Avril McDonnell

Wildflower Heaven Avril McDonnell

Crocus

Dark untamed earth, impersonal, unjudging, who made you drink up and swallow in the light on which you chew and spit back out in colors of touch and smell and hearing and sight? Are these ordained, or sprouts of pure randomness? So visceral, but equally sublime, forged deep in furnaces of stars, mysterious alchemic artistry, do we from these result? We harm your flesh by walking over you? I see a swelling bump, and from beneath the dry crushed leaves a perfumed bruise shows up.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir

Heart of the Matter

for my father, Derek Mahon

Sometimes I submit to the similarity between us, accepting the owlish, watchful eyes, and even the thoughts wedged behind the high brow.

Sometimes it’s the mannerism of slightly jutting jaw in thought, or the flicker of muscle in the cheek, taut in response to others’ words.

You were often a good listener, keen to know how others felt about a book, an article, even a joke uttered tongue in cheek.

And that’s what made us unique, united through an unspoken accord despite the broken cord you effected when I was nine.

What is established by Gaia below – a root begun and nourished, turning to flourishing flower – cannot be ignored. And so

our roots delved deep into the earth, connecting eye, cheek and bone, and our shoots infused the macrocosm with words unspoken while you were alive.

Katy Mahon

Odyssey

In the early light the dewlight of rustling leaves before all sense of a settled earth is a decision

a notion of freedom and odyssey and the road ahead

when I move everything moves around me the future dances unruly in my hair

yet when I arrive at the place of grazing herds and call it home and do the things of well-fed men I find it blighted

leap to my feet and stride again into falcons’ wind

in search of another Ithaca.

Huw Gwynn-Jones

The End of the Exile

I left the world of men incognito; wrapped in my flesh, my sunglasses, my shawls, in navy and black, wrapped tight in my rage.

I went to live in my mother’s house, made meals three times a day, morsels for women, delicate things. I scraped ashes from the grate. Years passed.

When the carers came to tend to my mother we talked of female concerns; the foolishness of men. The foolishness of men is always the same be they Irish, Ghanaian,

or Lithuanian. We laughed the knowing laugh of women. When my mother passed away I was left with the dog, a gentle bitch

but not enough to maintain the femaleness of this place, and quite unexpectedly, I left my exile, as a swimmer strides back into the cold bay. I kissed him very deeply, lowered myself in.

Rachel Coventry

The Withdrawing Room

Inside the castle, I wander airless apartments, and enter a room different from the rest – the women’s withdrawing room. On hand-painted Chinese wallpaper a fawn walks along a path, a parrot rests in a peony tree. I lose myself in the garden, sit on the blue glazed seat by the lotus pond, eat a persimmon picked from the tree overhead, listen to the song of the yellow-tailed bird on the osmanthus, follow the butterfly hovering over the rock. I stand here in my winter coat, the room bare of furniture, wallpaper veiled in a patina of age, at home in this female domain, in undisturbed delight, from the world outside.

Pauline Flynn

My Son, Skydiving

If every mother knows to sew pomegranate seeds into the seams of her daughter’s dresses,

she knows to keep her son’s eyes to the ground, shield him from matches and the patterns

of clouds, show him the entrails of birds killed by neighbourhood cats. But daily,

unthinkingly, I led you across the threshold of long empty cages, past nail-studded doors;

drew rusty bolts in and out of their chiselled pockets, thought you safely cocooned

in the womb. Until under my feet, the wind vibrated the echo of a shriek, made you leap,

turn a complete somersault in your amniotic sac, acquainting you fatally with the lure

of acrobatics, the feather float of ghosts.

Linda McKenna

Curlew Logic

I'm a curlew With my cew, cew cur—lee—cur—lee whistle

and my long legs and cur—vey beak

I'm a curlew That's me behind the thistle, looking dappled and rather sleek

I'm a curlew With my cew, cew cur—lee—cur—lee whistle

And my currycomb shaped eyes

I'm a curlew a cursed curlew With a curvilinear point of view

curt but cautious with my curlicue beak

I'm a curlew don't forget me If it's curiosity you seek.

Sinéad McClure