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Drawn to the Light Press Issue 4 October 2021

Lines to Knowth Fiona Seoige

Contents Old Fire Oak Weaving Ragna October Lullaby Normal People Sunflower Syndrome Phoenix Park Renaissance Last Frost Holding Hands Thistle Head Feral Witness to Certainty Folded Matching Outfits Remission Deep Breaths at Hogmanay Deep Regret Drowning in Sorghum She Spends Two Years A Bed of Silk One Life Pebble All the Cracked Things Sisters Betrayal From the Shadows Leaving Home at Eighteen Love’s Legacy I Want a Goddess Communion Cake The Hide on Shapwick Moor “But…” Northern Sky Portstewart Beach The Salt Marsh My Kingdom The Sublime You Looked at the Map Sonnets in Place of a Subject Some roads are lonely 7/7 Seer Sunita’s Smile Sunset at Beenbawn Dingle Notes on Contributors

Blake Everitt Billy Fenton Lydia Harris Simon Cockle Mehak Goyal Frank Murphy Kate Meyer-Curry Marguerite Doyle Alison McCrossan Sue Wallace-Shaddad Sue Wallace-Shaddad Ben Banyard Anthony Wade Lynda Tavakoli Lynda Tavakoli Ger Duffy Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon Róisín Bugler Cáit O’Neill McCullough Vinny Glynn-Steed Michael Durack Maurice Devitt Colin Pink Bernadette Gallagher CR Green Catherine Brennan Catherine Brennan Eugene O’Hara Mark A. Murphy Ansuya Patel Michelle Dennehy Deirdre Hines Mathew Lyons Rose Cook Yvonne Boyle Yvonne Boyle Jorge Leiva Eoin Cahill R.W. Haynes Jefferson Holdridge Bernie Crawford Matthew Page Petra F. Bagnardi Jay Mitra Polly Richardson Munnelly

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Editorial Knowth in County Meath is one of three Neolithic passage tombs which comprise the Brú na Bóinne (Palace of the Boyne) site, commonly known as Newgrange. Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange, c. 3200 BC, are thought to be older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. From Fiona Seoige’s painting I sought some milk of the stars, the River Boyne after all takes its name from the goddess Boann meaning white cow. In this fall of the year, we should drink the stars, as Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Mankind has always looked above in wonder, from the Greeks and the Olympians to the early Christian Church of the Star of Bethlehem, to medieval Kings afraid of their own shadow of solstice. Galileo was the child dreaming of the man on the moon and still we attempt to emulate the lunar landing of 1969. If the stars are far away and knowing, then poetry is a way of coming closer, its gravity a pulling towards the centre of ourselves, following lines of spirituality and science. The light of the stars may lead us closer to death and the depth of winter, but some fire holds fast there, another lighthouse of love or faith. One thing I am always sure of is that we are only beginning to understand. Thanks to everyone involved in this issue. Fate or life has a way of bringing us where we are meant to be. I trust in that. Maybe we are who we are before we were. I am you and you are me, and we are we. Imagine being on a train through the darkness like Louis MacNeice does in his poem Star-Gazer! So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted sight Of those almost intolerably bright Holes, punched in the sky, which excited me partly because Of their Latin names and partly because I had read in the textbooks How very far off they were, it seemed their light Had left them (some at least) long years before I was. Enjoy the passage and see you in spring! Orla Fay, 09/10/2021

Old Fire When the ash trees as old as fire turn to iridescent white I want to be with you in a garden where the river gives the walnut leaf to nameless water and with night falling the dogs bark as light rests in the palm of your hand Blake Everitt

Oak Rings of time curl through my floor like stolen ribs. What if I could read them like a fortune teller can read a cup of tea? When I first squinted the birthing sky – a family taken by hungry grass. Once, a young woman buried her baby, bloodied and (un)wanted, beneath me. I shivered at the sound of gunfire across the river as you tore open a word. My feet walk over you, soak up your sun, your rain, your wind. You are my root. My Oak. Solid. Unshakeable. Billy Fenton

Weaving Ragna with weft and warp the shuttle my prow and stern my boat heads down driven by tide, pulled by flow the swallow loops yarn round her bill she’s bearing it south towards the sun I lift the heddle, heave the pierced bone each thread passes under and over I’m walking through stone I’m walking on hide I’m weaving my skin I’m threading sand I follow the shuttle into the shed and dip the yarn in onion skin boiled to a pulp and drained add mordant to lock my shy gold in Lydia Harris

Ragna, a farmer from Orkney. She appears in the Orkneyinga Saga

October October starts with nothing; a monstrous blank With tentacles at September’s throat. It keeps the heat of summer for a week, Then holds it tight in tourmaline and opal, Before exhaling into fingerless gloves. It is a flag of revolution, planted in bonfire mounds of leaves, of spent feathers. It is calendula, the bad tooth’s friend. But it ends with a trick or an unearned treat And a witch’s hat and broom, or, at least, A cheap box of noise and sparkle to cheer Up a subfusc night. And, in the end, a month’s just a moon’s return trip, a calendar of tally sticks, chalk marks, false starts. Simon Cockle

Lullaby Listening to Becoming on Audible, I travel back to my childhood room— My head rested in my mother’s lap, “The Famous Five by Enid Blyton. Chapter Two – ‘The Strange Cousin’.” “Mummy, I have short hair. I can swim as fast as a boy. I don't like playing with dolls. Am I strange? Should I have a boy’s name?” “No, Rosebud, don’t you see there’s a whole chapter dedicated to you? You are going to bloom no matter where you are planted.” She continued reading the chapter. Her voice plays like a lullaby in my ears. I sleep like a child in her mother’s lap, my AirPods slip out. Mehak Goyal

Normal People (Closing Time) Past the watersheds It was Pure Mule The kick in. There were no normal people Round here. Dressed to kill When they were dressed At all. And before the snowflakes melted Or the chips were down It was Closing Time. And Marianne. Well you’d better hope That the Bomber Brennan Was not on student Exchange. Coz there were no normal people Round here. It was Closing Time. Frank Murphy

Sunflower Syndrome Mid-July’s rising thermometer has brought the first sultry heatwave of sunflowers back to supermarket shelves. I first saw them this week as I sweated round Tesco after work. I envied them, dipping their toes in the bucket, as if they chilled at their local Lido. They were long and lean in high-cut chartreuse one-pieces, with stems for days. With their dirty-blonde tousled petals, they were ‘Fifties pin-up girls, fresh from a boardwalk photoshoot. Hand-picked by model-scouts, they had survived the killing fields of casting to make the final cut. Even under strip-lights their tight-pored permatanned faces were immaculate. They blanked me with their inscrutable Rayban stares, from behind shuttered eyes. I was a clumsy wildebeest eyed up by this blonde-maned lioness pride. Under their burning gaze, I felt photosensitive. My hand shielded my eyes from the radiant heat of their glare. Normally I’m drawn to sunflowers, but not today. I imagined how I’d feel facing their cool appraisal after a twelve-hour shift and I balked. I need to work on my summer body before I take that lot on. Kate Meyer-Curry

Phoenix Park Renaissance Instead of giving it a kick, I picked it up in my hand, clenching it there, the hard nut of autumn. Its bronze sheen even to the touch but giving nothing out of the core. The world, walkers, bicycles, jingled over the surface, searching for their temple. I watched them loom, then leap away like flames on a taper. They licked across my palm, sinking through my fingers while I plunged back into the eye of the water bird beating my wings, flying up again from the fire. Marguerite Doyle

Last Frost We tramped the path, last frost, naming sycamore, horse chestnut, ash, elm, silver birch; fingers parted prickly hawthorn, nested delicate-blue and brown-splotched eggs. ‘Soon we’ll hear the blackbird,’ you said. ‘Music which falls from the stars simmering into summer mornings.’ Autumn, we noted each leaf down by the Lee splashed ochre, red and gold, reflecting a hazed sky; maple, oak, sweet chestnut, alder, paper birch. In the still season you said, ‘not many blackbirds survive first flight yet their trill’s so lovely in the twilight.’ And now your atoms have scattered, rearranged, grief is a creature all velvet-plume and dusk. Alison McCrossan

Holding Hands She places her hand in mine so small I can cup it completely warm and still like a captive bird tender bones not yet fully formed ready to grasp fledgling friendship Sue Wallace-Shaddad

Thistle Head Sue Wallace-Shaddad

Feral He slides low along the cracked pavement, barely registers the heat as he hunts the sparrow which picks at crumbs below the taverna table. Later he washes in the shade, carefully licks blood from his claws before a languid stretch and a doze. Although feral, he knows to accept strokes from tourists, cosies up to the chef who’ll toss titbits from the kitchen. His is the hundredth generation of cats who have never known an owner; this whitewashed town is his. Ben Banyard

Witness To Certainty Among the soft sounds of early morning we stand patiently for the first country bus and watch a kestrel close, wing-tips riffing, fluttering, light upon an unseen thermal, waiting upon the giveaway glow of urine treacherously trailing incontinent mice scurrying among clustered weathered barns, a perpetual progression of patience and prey. We watch dispassionately, wait quietly, knowing this bus will come at its given time for the app on the phone has affirmed it, as certain as death follows the dawn. Anthony Wade

Folded You are an envelope unopened, chin to chest, face to thigh Li Hua, the folded man, twenty-eight years in search of sky. There is no easy unfurling, no gentle tease of bony curves, no tender touch, no fond and soft caress of tendons, sinews, nerves. Only the scraich of saw on bone, on thigh, on neck, on lumbar spine and finally on hips to help you stand, the folded man, unfolded by design. Your mother, Tang Dongchen, will see your face and know it whole, and sifting through the stones of memory say, my son, I met your soul. Unbound by love the burden of your folding finds release in eyes that after all this time will kiss the sky to find you peace. Lynda Tavakoli

Matching Outfits Lynda Tavakoli

Remission You and I no longer look one another in the eye, our children have stopped asking why. The mongrel rests her muzzle on my lap the mower judders to a stop, a jet pens a white line across blue sky, rush of bird wings as light enters leaves, branches tremble, an ambulance blares by, then stillness. Somewhere, someone is taking their last breath, Somewhere someone is entering the fire, smoke rising, bones crumbling to ash. When the time comes we will lie down before the wolf like lambs, while woodbine and dog roses release their scent, heavenward. Ger Duffy

Deep Breaths at Hogmanay Early sundown flares before slate twilight blankets Hauxley beach. Chill brine seeps through her trainers as Coquet lighthouse blinks, breezes freshen and pick up from the northeast. Ecstatic, relieved, she burns with urges to sing and dance. She doesn’t care who sees. Survival means she’ll have a chance to see another year. Despair in remission, she’s vitalised and freed. Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

Deep Regret For Vicky Phelan (After Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18) Fair to unfair sometimes declines Nothing fair in deep regret Pin striped contrition, empty chimes In a burial of misread checks. Nothing fair in deep regret Darling shakes the stealthy state. In a burial of misread checks Lovely girls are temperate. Darling shakes the stealthy state By chance a trimmed page is flagged Lovely girls are temperate In the shadow of death’s brag. By chance a trimmed page is flagged Pin striped contrition, empty chimes In the shadow of death’s brag Fair to unfair sometimes declines. Róisín Bugler

Drowning in Sorghum We were fourteen when the Gorman boy drowned feet first & sunk to the tip of his crown in sorghum that was the way he’d shouldered out his birth too a footling breech, set adrift now in a burying log & so slight that he had even slipped through seed you said to me ‘that box would be near empty … were it not for his mother’s tears’ in the weeping heat & loud silence of the chapel my eyes remained dry-trained to the back of you your hair restrained to that tamed lick of a cow & your nape naked on the penitence of the pew I had suffered decades of rosaries to be this close later while the cousins keened, we slipped behind a stone me fourteen & you lifting the chaff of the day from my lips it was me who fell then letting my anchor loose letting my breath be taken like I was drowning in sorghum Cáit O'Neill McCullagh

She Spends Two Years not looking westward, where the donkey’s melancholy lingers like tears collected under pillows or blighted thoughts uncovered in the corners of her cupboards. Nor past a seaside gable’s point-of-no-return, to landmines of deflated footballs hidden in the sand and in long grass where the clothes-line flails dejected off its metal captor the ricochet of wire are warning bells at night. Nor does she look eastward to flow and ebb of hills that slant away from angry eyes – we have no part in this they seem to say. She spends two years not listening to a summer snipe – tail end of its sinking fits and quavers, nor the conch-like wind that rushes down dunes in pockets to greet an empty strand. She spends two years not facing the unmanned watchtower where light was scattered once like platitudes at a funeral. The lantern long since faded in her eyes. Vinny Glynn-Steed

A Bed of Silk Not blessed with the gift of Gaeilge ón gcliabhán, nor boasting a Master’s in toponymy, and yet I know enough to figure out that beg means small, more big, bally townland, that bane is white, duff black and boy yellow. I’m certain kill’s a church and kyle a wood, that ros could be a promontory or grove, knock means a hill, clare or moy a plain. So I reach for the cartographer’s handsome book whose pages are splashed with art and poetry to seek out the delicate island of Inniskeen, the hillside of the women, Slievenamon, the grove of the brothers, Gurranabraher, Lugnaquilla’s hollow in the woods, the flaming waterfall at Assaroe, or Kenmare’s cosy little nest, Neidín, I contemplate a resting place in Clare, in Labasheeda where the cold comfort of a tomb is transfigured by the alchemy of the Gaelic tongue into a sumptuous nuptial bed of silk. Michael Durack

One Life A boy picks up a stone, throws it in a river, watches the water swirl to suck it in, pictures the unseen stone falling in slow motion to the river bed, where it will lie for years, rocked gently, but not disturbed, by the chortling current, brindled by the time lapse of seasons. One day, the boy, now a man, diverting from the frustration of a fruitless business trip, returns to the river; standing like a heron on the tufted bank - grey against green he stoops to pick up a pebble, but turns away, knowing he can never revive the dappled perfection of that ordinary day. Maurice Devitt

Pebble Forgotten, hidden in my pocket a speckled pebble nudges my thigh. I pull it out, balance it on my palm, it lies there, snug, precarious, resistant. Its sgraffito surface dances among the lines in my skin; heart line, head line, life line, a criss-cross confusion of vortices, elaborate patterns, helixes, whorls, fractal openings, a fate line, inscribed in a language I cannot read. As I hold it I’m torn between hurling it into the sea and preserving it as a geologic relic, a capsule moulded by time and shape shifting elements. How did you get that way? I ask it. How did you get that way? responds the pebble. We both shrug move on. Colin Pink

All the Cracked Things we hold — a window frame, three whole panes one cracked, as his hands put it in place thirty years ago. Glass chalice, reddened in its blowing, cracked but still whole sits on a sill beside the cracked pane. Frosted amber, flute-like jug, cracked. Not used since — for mulled wine. Whiskey glass, a wedding gift, rim chipped. We gently run a finger to feel the cut and drink from the other side of the circle. Bernadette Gallagher

Sisters Every year to celebrate his birth, find relief from summer´s last blistering when maples blaze orange and red in the north, the widow journeyed to his sister´s when one year she noted a blue yew blocking light from where they stood framed in windows, apart. ¨A severe pruning,¨ she said, ¨will reduce its height We´ll bonsai layers, like clouds, for a start. Light will reach this room through missing branches. Come with me now. Let´s take saw and shears before autumn ends and cold advances. Let´s not lose courage, give into fears.¨ Later they stood, arms wrapped in light, stronger. Their embrace told her who´d known him longer. CR Green

Betrayal Colours of the soul Hide fissures Where rivers of doubt linger Sharpest tools Cut Wordless veins Broken Sewn with mindless filters Graduated thoughts Fracture even the staunchest mind Powerless Against a will Weak from tear sodden dreams With inconclusive resolve Deeper in my heart now I wear my scars Coloured rainbows of life. Catherine Brennan

From the Shadows Catherine Brennan

Leaving Home at Eighteen the real promise arrived in the warring oranges of that late-August sky. we came to the windows to watch the light that flamed like burning pumpkins, mandarins, ochre & squash. behind the glass our skins ran the colour of erupting orchards. soon we would leave here, this unmerciful here; the border town with its walled courthouse, its Sunday football team, its outskirts of marsh, its rain. soon we would leave the flat row upon row of family home- those little studied boxes of pain and history where people float in and out of rooms, saving up for wooden floors, spitting in sinks. soon we would leave for the blaze of citylife & sex, & Red Stripe beer. soon we would leave here for the night club, the sleepless people, the hard-won kinks and the first heartbreak- the first beautiful bone-crushing haemorrhaging heartbreak- which groomed us tearfully into militants obsequiously devoted to the terrorism of love. Eugene O’Hare

Love’s Legacy She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books. – Gustave Flaubert My first love destroyed yours, though you too loved as if your life depended on finishing the book. Only a madman would’ve tried prize you from it, and, of course, we tried like a ruined child to destroy everything you identified with, in a rage so ferocious, we rent the curtain of the temple in two halves. * And yet, we have no idea who, or by what margin – we who have so many ideas – are most in love with: Emma, Eleanor, or Helen? Femmes who only need take breath to set the minds of both radicals and artisans racing with obscenities. So soon, we lose sight of our own struggles, as we run headlong into danger without care or forethought of action. Prepubescent boys might fare better than grown men – who open like over-ripe conkers at the siren call of sexual perfection. * But life can disfigure a man’s motivation, his purpose and his joy, more surely than a blow to the head with a great tome, rendering him improbable to drink with, or be with, outside the humdrum of provincial life. Now intemperate with jealousy, the stars fade in a fog of regret, as real as it is easy to betray all our convictions. Mark A. Murphy

I Want A Goddess I want a goddess to sprinkle poetry onto my oats and drizzle honey to sweeten my thoughts a goddess who cradles me through monthly days sing lullabies who sends me off on a slow boat to Kerala a goddess with attitude who takes no shit spurns authority and sips an extra hot cortado a goddess who deals with leaks fills out tax returns skips Mondays and never explains where she’s been a goddess who shakes off her blues, stomps out her fears a kick ass goddess a determined goddess a goddess who belongs in this world with all the other goddesses I want a real life goddess. Ansuya Patel

Communion Cake At seven minutes past midnight, fake tan still to do, I am making a cake for your Communion: blood orange and raspberry, swiss meringue buttercream. No radio to wake small sleepers: just the mixing bowl and me. I stir in that time I chipped my front tooth drinking wine from the bottle on a hurtling bus; the morning I markered on shared sheets, the apple of my anger skin-bursting and monstrous... you should get a taste of that; that night I collapsed in a chip shop, wearing ridiculous purple stilettos. The mother who tied your laces - see her there, stranger-circled on the dirty floor; divorced joys of morning cigarettes, kissing boys on other planets heart sky-sized and full, body music-wrapped - in they go, alongside that jump from a ten-foot wall in heels and a ballgown. Finally, the morning I rang in sick, first day in a new job, to stay in bed with your young father. In it leaps, just before the final stir-up. This thick batter of blunders and misreckonings, I spoon into tins. The oven hums readiness for transformation, separateness debunked in its warm belly. Beloved, it’s scary, but a liberation, too when we discover the woman in front walked mapless, through a trail of spilt milk. Michelle Dennehy

The Hide on Shapwick Moor Flash of black and white & a wily woodpecker claws into a crammed peanut filled feeder to swing in rhythm with the wind who hurries along a middle-aged grey pheasant but stays the wide-eyed rabbitShadow of raptor pulls my eye up into a sky of dipping treetops from her added mass swaying against our shared desire for flesh & it is as if the winds were waves & her beak an arrow of timeRipple of roe deer rises over far off reedbeds as dimuendo of choraling chaffinches chase a herd of blue tits above an emerald pond hiding her reflectionsFlash of black & white & flash of black & white two wily woodpeckers claw in on either side of that feeder to meet themselves like in that painting Rossetti painted over and over of his honeymoonthe one he called 'How they met themselves' & just then i catch sight of the two of us in your camera lens aimed at our doppelgängers visiting their myriadselvesDeirdre Hines

“But…” I am six and sitting in the warm penumbra of a white-doored boiler, my legs curled beneath me on the plain beech chair. Porridge is toiling on the hob. My brother is sneezing, allergic to the marmalade he’s eating. Tea from the pot is oak, sugared to a sheen. My father has broken for work already. Where my sisters are I don't know – Here and gone in a blur of perfume and soap or beside me perhaps, troubling the cereal bowls with their spoons. I haven't thought of this table in thirty years, its blue formica—Joni Mitchell blue—hatched everywhere with white. My mother is nowhere to be seen, although she is at the heart of it, pulling the room around her as if we were her moons. What else can I see? The future, like steam on the window, where is written its unspoken "But…" The back door's beside me, its bolt undone. Beyond it will be bottles of milk from a defunct dairy— three, now two, now one—then a gate swinging open And a gate swinging shut. Mathew Lyons

Northern Sky With the weather stuck on rain, chill washed clouds, here a grey on grey landscape, misted drizzle to remind me of a northern sky. Yet a gannet hangs at sea edge such a sense of energy, of joy bright white, wide winged plunging circling after the same fish that lure a lone black seal. A break in the rain brings swallows, endless acrobatics, wheeling, synchronised feeding. Their muscular grace in the foreground, the gannets’ bold grandeur behind. The sea clean and cold. Rose Cook

Portstewart Beach Yvonne Boyle

The Salt Marsh ‘O salty sea, so much of your salt is the tears of Portugal’ Fernando Pessoa Between Taviro and Olhao we stop at the coastal salt marshes, little packets of handmade Portuguese sea salt sold nearby. I can easily buy industrial salt at home. But here I stand by the salt marsh pans where sun dried grains are harvested. Every time I reach up and bring down my pauco saco of pure white salt, I am back on the edge of the Ria Formosa, sun, sea beyond the sand spits, the onward journey waiting, touching the ancient salt gathering cycle come alive again, tasting ‘the sea dust’ of the ‘salinas’. Yvonne Boyle

My Kingdom My Kingdom is the spot where I place my striped chair facing the Atlantic. The sound of waves, the lullaby that rocks my childish dreams. I taste the sea breeze through the dry wine that comes from cathedrals. I thank the wind for drying my clothes, for sending the tourist away. Jorge Leiva

The Sublime I downloaded an app that overlaid the universe onto the camera of my phone. It terrorises me. Launched from my garden, when conditions are right, I slowly traverse the night sky. Ignite the constellations, wait with trepidation for the next planet to bulge - JUPITER from the screen. Spa music that accompanies my voyage adds to the disquiet. Maybe it was thought necessary, to soothe the anxiety which may arise, when you realise just how insignificant you are. A speck of space dust amidst the infinite. I abort my mission and go back inside. I launched it once during the day. To see if it was all still there. It was. But things had moved. Mars was floating below my toes. I closed it again quickly. It is difficult to focus on my task of moving numbers and words around a grid on an illuminated screen, to be sent, to be sent, while all of these planets and stars continue to move around me, day and night, with no regard for my work.

I deleted the app that overlaid the universe onto the camera of my phone. Eoin Cahill SkyView Free is the name of the app that you should not download

You Looked at the Map You looked at the map of our affection and saw An episode, a sketch that something had drawn For a brief entertainment before we were gone. Remembering outlines suggests a plainer law: A cautionary caveat that denies The heart-shocks of beauty, the mystical force Charging our action to follow its lusty course; Whatever prudence argues, this force defies. It was the rhythm when you turned your head, Or the enigmatic magic at times in your voice That thrilled the demons and made them all rejoice; When angels call, they run away instead. You looked at that map and slowly turned away, But I still imagine you see it today. R. W. Haynes

Sonnets in Place of a Subject The sky resolves into a deeper hue Saying nothing that we might understand, As though it were opaque and yet see-through, As though it were a riddle of the things And not the things themselves. Sky without land. The sun’s motion as it seems to pause. The bee that’s felt only in its stings. At the highest latitude, it is the blue Of twilight and night-shining clouds. The essence of nature’s arbitrary laws. Each one absolute in cause and effect Remains convincing yet forever shrouds The art that we freely would elect In solitude, but which is lost in crowds.

The air is its own apparent meaning More than merely sound, the lyrics form A grammar to cast a spell and something stirs Leaving listeners hushed already gleaning That what they can’t explain is live and warm, Enchanting spectral rooms where it avers But never makes a statement. A great refusal To take sides. With no moral ambition. Pure sympathy comprehending all. In place of any subject, every cognition A version of the song to woo its mate, Happy when the poem finds its young, Yet sad at the prospect of their fate. Its only purity that the song be sung. Jefferson Holdridge

Some roads are lonely and long. Those nights I had to drive that road the pall of darkness from the back seat palpated my back. It sucked up the air in the Mini Cooper, my first second-hand car. I checked the rearview mirror, emptiness reflected. Turned up the heat, tuned only static on the radio. Palms damp on the steering wheel, kept my eyes on the strip of grass between the beam of headlights. Needed the moon to stop playing with the bent backs of the hawthorns that lined the narrow road. A sharp right at the corner of the churchyard where the high Celtic cross loomed. My mother had told me stories: about the small cillín outside the back wall of the graveyard. In that unholy ground mossy mounds are swaddled bundles in a nursery; some are marked with stones, half-sunken, tilted as if to shrug their shoulders. My mother told me too that even though the little ones are buried, the land retains the pain. Some nights, maybe when the hawthorn bloom is cloaked in moon-glow, this pulsing hurt breaks loose into the dark. Bernie Crawford

7/7 Mum in tears at home thinking I might've been killed In London. Me and Emily O'Donnell On the back seat of the school bus watching service stations slip by. No network coverage leaving loved ones in limbo. Just hours before: a damp mentholated fag shared Behind the National Theatre, a taste of cherry On the filter filling my head with hocus-pocus. Then the readings of poets from our GCSE syllabus. Between Armitage and Agard, three tube trains and a London bus Were blown apart by four suicide bombers. All as I slip a lavender-scented birthday card and dreamcatcher Onto Emily's lap unbeknownst to al-Qaeda. At Newport Pagnell, I remember Emily closing one eye And holding a Wagon Wheel up to the sun As if to purge the world of light. 'Something's gone cold', I thought. Call it collateral damage. Matthew Page

Seer It begins with a simple edict. He forbids the women from wearing garments of rose, purple and crimson colours. For they feel like a sickness to the men. For they feed the darkness hidden within them. Then, he closes the theatres where the women let their souls soar. For the tunes stoke strange feelings within the men. A fake smile of paternal kindness upon his features, he allows only the boys to fill the schools – as the girls should stay safe and home. The women protest and linger outdoors defiantly. But the men grab them and drag them indoors. House walls inhale violence. The streets exhale emptiness. The despot breathes upon the village stories of infinite dangers. Everyone believes, afraid and enthralled. Flowers and grasses thrive amid the stones. A woman sees beyond the farce. She silently observes how he grows greedy for power and servitude. She calls upon the villagers now divided – jailers and prisoners. She becomes louder, and tries to coax the women out of their hiding. The despot bruises her flesh with stones, but her will shimmers fiercely. She covers her wounds with pink and purple silks, and plunges her feet in red. Down the streets she marches. At first, she walks alone. Soon, more women break the censure. Some of them wounded. All of them colourful and loud. Petra F. Bagnardi

Sunita’s Smile small white teeth in dark brown gums radiate the room with light and love her nimble fingers weave folds into fabric with the same grace of a harp player I watch her work mesmerised she pins the slipping silks to my shoulder and smiles “that’s better,” she says with a sari secured to me I can now move freely we crowd around her cooking crunching through the baijis she balanced on a tray we leave our lips open, pushing out the burning heat with quick, quiet exhales we are saved from the embarrassment of our over eagerness for our brown faces are focused on the Bollywood film. her son sits on her lap; her kajal-lined eyes trap a small reflection of the screen in her iris. she strokes her son’s hair tenderly and I know that he will grow up happy. Jay Mitra

Sunset at Beenbawn Dingle Polly Richardson Munnelly

Notes on Contributors Petra F. Bagnardi is a TV screenwriter, a playwright, and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets' Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her work was featured in Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Trouvaille Review, Black Poppy Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Writing In A Woman's Voice, Poetica Review, Red Door Magazine, and Call Me [Progress]. Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, on the Severn Estuary near Bristol. His third collection, HiViz, will be published by YAFFLE Press later this year. He blogs at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com and tweets @bbanyard. Yvonne Boyle has has had a range of poems published in a variety of magazines, books and anthologies. She was a N I Arts Council Support for the Individual Artist (SIAP) Awardee 2018/2019. She is a WomenAloudNI member and a Causeway Coast and Glens Councillor. Catherine Brennan is a visual artist from Laois and part of the Laois Arthouse Collective. Time and space during lockdown was spent expanding her work to include writing and photography. A solo exhibition in 2020 has led to other exhibitions throughout Ireland. She had work published in Ireland and internationally. She co-curated the Collectives exhibition in Dunamaise Arts Centre, also exhibiting and writing for it. Her work is emotion based, examining all sides of a conversation and the resulting solution is shown in her work. Róisín Bugler's work has been published in Boyne Berries, Ropes, The Poetry Bus, Sonder Magazine and Quarryman and various online publications. She coordinates ‘A Flow of Words’ literary show on Scariff Bay Community Radio. She was the winner of Strokestown Percy French prize for Witty Verse and runner up in the Padraic Colum International Gathering competition, both 2019. Eoin Cahill is based in Cork, Ireland. A husband and father of two boys. Enjoys writing poems but is deeply uncomfortable writing non-fiction, particularly short third-person biographies about himself. His work is published in Dreich Magazine. Find him on Twitter @eoinspoems Simon Cockle is a poet from Hertfordshire, England. His first collection, River Lane (Arenig Press) was published in 2018. His poems have appeared in Envoi, iOTA, Dreamcatcher, The Lampeter Review and Prole Poetry. In 2020, he was selected for the Ver Open Prize. He was invited to read at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in 2016. 2017, 2019 and 2021. Rose Cook is a poet who lives in Devon. She is a well-known South West poet who performs regularly at local poetry events. Rose co-founded the popular Devon poetry and performance forum One Night Stanza, as well as poetry performance group Dangerous Cardigans. She worked as an Apples and Snakes poet, performing in venues from the Soho Theatre in London, the Bristol Poetry Festival and throughout Devon. Her poetry has been published in six collections, her latest is called Shedding Feathers (published by Hen Run, Grey Hen Press). Originally from Co Limerick, Bernie Crawford lives in Co Galway and her poetry has been published in national and international journals and anthologies. Her first full collection, 50

Living Water, was published by Chaffinch Press in June 2021. She is on the editorial board of the poetry magazine Skylight 47. Kate Meyer-Currey was born in 1969 and moved to Devon in 1973. A varied career in frontline settings has fuelled her interest in gritty urbanism, contrasted with a rural upbringing, whilst her ADHD instils a sense of ‘other’ in her writing. She has over fifty poems in print and e journals. ‘Gloves’ recently made top 100 in the UK’s ‘PoetryforGood’ competition for healthcare workers. Her first chapbook ‘County Lines’ (Dancing Girl Press) comes out this year. Michelle Dennehy read English at Oxford University, and holds a Masters degree in Novel Writing. She turned to poetry in the first lockdown, and got hooked. Her poems have been published in 'The Honest Ulsterman' and 'The Bangor Journal'. Ger Duffy lives in Co Waterford. Her poems have been published in Slow Dancer (UK), The Womens’ Press (UK), Viking Press (UK) Voxgalvia, Pendemic, In the Midst (US) and The Waxed Lemon. She was the recipient of a Mentoring Award in Poetry from The Munster Literature Centre in 2021. A past winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland and Poems for Patience competitions, Maurice Devitt published his debut collection, ‘Growing Up in Colour’, with Doire Press in 2018. Curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site, his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. Marguerite Doyle holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Dublin City University. She studied Russian at Trinity College and has a particular interest in the work of the Russian female poets. Her work has been published in Reliquiae Journal, The Galway Review, The New Welsh Reader, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, The Ogham Stone and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology, 'Hold Open the Door'. Marguerite is a full-time family carer. Michael Durack lives in County Tipperary. His work has featured in journals such as The Blue Nib, The Honest Ulsterman, Boyne Berrries and Poetry Ireland Review and has aired on local and national radio. Publications include a memoir, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and two poetry collections, Where It Began ( 2017) and Flip Sides (2020) from Revival Press. Blake Everitt (b.1989) spends time on the Isle of Wight and in southwestern France. His poems have appeared in a range of journals, including: Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Time of Singing, Harbinger Asylum and The Dawntreader. Billy Fenton lives in South Kilkenny. His work has been published in the Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Irish Independent, Crannóg, Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, Crossways, and many others. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2018, the Fish poetry prize in 2021, and was chosen as a mentee for the Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme in 2019.

Bernadette Gallagher is based in Cork. Her poetry has been published in print in the US, UK and Ireland and recorded by the University College Dublin Poetry Archive. She has been invited to read her work in Ireland, UK, US, and at the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi, India. bernadettegallagher.blogspot.ie A Computer Science Engineer with a Masters in Management from Imperial College London, Mehak Goyal ran a couple of profitable start-ups, before committing herself to becoming a full-time writer. Shortlisted for the Sakhi Awards and the Cinnamon press literature awards, her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Magma Poetry, One Art, Sky Island Journal, The Madra Courier (India), ANGLES, Visual Verse and more. She is working on her first poetry collection. Follow her on IG and twitter @poetic_quill. California-raised, CR Green now lives and writes poetry in Christchurch, New Zealand. She enjoys meeting other poets in writing workshops. Her poetry and short stories have been published in publications such as The Loyalhanna Review, Close to the Boneyard, The Reach of Song, The Poetry Distillery, and a fine line. Recently, a poem has been shortlisted for the New Zealand Society of Authors Heritage Literary Awards. Lydia Harris lives in the Orkney island of Westray. She held a Scottish Book Trust New Writers’ Award in 2017. Her first full collection is due from Pindrop next year. Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon, MA Creative Writing, Newcastle, UK, 2017, lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies and is a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee. She believes everyone’s voice counts. R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, teaches early British literature and Shakespeare. His collections Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2019, and another collection titled Heidegger Looks at the Moon comes out in November 2021 from Finishing Line. Deirdre Anne Hines is an award winning poet and playwright. Her first book of poems ' The Language of Coats' was published by New Island Books in 2012 and includes the poems which won The Listowel Poetry Collection Award. New poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Crannóg, The Lake, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Bombay Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, Elsewhere to name a few. She was shortlisted for The Bridport Poetry Prize 2020 and The Fish Poetry Prize 2020. Poetry reviews of hers have appeared in Riggwelter, Sabotage, PN Review, Rochford Street Review and The Dublin Review of Books. She has advocated on mental health issues as they intersect with accommodation for many years. Jefferson Holdridge was born in White Plains, NY, and raised in Connecticut, and has travelled widely throughout Italy and Ireland. Among his publications are four books of poetry, the most recent being The Wells of Venice (Eugene: 2020). He is a Professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Jorge Leiva is from South Spain and lived in Ireland for over eight years. Some of his work has appeared in Skylight 47, The Galway Advertiser, Drawn to the Light Press, Headstuff.org,

Dodging the Rain, 2 Meter Review, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis and The Waxed Lemon. In 2019 he was long listed in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition. Mathew Lyons is a London-based writer. His poems have appeared in Atrium Poetry, Dawn Treader, Dust Magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Nine Muses and Visual Verse. Alison McCrossan writes poetry and fiction. Her work has been published by The Honest Ulsterman, Southword, Impossible Archetype, Orbis, Prole, Crannóg, Poethead, SurVision, and elsewhere. Cáit O'Neill McCullagh is a straying archaeologist, at home in the Highlands of Scotland. She writes for journals and edited volumes. Her recent work includes chapters on Shetland’s Up-Helly-A, and Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown. New to poetry, her poems have been published in Northwords Now, Bella Caledonia, and the Banyan Review. Jay Mitra (they/them) is a non-binary punk poet and artist based in Hull/Manchester. Born in India but raised in Yorkshire, they have spent their life merging two cultures into one fivefoot body. Polly Richardson Munnelly currently lives and writes in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland. Co-host & MC for Impspired lit mag poetry nights, she continues to run groups the Bulls Arse Writers & Worldly Worders remotely. She has been published both nationally and internationally. Her collection Winter’s Breath is available on Amazon. Frank Murphy was the winner of The Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award Poetry 2009. Recently he was shortlisted for The Trim Poetry Festival 2021 and gained an Honourable Mention in the Douglass Week Poetry Competition 2021. Published many places. Editor of The Meath Writers' Circle Annual Magazine. Mark A. Murphy is an Ace poet, living with GAD, and OCD. His work has appeared in The Magnolia Review, ISACOUSTIC and Dreich Magazine. He has poems forthcoming in Cultural Weekly and Acumen. Eugene O'Hare was shortlisted for the 2021 poetry prize at Belfast Book Festival. Recent poems have appeared in Crossways, The Galway review, Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Village, and as a featured news piece in The Irish News. He is working towards his first collection. Matthew Page is a trainee psychotherapist. Previously, he studied English literature at Lancaster University. He is a keen tennis fan and supporter of Leeds United FC. He was born in Northampton, UK, but has been happily transplanted to Lancaster, UK. Ansuya Patel grew up in India and speaks Gujarati, but writes mostly in English. She lives in London and has taken courses in Creative Writing and Poetry at City Lit. Her poems The Widow Of Varanasi and I Remember have appeared in the annual anthology of Creative Writing. Her poem London’s Money Land has been selected for inclusion in the 2021 edition of Between The Lines. Her poem Brown Girl has been selected as a highly commended entry in the Black in White Poetry Competition 2021. Colin Pink’s poems have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines in the UK and Ireland. He has published three collections: Acrobats of Sound, (Poetry Salzburg Press, 53

2016), The Ventriloquist Dummy’s Lament, (Against the Grain, 2019) and Typicity, (Vole, 2021). Fiona Seoige is a Meath based artist whose prerequisite for life is do no harm, please let it be fun, you don’t know the half of it, and love is the answer to everything. Her work is land based mythos with plenty of experience of how wild and wonderful it all actually is. Sue Wallace-Shaddad has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/Poetry School London. Her pamphlet 'A City Waking Up' was published by Dempsey and Windle October 2020. Sue has poems published by London Grip, Artemis, Fenland Poetry Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears. She is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society. https://suewallaceshaddad.wordpress.com Vinny Glynn-Steed from Galway is widely published abroad and at home. His work has appeared in journals and online in Mexico, the United States, Wales and Northern Ireland. He has featured in publications such as Windows 25th edition, Parhelion and Cinnamon Press. Other publications include Boyne Berries, Crannóg, Headstuff, Ofi Press to name but a few. Vinny was the winner of the 2020 Allingham Poetry Competition and his debut chapbook Catching Air was published by Maytree Press in December 2020. Lynda Tavakoli is a writer and poet from County Down. Her prose and poetry have been widely published and she has won a number of awards, including the Westival International Poetry Prize and the Listowel Originals Prize. Her debut poetry collection The Boiling Point for Jam has been recently published with Arlen House. Anthony Wade, a Forward Prize nominee, has published in poetry magazines in England, Ireland (including Drawn To The Light), Scotland, and as far afield as India and the USA, both in print and online. Irish, he lives by the sea in East Cork and is an active member of Midleton Writers’ Group. Twitter @anthonywadepoet

https://drawntothelightpress.com Twitter: @DrawnPress Instagram: @drawntothelightpress Drawn to the Light Press is edited, designed and produced by Orla Fay. Cover design Lines to Knowth by Fiona Seoige The works included in this issue are copyright of the poets ©2021 and may not be reproduced or changed in any way without the permission of the individual author. Drawn to the Light Press is ©2021 of the editor. All rights reserved.