Rhea Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.