Drawn to the Light Press Issue 2

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 2 February 2021

Come Spring Janina Aza Karpinska

Contents a love, a light, and a magic, all of my own Signs and Wonders a flowering The sun is naked The best way out is always through – Robert Frost Anointed Kingfisher in slow motion, frame #7 Dear Jason, Speaking of You The ones that are here still Droplet Droplet Reflections Tidy Woman Bathing Shipping Forecast Never Forgotten Just Go London Underground Valentine Love you.

Fortress Modena Still the Sea Elements ellipse Vigil Coming Home Not My Type Ghost Town Love Poetry Bungee Jumping My Lover, Irena Dubrovna Blank Wall The Jolly-Wolly Wobbly Man Thin Line The Star Blaze On The Wing You heard the one about the Mars Rover The Grey of Goibniú Galway Stonechat Notes on Contributors

Linda M. Crate Janina Aza Karpinska Susan Connolly K.S. Moore K.T. Slattery Michael Cullen Glen Wilson Taidgh Lynch Lynne Wycherley Sacha Hutchinson Maeve McKenna Dolores De Bie Mark Ward Anne Daly Nicola Heaney Anthony Wade Marie Studer Ella Sadie Guthrie Stephanie Powell DS Maolalai Patrick Chapman Ted McCarthy Roisin Ní Neachtain Roisin Ní Neachtain RC deWinter Jeremy Haworth Faye Boland Róisín Bugler Aine MacAodha Ana Spehar Ceri Savage Paul McDonald Rhea Johnson Camillus John Patrick Deeley Anamaria Julia Dragomir Billy Fenton John D. Kelly Georgie Bailey Mary O’Brien Sacha Hutchinson

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Editorial Sincere thanks to this issue’s cover artist Janina Aza Karpinska. Come Spring, in her own words, was one of two canvasses I found put out by bins; I had to take them although I wasn't used to working with canvas. I'm an artist, but I don't use paint. It hung around for a long time.... waiting for me to realize I could marry my textile collages and love of crazy patchwork with a kind of devotional image - a tribute to redeeming the discarded - all the butterflies and flowers were ones I applied - finding use and purpose in that which had been thrown away.

Creative compost - something fertile coming from processed waste. New Life.

Janina spoke of her works as ‘Creative Acts of Redemption’, and it struck me how close the link is, between works and feats of art, and solace or redemption. This issue has a collaborative feel to it. Janina’s butterflies are in tune with Deirdre McKernan’s Aurora. I worked with some of the poets in the editorial process and in translation. Mark Ward responds to an Anne Tannam poem (Tannam had a poem in issue 1). Maeve McKenna responds to a photograph by Dolores De Bie. Ana Spehar brings a sample of Instapoetry to the issue.

Love in many guises became an integral theme of the issue, perhaps because Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Magic is also weaved throughout and is something I always associate with February 1st, St. Brigid’s Day. Thank you to everyone who submitted. There were many fine poems I couldn’t include but I hope that these poets will submit again to the June edition.

We await Spring with anticipation.

Orla Fay, 30/01/2021

a love, a light, and a magic, all my own "i love you, but you scare me" isn't the flex you think it is because i no longer care who likes me i have learned to love myself, and i am not going to change; done apologizing for things that aren't even my fault— you don't have to like me, but i don't have to care; i have a love, a light, and a magic, all my own.

Linda M. Crate

4

Signs and Wonders Beside the water of Ballygowan, the bottled water of the same, a little white candle burns; close to both, a golden swan, a tiny open padlock with long curving neck found on the tarmac of Windsor St. placed, just so, on the table of the Earth and Stars, my face reflected in its shining curve; a distortion of near-wonder: key to every mystery Janina Aza Karpinska

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a flowering saying how i feel while days of knowing you grow – and lifestories unfurl flourish flower bless blossom charm pray Susan Connolly

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The sun is naked The sun’s not breaking through.

Celandines took the last lemon chiffon, stripped her of ballgown.

The sun is naked, she rolls in the water that rises from cloud, flashes a shoulder — at least it’s evidence of light if not full bodied and blazing.

She hasn’t left us yet, although each winter we wonder will this be the year she never gets dressed?

K. S. Moore

7

The best way out is always through – Robert Frost Dear Mr. Frost, Your advice is some of the best I have ever gotten, after the fact.

Hindsight is a complex thing, but I did make it through.

There were times I gave up, closed my eyes and hid in my warm bed where it was safe, imagined sucking my thumb, clutching my childhood pillow and blanket to fruitless breasts, I stopped moving, self-sabotage at a standstill, resigned to this life sentence.

Angels disguised as friends gave gentle nudges, pushed softly forward, reminded me how to acknowledge a self-constructed prison.

I know reality alters and shifts, and I could allow the darkness to win over once again.

In the meantime, I will chant your aphorism like a mantra, praying it will take root, help me swiftly navigate the next dark voyage.

Sincerely, Me K.T. Slattery

8

Anointed As I plunge below the icy depths I feel my worries washed out on a wave, My head submerged, now free of secrets kept And of burdens I no longer wish to save.

Beneath the dividing sheet of two domains As the water laps towards the bay And the air made warm by delicate summer rains I feel as light as golden hay.

Transformed again by the waters cure Baptised by the elements, washed and new, God’s healing hand felt in the ocean pure, My mind cleaned of disease by the deep blue.

Surrounded by the elements I feel light as snow And recognise my own impermanence Like the tide going out, I too, will go.

Michael Cullen

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Kingfisher in slow motion, frame #7 Technology lets us be a god that can’t change everything, pausing the film to study a moment already gone; the wingspan at its fullest, outward sprays a million beads of water, river jewels for the offerings, feathers deep-painted by the wetness but not yet shaken off, azure blue, sunset orange a white chest full with the inhale, at the cusp of a mighty exhale.

The splendour of divine watercolour perfect to the eye that wants to see it, its long sharp beak at full hinge makes room for the fish that came too close to the surface, its eyes seeing no danger to either side does not expect the above to break the ceiling of its universe, it will struggle though it doesn’t know that it will be just a struggle.

Even if I could intervene I would be depriving one life for another, the bird must eat, the next frame will come.

Glen Wilson

10

Dear Jason, I’ve been trying to come back to you, to shake you out from under the leaves and find you under the cherry blossoms.

But how can I come back to you when I don’t know where you are?

Perhaps you’ve taken to the Atlantic Ocean.

Perhaps your wetsuit clings to your skin, though it’s unlike you to stay in one place for so long, so you can’t be found.

Taidgh Lynch

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Speaking of You In the flow of this world, its stream of peptides, DNA’s furl, faces, parishes, fern fronds uncurled, fingerprints swirling with currents there is you – just you – your signature voice, your hands at rest on fret-board and strings, a Gallagher in waiting, Hendrix-on the-wing and your face I know more clearly than my own, familiar country where sunlight walks fawn trackways.

Out of a shoal of leaves one leaf is topaz, gold.

Out of a shingle mile, one stone insists; in cross-shore drift one shell says lift me.

Out of a river of strangers you turn to me like a truth.

Lynne Wycherley

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The ones that are here still To wander in the woods to smell autumn leaves to think about black holes you have left time and space now you float as atoms.

It must be good to be a bird make your alarm call, fly away re-locate to a nearby field or just stay high.

A photograph album of black and white faded colour, reminds what was before why does memory sweep with sad happiness, then catch and wrench?

How I miss you the ones that went before the ones that are here still I miss you all.

Sacha Hutchinson

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Droplet Not a moist lash to cushion your descent, not cheeks flush with autumn’s breath, where you might trickle, and tickle.

Each image is a millisecond of pain, blinking.

Absorbed, these limpid capillaries are routes blinded by fear, socket perilous on a branch, whipping wind circling this invisible cup of hurt, wooden stalk, branches of small strength holding firm.

But, you are delicate, vulnerable, clinging on until winter hardens your brittle film. For now, droplets of rain have offered your heart this reality: your tears are imagining a tree.

Maeve McKenna

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Droplet Reflections Dolores De Bie

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Tidy after Anne Tannam’s ‘Role Models’

Anne, the workmen don’t look happy sweeping up. No one has had lunch, not with the loose gravel’s small hills spilling into the road. One man, older than you’d think, mid-60’s, drives the digger effortlessly, its claw reaching – a dancer’s arc whilst the cab moves clear of traffic.

The other man follows after, brush in hand. Anne, from the kitchen, you watched your men go each day to work with their hands. I stand, waiting my hands not having lifted more than a box of books. I have swept up, spot-mopped supermarket floors but I write this because I can’t lift the world and move it like they can.

Mark Ward

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Woman Bathing after Rembrandt’s ‘A Woman Bathing in a Stream’

How he devoured her, that old master… the quiver of uncovered skin, lily-white against the stroke of water upon her thighs. The inviting penumbra of a lifted shift, ripples inching upwards, red with the knowledge of refracted sighs.

A woman stands in sea water, gooseflesh blooms over the mottled iris of her shivering skin.

The striations of childbirth cascade, cracked as the umbo of a broken shell. Her swimsuit is too tight.

My heart, overlook these earthbound blemishes and love me, as the water loved her.

Anne Daly

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Shipping Forecast My car is wedged tight on the ringroad – morning gloom lit by red lights that stretch ahead for miles. I think of you across the sea breakfasting alone – probably porridge – sitting with a book at the kitchen table, pelts of rain slapping the skylight, guttering down pipes into the garden we used to play in.

Maybe you’re already out on the river, oars cutting through the glassy surface – without the life jacket we bought you one Christmas years ago.

Most nights I lie in darkness, listening to freight lorries pounding the wet tarmac of an English city I still can’t call home because how can it be home without you.

It’s been nearly twenty years since I became a visitor to my attic bed, tucked up under a roof that played lullabies of rainfall and rattled in storms.

Across the sea, you hear the same broadcast.

Lundy: northerly three, slight, fair and good.

Malin: variable six, rough, rain and poor.

There may not be rowing in the morning.

Nicola Heaney

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Never Forgotten Early in the pandemic the daughter walked with her small daughters on their daily visits to Granny. They walked slowly. Every school was shut and the unexpectedly hot days were long.

The eldest, always first, would press her right hand against the kitchen window and Granny would place her left hand against it on the inside for what they called a glass kiss. The middle girl would place either hand, followed by the lifted youngest, who always gave Granny two glass kisses, and her bewilderment at why just this and no more tore at the hearts of the two Mothers. Then they were gone, again, so few short minutes so swiftly flown, and Granny left with the angry bee trapped inside, and desperate, the living world out of reach beyond the glass, and fated to fade away within.

Anthony Wade

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Just Go There are days when it is best to go on a whim whether by foot, bike, or car, a leafy lane, a climb up Keeper Hill, see spikes of purple loosestrife, ferns watching over streams.

To city or town, no map, no plan, encounter a street seller, feast on stained glass, steeples, lichen headstone stories, herbaceous borders in a park, coffee on the pavement.

The je ne sais quoi of a journey on a whim.

Marie Studer

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London Underground after ‘Baseball and Classicism’ by Tom Clark

Sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time looking at the tube map in between each journey since I am not going to take a test on it and I already know where I am going.

Sometimes I wonder how many things I would know if my mind wasn’t cluttered with the exact hue of each line where they went and which zone they fall into If I’d be able to think clear enough to solve things like math equations and physics and crises in the Middle East, world peace or the correct date to send flowers to your doorstep.

If I were to take a test, maybe for the first time in my life I’d get straight A’s.

My school halls wrapped in ivy.

My brow higher than Hampstead Station’s 300 steps but tests were not made for me and the flowers die on your doorstep every time.

Ella Sadie Guthrie

21

Valentine She makes love on my bedroom floor, Valentine’s day 2016.

I try and swallow my loneliness high on the old mattress – lying as still as a laid-out corpse, watching the shadows move along the ceiling. Long past midnight, last drinks bell hollering across the pub, straight cut of light through the venetians – the slick of cars in the rain make choir with the kisses and groans from down below. The radio in the next room plays soft, mournful music – as I wait for them to finish.

Stephanie Powell

22

Love you. it's these hot summer days doubling in dublin sun. these hot days and hot nights like a cat in the bramble patch screaming. all down the canal kids are drinking, 20 and 30 year olds sharing cans and winebottles like artists in the 20s, Paris, sprawled all up the Seine. my girlfriend calls and tells me things have gone bad in the office – she's panicking and could I come get a drink with her. then she tells me if she loses this job she'll have no visa and I'll have to marry her if I want to keep her around.

I say I'll think about it and tell her 10 minutes and I'll meet her. then it's just "love you" and just hanging up. getting ready to meet her I put on a fresh shirt and look out the window and think about it.

DS Maolalai

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Fortress Volterra. This morning the name arose like a scent. How long it had lain dormant in my mind. Electric earth, I’d called it.

Rebound atmospherics. The year a bolt in April rent the welkin in my heart.

In those days, I was wrong about so much.

Stopped in a piazza for panini and espresso, you spoke, regressed to ten years old, watching a movie on cable.

Noble virgin, probably beautiful, falls in love with the stable-hand, so her mother walls her up alive in the keep at Volterra with a wild boar to mock her rebellion and a black dog to teach her submission. That day as we parked on the spiral path to the old fortress town, you recognised the Porcellino tower.

Her face, a perfect life-mask, regained its vigour, descending to rest on your own.

Bianca Maria di Malaspina – She had been immured at Fosdinovo, but in which century it is unclear.

Their skeletons, mingled in a charnel pile, were found in nineteen-eighty. Was it the hound or the pig that got to her first?

In those days, you were wrong about so much.

‘Volterra, I am sure of it, my love.

This is where I died.’

Patrick Chapman

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Modena After the harshness of cobbles, the dim interior is soothing on the eyes, cool, too, with the intimacy of a cave, walls almost damp to the touch. Such is imagination that old couple strolling stiffly along what shade the garden gave, content as a pair of swans.

I rest between the smell of masonry and wax, and think of living under a sky that rarely changes, where rain comes and is gone, leaving a hint of citrus in the air and morning tells what day will become; where the language of good nature is easy, unhampered by chill or sudden downpour.

Maybe I could learn to walk gracefully in arid air, shirt not clinging to the small of the back.

There is a style in having overcome which I know I'll never master, a knack in moving along streets where local flags carry their centuries lightly.

Exiting, all is shadow and glare as it must always be at the centre. This is the true light, the crayon-colour of a four year old, all green, gold, purple; the heart of the sun is in one of those layers buried in a box among the cast-offs of a long growing. Go home and shiver, make your own sun.

Ted McCarthy

25

Still the Sea Still. still sea still preserving your omniscient touch the coral limbs the lucent timbre and blueness of the altitude more like an ashen cornflower than an Adriatic pool of six years between a repetition where every man and woman screamed I am burning I am burning and all the rage went dead Roisin NĂ­ Neachtain

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Elements Roisin NĂ­ Neachtain

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ellipse ya know it's all ok until it isn't you bob along a rubber duck in the bathtub of the world waiting for something you can't control a captive in the ignorance of silence waiting for that happy ending to begin you don't hear the waves slapping the rocks you don't even know the rocks are there the tide carries you and you just breathe in and out waiting until you forget what it is you’re waiting for and closing your eyes surrender to the homelessness of what you think is the open sea but is only the polluted porcelainbound pond of rich men’s dreams RC deWinter

28

Vigil Nothing matters now save his eight pound slip of flesh warming behind perspex, every bloodshot palpation of his ruby heart fastened in its nook of mothwing, its tent of cotton-curtain skin.

Every spark that lifts in the dark, every misfire of every synapse inside every soft, curling wire in his head, every womb-sluiced follicle on every inch of his tiny body pinkening on the tube bed and every red beep of the insomniac machine that jangles the hum in my bones, the hum of grief, the murmur-hum of love.

Jeremy Haworth

29

Coming Home The sky, bright as your baby-blue eyes.

Busy nurses fustle, utter the hospital's black and white tiled-effect policy, pass you over at the hospital door.

The sweet milkiness, bundled newness of you, strapped into your bucket seat in the back.

My neck in an owl-twist over my right shoulder, inspecting the rosiness of your cheeks, tweaking the temperature dial, as your father drives with more than the usual dose of caution.

Framed by the windscreen, we glide round the bend. The MacGillycuddy Reeks, bathed in blue light, peak and dip like a screen-monitored heartbeat.

The baby-fingered exquisite perfection of the moment, heart-swelling glory of it all.

Faye Boland

30

Not My Type (Kerry Babies case - 1984) From Cahersiveen strand Baby drifts to limbo where Éireann’s sin-stained bastards go.

Eighty kilometres north pointy fingers slitty eyes spy trollop’s extramarital frolics romping willingly with a wedded man.

‘She’s not the full Catholic shilling’ Bless the father’s it’s been that long since the falsified confession.

Garda explanation ‘heteropaternal superfecundation’ Offer penance - Baby A twenty-eight stabs Baby O interred in plastic shroud Found by out-house, death indeterminate.

God is gracious Baby John Pedigree to eternal nonentity cast.

Illegitimates and adulteresses spat out holy steam rubbed in wounds washed down by the constabulary with the blood of Christ.

Róisín Bugler

31

Ghost Town I want to hear Paul Weller sing Going Underground The Modern World, The Eton Rifles, along with The Specials’ Ghost Town and The Sex Pistols for pity sake, but it’s Saturday night in Omagh and the DJ will only play a few numbers from the ‘alternative music’ scene.

The rest will be pop tunes and everyone will be still doing disco dancing moves on checkered tiles.

The queue for the loo, (commonly known in Tyrone as the bogs) will be lined with lipsticked girls wearing boob tubes and carrying a bag they just danced around.

They will look at me as if I landed from the far side of the moon with my Doc Martens on, sticking out like a sore thumb in the rural North of Ireland, in drainpipes and sugar starched spiky hair.

God loved a trier, and my friend Trich and I did that.

I wanted to say I’m with you all 100%, I’m shaking my fist at the establishment.

I’m doing all I can in this market town to ripple a few waves at parochial powers, at government propaganda.

Aine MacAodha

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Love Poetry Ana Spehar

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Bungee Jumping She looks at me curiously, and asks, are you in love with me?

And I remember bungee jumping once, off a cerulean bridge stretched over a canyon ridge in West Coast Canada.

The view was sublime – endless trees broken only by the skyline – and I knew there’d be so few times I’d drop from a bridge and survive.

So, I straightened my back, held my head high, and aimed for the thin line of the horizon, breathing deep, bended knees, diving forward fearlessly.

I was never afraid of heights until that morning; the rope pulled me back, but I never forgot that feeling of falling.

I was hanging to life by a thread, long, elastic, dangling over a careless canyon.

It could end so stupidly – just a loose thread, just a fall from a tread on my shoelace.

When scared, I often dip my head, hide my face, look down at my shoes interlaced, see my toes itch over the edge of some unseen ravine, feel a slight bend in the back of my knees – my body reminding me that I know the feeling of falling.

So I take the same stance, back straight, head high, and I look into her eyes as though they are the skyline.

I take a deep breath, and I say, yes.

Ceri Savage

34

My Lover, Irena Dubrovna You kept yourself awake at night by purring, reflecting on your history of wickedness. Cats didn't like you, saw themselves mirrored in your amber eyes; birds glimpsed their certain death.

You'd choke the ones that didn't die of fright, stand beside their cages dressed in mourning clothes, your black coiffure lacquered. You had no choice.

I loved you long before we kissed; you'd hang from my lip with your needle teeth, wrap yourself in fur to walk the night streets.

I'd stroke your coat on your return, wet with scent, seal sleek.

You'd stalk imagined rivals in their sleep, lap at their wounds with ferocious cunnilingus: they'd wake at dawn in ruined sheets, the remnants of a torn life.

You told me scraps about your past: descendent of your master's pets, the corpse you limped away from with eight of your nine lives left.

Paul McDonald

35

Blank Wall On the drowsing above-bed wall I caught them Stealing out – like a rook or bishop mid-move – fir trees, Their long faces stooped on shrapnel chins, leaping Away from the headlights of a somnambulist car passing; Then quickly as if to cover up the slip, crouch Against any one of four edges until Behind me, the streetlight flickers back on Offering to read my face – A neat black blot on blank wall.

Rhea Johnson

36

The Jolly-Wolly Wobbly Man The drug dealer hopped on the bus.

The gangster hopped on the bus.

The vicious dope hopped on the bus.

But he wasn’t a drug dealer.

And he wasn’t a gangster.

And he wasn’t a vicious dope either.

I knew where he lived. I’d seen him every so often for five years.

Always keeping my head down as I passed so as not to establish eye contact in any way.

It could be life-threatening. Because.

He looked like a drug dealer.

He looked like a gangster.

He looked like a vicious dope too.

He’s just bounced up the stairs of the 79 bus at 5.30 pm.

It’s packed with people travelling home from work.

He’s all jolly-wolly wobbly loud and cracking bullet jokes with people as he swaggers to a seat right at the back of upstairs.

This is going to be trouble man.

I hear everyone thinking the same.

He’s going to upset apple-carts.

Get on your nerves.

Get the bus rowdy.

But no way.

Not at all.

Because he’s not a drug dealer.

And he’s not a gangster.

And he’s not a vicious dope either.

He’s funny and charming and it’s absolutely impossible not to like him.

He has personality sprouting out of every thought in his head.

People are beaming him blind upstairs on the bus.

They’ll be no aggro. Only love.

He’s sound. Really fucking sound.

His conversation is a constant loud 37

jolly wolly wobbly.

I don’t miss a word of it, thank God, it’s that resonant and warm.

I’ve misjudged him all these years.

He got on the bus the next day as well at around the same time.

And snake-charmed everyone a second time.

It wasn’t a fluke.

Even better than the first.

Unbelievable.

He sat down beside this woman from America and she was eating out of his heart like a pigeon.

Everyone sang goodbye to him when he got off like he was Norm from the sitcom Cheers.

The whole bus adoring him in very soft focus.

I’m a bastard for getting him wrong all these years.

Life is great. Life is simply great.

Sometimes.

Camillus John

38

Thin Line Those who’ve left us aren’t absent, they’re invisible – Saint Augustine If through a brisk, fantastical gesture I could gather you back out of the eternity beyond earth and air, nothing might seem late or past repair, all grief instantly cleared; if I could spend a day around you again – mother, your hand on my shoulder while I washed or cooked in slanty light criss-crossing between two windows; father, your shadow next my arm, pointing where the tidiest lop of a dead apple branch sits hidden; or you, friend, for once drunk only on the summer air, reciting ahead of me a poem at midnight, your voice blending with a blackbird’s sworn from a tree on Charlemont Street…

But no, your gifts are still on offer here, any want beyond this not yours but my own, though everything I grow tangled up in or call good sense chafes against the thin line separating us – which will fray soon, frays even now, if the crooning chimney, the yellow-green willow rustling with finches, or my own body can be given credence.

Patrick Deeley

39

The Star I'm looking at the rising star, flickering in bewildered night, Shivering, trembling, hanging from the sky.

She's calling, but I can only reach her with naked eye.

Blink slowly, some day she will fall, My desires pulling after her.

Burning sparks of longing and dreams Will shine in the wake of detachment.

Her light grows timid in the end, When fiery body shatters.

And I will go out with her, For she will have been, after all, mine.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir (translated from the Romanian below)

Steaua Privesc la steaua abia răsărită Cum pâlpâie-n noapte nedumerită.

Sclipind tremurândă, de cer agățată, Mă cheamă, dar n-am s-o ajung niciodată.

Clipește încet, cândva va cădea, Dorințele mele trăgând după ea.

Scântei arzătoare de doruri și vise Luci-vor pe urmele stelei desprinse.

Sfioasa-i lumină, când se va curma, Când trupul de foc i se va sfărâma Și eu mă voi stinge odată cu ea, Căci ea va fi fost, dintre toate, a mea.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir

40

Blaze Half-heartedly, I let you read my palm: scrape of your finger nail like a trickle of blood along a desert hillside.

Grind to a halt, between head and heart, stab your finger through.

I open my eyes to moonlight, your naked leg over mine, watch the clouds slide by, see the stars blaze open.

Billy Fenton

41

On The Wing It was always in my nature to be supernatural.

Like the time when I first flew and sang with you in a dream and wrote a poem and instantly knew that all poetry is non-fiction – that all conscious and unconscious thoughts are real.

I say this with the elation that a lark might have singing high in the blue of a cerulean sky and my spirit flies and I feel as free of friction as a swift that eats and mates and even sleeps and dreams on the wing and only comes to rest to nest to bring about what (maybe) came first, once again amidst the mind-splitting, dumb refrain of the heady, headless chicken and egg conundrum that doesn't really feature in the mostly non-down-to-earth nature of this poem.

John D. Kelly

42

You heard the one about the Mars Rover?

Every year it sang itself Happy Birthday and waved a little flag, slap bang middle of the red planet (the one they reckon we could live on one day).

Out there, cold, in the inky Black Sea. The one peppered with glinting fish, pebbles we mistake for satellite dishes, Rover blew out it’s candles and danced a birthday slow dance, for age is not a construct to robots, no no.

And when they were done with it, tinkered with a new one better than it, decided they’d had enough, they’d better scrap it, they turned it down, shut it off.

Let it freeze on the red face of that earth.

How cruel of us to think we’re better than a machine manifested, birthed from our hands.

One that helped draw our eyes in the middle of the lonely stars and the lonely skies.

So, really what I’m trying to say when I discuss the sorry little sod today, is never let anyone think you owe them anything.

Georgie Bailey

43

The Grey of Goibniú On my last legs now alas, since the disrespect began, expelling me from my rightful place, that place where, properly honoured, I would generously give of myself, enough to be shared equally among all, regardless of position, rich or poor.

Then came the need for more and more, throwing everything out of balance, the notion that there is no limit, that I can somehow fill this vessel they have brought, this sieve; by day, by night and day again trying to give what is expected trapped in a habit of providence.

Between life and death now, my strength ebbing, my draining soul.

Mary O’Brien Note: In ancient Ireland the magical Grey Cow of Plenty was owned by Goibniú, the SmithGod of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the three gods of craft.

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Galway Stonechat Sacha Hutchinson

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Notes on Contributors Georgie Bailey is a working-class Poet and Playwright from Bordon, Hampshire. He is a recent graduate of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Dramatic Writing MA, and mentors new writers through creative writing projects. Georgie has had several poems and short stories published in anthologies and magazines such as Horizon Magazine and The Unexpected Spring.

Faye Boland was highly commended for the Desmond O' Grady Prize 2019 and shortlisted in 2013 for the Poetry on the Lake XIII International Poetry Competition. She won the Robert Leslie Boland Prize 2018 and the Hanna Greally Award 2017. Her first poetry collection Peripheral was published in September 2018.

Róisín Bugler has had work published in Boyne Berries, Ropes, The Poetry Bus, Sonder Magazine and Quarryman. She coordinates ‘A Flow of Words’ literary show International on Scariff Bay Community Radio. She was the winner of Strokestown Percy French prize for Witty Verse and runner up in the Padraig Colum Gathering competition both, 2019.

Patrick Chapman’s most recent poetry collection is Open Season on the Moon (Salmon Poetry, 2019). His non-fiction book, David Cronenberg (Sonicbond Publishing) is due in 2021. He co-founded and edits The Pickled Body.

Susan Connolly has published three poetry collections. Bridge of the Ford (Shearsman, 2016), a tribute to her hometown of Drogheda (droichead átha / bridge of the ford), is a collection of thirty-three visual poems. Her poems were published recently in Otoliths https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2020/10/susan-connolly.html and in Experiment-O 13 (AngelHousePress, 2020) http://experiment-o.com/.

Linda M. Crate's works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. She is the author of seven poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: the samurai (Yellow Arrow Publishing, October 2020). She has also authored two micro-collections, and three full length poetry collections.

Michael Cullen is a young poet living in North Dublin, currently teaching and acting while awaiting the commencement of a Master’s degree. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College, having studied history. Michael has previously been published on Pendemic and is releasing more works throughout the year so keep a keen eye peeled for new material. twitter @mikeycD9.

Anne Daly is an Irish writer who lives in Bettystown, Co. Meath. She is the short fiction editor of Crossways magazine. Her short fiction and poems have appeared in a number of online and print journals.

Dolores De Bie lives in rural Sligo, Ireland. She is passionate about capturing natures invisibility to the naked eye through the lens of a camera. Dolores posts actively on Instagram. Her photos can be found @doldebie Patrick Deeley is from Loughrea. His collections with Dedalus Press include Decoding Samara, The Bones of Creation, Groundswell: New and Selected Poems, and The End of the

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World. He is the recipient of many awards for his writing, most recently the 2019 Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award.

RC deWinter’s poetry is anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (NY Times/2017), Coffin Bell Two (Coffin Bell/2020) in print: 2River, Adelaide, Event, Genre Urban Arts, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, The Minnesota Review, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner, Southword, among many others and appears in numerous online publications.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir came from Romania to find a home away from home here in Ireland. She has studied Philology, Literature and Philosophy. She started to write verse in a moment of overwhelming sensitivity and is hoping to touch the borders of literature.

Billy Fenton writes poetry and short stories. His work has been published in the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, Honest Ulsterman, Galway Review and others. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2018, and was chosen as a mentee for the Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme in 2019.

Ella Sadie Guthrie is a journalist, poet and screenwriter. Alongside fellow poet Ruth Boon, she co-founded WRIOT, a poetry collective for womxn and non-binary poets that facilitates workshops and events, but mostly she spends her time walking along Brighton seafront and writing about the ocean.

Jeremy Haworth is a Dublin-born poet. He won the Cuirt New Writing Prize 2019 and is working towards the publication of his first collection of poetry. A market gardener by day, he lives in rural Co. Laois with his wife and two young children.

Nicola Heaney is a Northern Irish poet based in the South West of England and has had work published in The North, Poetry Birmingham, Honest Ulsterman and Crannóg amongst others and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2019 and 2020. She has just had a book of fairytales and legends for children co-authored with her father published by O Brien Press.

Sacha Hutchinson is living in Galway, Ireland. She recently started writing poetry, attends a weekly poetry class and has read at the Over The Edge open reading. Her poetry appeared in Ropes 2018 and in the 2018 spring edition of Skylight 47 and the 2019 autumn edition of The Curlew. She was shortlisted for Poetry for Patients 2018 and 2019. She was longlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2018 and shortlisted in 2019. She received a Bachelor of Arts in art and design in 2010. She has an interest in exploring the environmental message through illustration, paint and poetry. Sometimes her drawing will be combined with the written word.

Camillus John was bored and braised in Dublin. He has had work published in The Stinging Fly, RTÉ Ten, The Lonely Crowd and other such organs. He would also like to mention that Pats won the FAI cup in 2014 after 62 miserable years of not winning it.

Rhea Johnson is a young poet from Mumbai, India. Her poems are inspired by the quotidian and fleeting rite of life. She is a student of Poetry at the California Institute of Arts.

Janina Aza Karpinska won 1st prize in The Cannon's Mouth Poetry Competition shortly after achieving an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development, with Merit, at Sussex 47

University. Her work has appeared in many publications. She makes writing a daily practice, and reading poetry, a regular treat.

John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. He won the Listowel. Poetry Collection Award, 2020 and Desmond O’Grady International Poetry Competition, 2020. His manuscript was highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2016. His first collection − The Loss Of Yellowhammers was published by Summer Palace Press in 2020.

Taidgh Lynch is a poet from Co. Kerry who lives in Saskatoon, Canada with his partner and their new baby. His poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, FreeFall, ROPES, The Poetry Bus, Boyne Berries, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, First Lift Here, was published with Jack Pine Press, September 2019.

DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) Aine MacAodha published three volumes of poetry. Where the Three rivers Meet and Musćilt were recently published by Argotist online. Her poems have been translated into several languages. Her latest collection Landscape of Self was published by Lapwing Press, Belfast. Recently she was invited by the Irish embassy in Warsaw to use her poem ‘Distractions’ as part of their yearly festival. "wiersze w mieście" - Poems in the City. https://ainemacaodha.wixsite.com/ainemacaodha/links-to-my-poetry-and-photography Ted McCarthy is a poet and translator living in Clones, Ireland. His work has appeared in magazines in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has had two collections published, November Wedding, and Beverly Downs.

His work can be found on www.tedmccarthyspoetry.weebly.com Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty-five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write full time. He is the author of twenty books, which cover fiction, poetry, and scholarship.

Maeve McKenna lives in Sligo, Ireland. Her writing has been placed in several international poetry competitions and published widely in print and online. Maeve is working towards her first collection of poetry.

K. S. Moore’s poetry has recently appeared in The Stony Thursday book, New Welsh Review and Skylight 47. She placed 3rd in the Waterford Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for Ink, Sweat and Tears 'Pick of the 'Month'. Samples of poetry and other thoughts can be found at ksmoore.com.

Roisin Ní Neachtain is an emerging Irish-Scottish poet and artist currently based in County Kildare, Ireland. Her artwork features in international private collections and she is currently working on her first collection of poetry.

Mary O’Brien from Co. Wexford, Ireland, writes in both English and Irish. She has been a recipient of grants and bursaries from the Arts Department of Wexford Co. Council and has published six poetry collections. (maryobrienpoetry.com). She was the winner of Duais 48

Fhoras na Gaeilge 2017 at Listowel Writers’ Week and has been a reader for Duais de hÍde at Strokestown Poetry Festival in 2019 and 2020. Her recent collection, Ré na nÚll, was published by Coiscéim, Dublin, in 2019.

Stephanie Powell is a poet based in London. She grew up in Melbourne, Australia. Her poems have been published previously in literary journals, anthologies and online.

Ceri Savage is a Brit-born writer with an BA in English Literature from the University of Exeter. She has been published in The FU Review as well as in the short story collection A Flash of Silver-Green: Stories of The Nature of Cities. She is the founder of Savage Edits, an editing business for indie authors.

K.T. Slattery was born in Memphis and now lives in Ireland. Her writing has been published in Ropes Literary Journal, Nightingale and Sparrow, The Blue Nib, Impspired, The Wellington Street Review, Analogies and Allegories, and Streetcake. Most recently she received a special mention in the 2020 Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition.

Ana Spehar is from Croatia, living in Cork for last 4 years. Her work was published in A New Ulster, Boyne Berries, Solstice Sounds, Good Day News, and poetry anthologies A Journey Called Home and Cork Words. Her poetry is themed around love, and her love of Ireland, her endless inspirations. https://www.instagram.com/love_poetry_by_ana_spehar/ Marie Studer was a winner in the Trocáire Poetry Ireland Competition 2020, Holding it Together Apart 2020, Bangor Literary Halloween Ekphrastic Challenge 2019 and shortlisted in the North West Words Poetry Competition 2020. Her work has appeared in The Stony Thursday Book, The Waxed Lemon, local anthologies and online.

Anthony Wade, Irish, an England-trained lawyer, lives now by the sea in East Cork, Ireland, an active Midleton Writers’ Group member with work featured or forthcoming in Ariel Chart, Boyne Berries, Causeway, Dreich, Lakeview Literary Journal, Scrittura, Setu Bilingual, Strands Lit Sphere and Tiny Seed. See Twitter at @anthonywadepoet.

Mark Ward is the author of the chapbooks, Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and a full-length collection, Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). He was Highly Commended in the 2019 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and in 2020 he was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series. He has read his poetry on RTÉ Radio 1, Lyric FM and the Words Lightly Spoken podcast. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year.

Glen Wilson is a poet from Portadown. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2017, the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award in 2018 and The Trim Poetry competition in 2019. His poetry collection An Experience on the Tongue is out now with Doire Press.

Lynne Wycherley is a nature-loving poet living on a coastal farm in Devon. Her Listening to Light, New & Selected Poems was published in 2014; her new collection Brooksong & Shadows is due in early summer from Shoestring Press.

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The works included in this issue are copyright of the poets Š2021 and may not be reproduced or changed in any way without the permission of the individual author.

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