver
But the sea washes us all away. Driftwood and tide debris
Heaps of kelp and shells
Revitalized you walk back to the car
And disappear from the ochre bay
Back to the place you call home.
Nick Monks
The Oak Tree Nick Monks
Notes on Contributors
James Anthony is a Galway-based poet. His work has been published in Painting Words, Poets meet Painters (2025), Drawn to the Light Issue 13, New Isles Press Issue 2, Local Wonders, amongst others. He won the Luain Press Poetry Pamphlet Competition (2024) with his entry, Truth & Other Dramas
Mandy Beattie is a feminist, former social worker and academic. Prizewinner and shortlisted poet. Her poetry appears in, The Waxed Lemon, Poets Republic, Drawn to the Light, WordPeace, Orphic Review, Crowstep, Abridged, The Banyan Review, Gyroscope Review, Full House Literary, Verse-Virtual, Abridged and many more. Best of Net nominee 2024, 2025.
Titaś Biswas is a sociologist and a media/film studies scholar. She is a doctoral candidate at the UCD School of Sociology, a lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Carlow College, St. Patrick’s and a researcher at the UCC School of Applied Social Studies. Her poetry has been previously published in Abridged and A New Ulster
Liam Boyle lives in Galway, Ireland. His poems have been published in various outlets, including Skylight 47, Vox Galvia, Causeway magazine and Confluence magazine. He was a featured reader at Over the Edge in Galway and has also featured in the New Writing Showcase at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.
Ann Byrne is based in Dublin, where she works as both a librarian and a psychotherapist and, these days, also moonlights as a poet. In her more wistful moments, she goes by Ann Tigone. She is a proud parent, a devoted movie lover, and a lifelong bibliophile. She can also be found gazing at the stars from time to time. She has been writing creatively since her teenage years and recently concentrated more on poetry.
Deirdre Cartmill has published three poetry collections - The Wind Stills to Listen (Arlen House), The Return of the Buffalo (Lagan Press) and Midnight Solo (Lagan Press). Her fourth collection is
forthcoming. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and is a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing for Ulster University.
Janet Cheung, a web producer by day, writes more often in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) than in any human language. She saves her poetry writing for the evenings, after her son is lulled to sleep. Her new poem has been published by Virgo Venus Press
Emily Cullen is the Meskell Poet in Residence at the University of Limerick where she lectures in Creative Writing and English. Her third collection, Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), was included in The Irish Times round-up of ‘the best new poetry of 2019.’ Emily’s poetry explores themes of history, social justice, cultural memory, ecology, music and the female experience.
Author of award-winning first collection, Invitation to the Air, widely published and broadcast, Yvonne Cullen lives between Dublin, where she runs writing and creativity workshops, and Inishbofin where she writes and leads writing retreats.
Marianne Daigh lives in North Dublin, where she works as a family carer and writes. She has a background in religious studies and also practices photography. Her work has appeared in Swim Press, Channel, and The Belfast Review. You can find her on substack @mdaigh / insta @mdaighwait.
Maurice Devitt is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies page, his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. His second collection, Some of These Stories are True, was published by Doire Press in 2023.
Craig Dobson has had poetry and short fiction published in several UK, US and European magazines. He lives and works in the UK.
Paddy Doyle’s work has appeared in The Galway Review, Cork Words, Skylight 47, Revival Magazine, Drawn to the Light & Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. He was winner of the Cork County
Council Short Story Competition and runner-up in both the Leslie Boland Poetry Award and the Shahidah Janjua Poetry Award.
Born in Ireland, Lesley-Anne Evans returned to Belfast in 2024 to study for an MA in Poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University. Lesley-Anne’s work appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee Lit Mag, The Apiary, The Gorgon, EVENT Magazine, and elsewhere. Mute Swan is her first collection. Lesley-Anne is married with three adult children. https://laevans.ca/.
Attracta Fahy, Psychotherapist. MA.W NUIG ‘17. Winner of Trócaire Poetry Ireland Competition 2021. Irish Times; New Irish Writing 2019. Placed 3rd in Allingham Poetry Competition 2023. Shortlisted for: Saolta Poems for Patience 2023 & ‘24, Jacar Chapbook Competition 2023, Fish International Poetry Competition 2022 & ‘24. Fly Press published her debut chapbook collection Dinner in the Fields, in March 2020.
Kate Fenwick’s poetry appears in Ragaire, Skylight 47, Propel, Broken Spine and GPS Anthology, Live Canon, Drawn to the Light, Sundays at the River, Ink and Marrow. Her work has been shortlisted for a number of international prizes including Bridport, The Moth, Plaza, Westival and the Café Writer’s prize.
Cathy Fowley lives in Co. Mayo. Her autoethnographic work, often in poetry form, has been published in academic books and journals, her poetry in Drawn to the Light, Corvid Queen, The Storms and The Waxed Lemon.
Ronan Hart lives in Belfast with his wife and son. His work has been published in The Apiary, An Áitiúil, Sparks, Swim Press, Orangepeel, York Literary Review, and others.
Milla van der Have is a Dutch poet exploring the places where the everyday slips sideways. Her work crosses borders, appearing in journals and festivals worldwide. Author of three chapbooks, most recently Ox and Mandarin | Wayfaring Strangers (2024), she lives in Utrecht, always inventing new ways to make poetry misbehave.
Eliza Homan is a founding member of Airfield Writers in Dundrum. She has been published in The Bureen Meitheal, Waterford Review, Wolf Warriors, Anthology in America, Lights on the Horizon and chapbook Windfall & Harvest. Nature and healing, drew her to the practice of Shamanism, which influences her writing.
John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. His poems have been widely published in Ireland, UK, Canada, USA, and Austria. His first collection; The Loss of Yellowhammers was published by Summer Palace Press in 2020. His second collection About Blood was published by Revival Press in May 2025.
David Kirby is a writer and teacher. His work has found an audience in publications such as Literature Today, Stripes, The Galway Review, The Kilkenny Broadsheet and The Martello Journal. David recently performed his poetry as part of Teo Chroi’s production, Lughnasa, at Smock Alley Theatre- August 2025.
Edward Lee is an artist and photographer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited and published widely, with many pieces in private collections. His website can be found at https://lastimagesphotography.com.
Mary Lee’s poems have been anthologized nationally and internationally: Skylight 47, Orbis, Crannόg, shortlisted in Poems for Patience, (three times) and in Hold Fast to Dreams, (2024). Her work has been broadcast on RTE Radio 1. Mary’s third poetry collection: The Stranger, the Dream, the Bird was published with Revival Press, Limerick, March, 2025.
Paudrig Lee, a poet, from Killeagh village in East Cork. Smoking Bees is his debut chapbook. His poems reflect nature, history, genealogy, injustices, shepherded ideals & family dynamics. Involved in local history, genealogy, photography, music and art. Chance Meeting, his second chapbook of poems is due for publication winter 2025.
Nina Lewis is widely published in anthologies and magazines, she has two pamphlets, Fragile Houses (2016) and Patience (2019), published by V. Press. She is one of the Directors of Worcestershire LitFest and a former Worcestershire Poet Laureate. Nina was an International Guest Poet at Perth Poetry Festival (2018).
Patrick Lodge is an Irish citizen with roots in Wales. His work has been published in several countries, and he has read at poetry festivals across Europe. Patrick has been successful in several international poetry competitions. His fourth collection, There You Are, will be published by Valley Press UK on St Brigid's Day, 2026.
Anne Mac Darby-Beck has been writing poetry and short stories since childhood. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and journals in Ireland such as Drawn to the Light, Crannog, Stony Thursday Book, Ragaire, A New Ulster, The Honest Ulsterman, Cyphers, Stinging Fly, Cork Literary Review, Poetry Ireland Review and Skylight 47. She has also been published in British and American magazines such as Scintilla and Superpresent.
Alwyn Marriage’s sixteen books include poetry, non-fiction and two novels. She’s widely represented in magazines, anthologies and online, and gives readings all over the world. Formerly a university philosophy lecturer, Director of two international NGOs and Rockefeller Scholar, she’s Managing Editor of Oversteps Books and research fellow at Surrey University. www.marriages.me.uk/alwyn.
Kate McGuire, 23, is currently completing a degree in law at Maynooth University, Co. Kildare. Her first publication, ‘The Moth’, featured in the second edition of the ‘Dark Poets Club’ in October of 2024. Her second publication, ‘Music to my Ears’ featured in Sparks Literary Journal for their second edition ‘Bealtaine’ earlier this year.
Martin Meyler has been published in The Moth, The Cormorant, Drawn to the Light, Stony Thursday 18, Confluence Dec 23 & Ragaire (winter 24). Shortlisted for Gutter Magazine’s Edwin Morgan Trust Competition for poets 40+. He was placed 2nd in The
Redline Poetry Competition 2023. He makes & teaches art in Tallaght, Dublin.
Nick Monks lives near Preston UK. He studied Philosophy at Hull University. He has had many poems in UK small press magazines. Has worked in scores of careers. And travelled widely for about six years.
Fiona Murphy is a writer and anthropologist based in Dublin. Her work blends poetry, ethnography, and political storytelling. She has conducted fieldwork in Laos, Australia, and Ireland. She co-edits Anthropology and Humanism and co-founded the EASA Creative Anthropologies Network.
Soonest Nathaniel is a Poet, Digital Media Strategist, Broadcast Journalist, and spoken word artist. His poetry collection, Teaching Father How to Impregnate Women, won the RL Poetry Award. He is a Rhysling and Pushcart nominee; he’s also a fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He was a 2021 Langston Hughes Fellow at the Palm Beach Festival and Poet Laureate for the Korea Nigeria Poetry Festival.
Nuala O’Farrell has had poems published in The Galway Review, in Causeway / Cabhsair magazine and in the Samaritans Anthology 100 Poems of Hope. She is presently doing the Masters in Creative Writing in U.C.D.
Dr Caitríona O’Riordan (Osborne) is an Assistant Professor at University College Dublin. She has published over ten peerreviewed articles, three book chapters, and an edited book (Teaching Chinese Characters in the Digital Age: Insights on Current Trends and Future Directions). She lives in Dublin with her husband and two cats.
Tomás Ó Ruairc lives in Lucan, Dublin with Sara, their four daughters and Willow the dog! He blogs at Sifting the Silence - https://bazingadotlife.wordpress.com/. He has previously published in Drawn to the Light and Channel magazine. He is on Instagram @toruairc and @MossyWillow on BlueSky.
Jack Power is a twenty-two-year-old law graduate of the University of Galway, from County Clare. His poetry has appeared in International Human Rights Art Festival Arts Magazine, Digital Ecology, The Madrigal Press, New Isles Press, Black Buzzard Press, Martello Journal, and Ragaire Literary Magazine.
Karen Hodgson Pryce is a poet and ESOL lecturer living in Scotland. Her poetry is found in Mslexia, Lighthouse, Butcher’s Dog, Under the Radar and Propel. She was placed in the Café Writers Open Poetry Competition and was shortlisted in the 12th Ó Bhéal Five Words International Poetry Competition in 2025.
Jenny Robb retired from a social work/management career and started writing poetry. Since 2020 she’s been published widely in magazines and anthologies. Her debut collection is The Doll’s Hospital (Yaffle Press, 2022). Her latest collection is Hear the World Explode (Yaffle Press 2024). She lives in Liverpool.
Olwen Rowe lives in the west of Ireland where she enjoys exploring the local landscape. Her poems have appeared in The Bangor Literary Journal, Skylight 47 and forthcoming in Banshee. Olwen writes in fragments of time amidst the busyness of caregiving, attending to the ordinary magic of lives around us.
Marie Studer’s debut collection Real Words was published by Revival Press, 2023. She is widely published in journals and anthologies. She won the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland Competition 2020 and The Bangor Ekphrastic Challenge. In 2024 she was highly commended in The Francis Ledwidge International and The Denis O’Grady International competitions and in 2025 shortlisted in the RTE, The Prompt series.
Anthony Wade was inspired by the Collected Poems of Francis Ledwidge, joining Midleton Writers Group in 2016, with a first poem published in 2018; now a Forward Prize nominee with poetry published in print journals in Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain, the USA, and Canada.
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with recent work in Streetcake Magazine, The Madrid Review, The Amsterdam Quarterly, Mugwort Magazine and The Alchemy Spoon. Two collections available on Amazon and elsewhere: Intermission and Zoo.
Edward Lee Anne Mac Darby-Beck
Paudrig Lee Ronan Hart Eliza Homan
Jack Power Tomás Ó Ruairc
Nina Lewis Martin Meyler
Nick Monks Janet Cheung Mary Lee
Olwen Rowe Yvonne Cullen
Alwyn Marriage Emily Cullen
Soonest Nathaniel Attracta Fahy
Marie Studer Anthony Wade Liam Boyle
Ann Byrne Paddy Doyle
Deirdre Cartmill
Caitríona O’Riordan JamesAnthony
Kate Fenwick John D. Kelly
Nuala O’Farrell Patrick Lodge
Maurice Devitt
Karen Hodgson Pryce Christian Ward
Milla van der Have Mandy Beattie
Craig Dobson Lesley-Anne Evans
Jenny Robb Titaś Biswas
Marianne Daigh
Cathy Fowley Fiona Murphy
David Kirby Kate McGuire
€20
ISSN 2737-7768
