The end of the sky Cummings homage Chaelio Thomas

The end of the sky Cummings homage

It feels like we’re on different planets (clichéd I know) I Could search for other similes (metaphors.) We were living in each other’s skin (each moment Was) charged buzzing and the hours filled up without (Us) noticing we Could look at a wall track the sunlight Tedium absent idle thoughts (But) they seemed scintillating with you Everything (Now) feels like half (or less) Too much time Exhausted Lacking your (innate) tranquilliser Withdrawal (Like) anaemia Sapped Keeps me open (awake) A dull ache.

Chaelio Thomas

A Light Bulb Moment

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison

This poem is dressed in an apron and looks like housework, but the poetry is there in the corner, where a spider, fellow homemaker, gets an opportunity to escape or at least hide better.

The scent of lavender in the mop bucket washes over the terracotta tiles, and for a moment I almost remember something, something like; light blue with purple makes a change.*

Later, when I rub butter into wheaten flour between my fingers it becomes the grit an archaeologist removes to uncover precious artefacts. I discover domesticity is not important to the world of men.

Gertrude explained it all: It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.*

Siobhán Flynn

*Gertrude Stein

A Year in Haiku

balcony garden a sprig of parsley falls into a web

March sunset translucent tulip petals

little tern colony –startled by a loud noise a parent takes flight

picnic basket full rose garden on the wane

I sneak a blackberry with each lap of the path — walking meditation

in my friend’s window a trio of frost moons

Zimbabwe crickets underscoring Dublin fog –evening Zoom call

cool drizzle a triad of friends in the park

Maeve O’Sullivan

Four Haiku

Your wet clay footprints fill with rainwater, the field follows you home

Barbeque embers darkening dying glow a sudden breeze of sunset

A swan slides away from reeds his present, a drifting memory

Spill of toys in yard children returned to class stillness

John Noonan

Brolliologist

Delighted by their steel elbows and shoulders under taut stretched skin, their handles, proud ferrules.

The tegestologist slipping his beer mats into the plastic pockets of his album.

Staring, mesmerising her with brown empty eyes, she'll only touch their curly fur to re-arrange them, the artophile’s teddy bears, ancient and perfect.

The helixophile twists his oldest corkscrew in the palm of his hand, imagining the pull and grip of it against the cork.

Patient, proud, beautiful collections.

But won't the umbrella miss the applause and stomping feet of the rain, and what if the wind changes

and Mary Poppins misses her ride because it was neatly folded in a display stand?

Don't teddies need to be suffocated with snuggles under duvets, fed toast with jam, their fur sticking to it?

A sogging wet and shredded beer mat must feel job satisfaction when a couple leave together?

And if the tip of a corkscrew can't sip a Rioja on a Saturday night, well what's the point of it?

Maresa Sheehan

Gravity

Long ago, when the earth from some cataclysmic collision cast aside its heart, there was born the moon. Far-flung, the heart hardened to rock, barren birthplace of pain. And kept its tethered distance.

Years it orbited its planet home, content in cratered hurt, the shock of separation borne aloft, alone. Tide-puller, tear-keeper, melancholy muse-maker. Satellite ghost of loss.

Yet amidst its scarred terrain the Ocean of Storms, the Sea of Rain there was named: Sea of tranquillity Sea of fecundity Sea of nectar. Love, can never just die away.

Now the moon's face gazes luminous at the earth in nightly wounded wonder, knows there is no way back. Yet honours the gravity between them, spinning on an axis of unending light.

Siobhán Mc Laughlin

The Moon Speaks

Last night, he snuck in through my window round and fat, cackling like a magpie. Grabbed me by my pixie hair, whispered that he doesn't love me, my mother doesn't, my child doesn't, how could he when I'm such a dreadful parent, only playacting through video games and chalk drawings of sunshines and rabbits on the pavement. My mother looks at me, fat cheeked, pig eyed, smiles her greased smile as I pile up sweets, custard creams, endless cups of weak black tea, the skin from my thighs and forearms, Lego blocks that make up the last of my sanity, the smile from my face, a million hours of tears, all on the plate before her and she gobbles it up a black hole, a void I can't fill until I wake up sweating, the moon slinking out, back to his sky and his darkness, leaving me and my emptied chest with nothing but the sad cry-catch of tears trapped in my throat.

Jem Henderson

Tea at Harrods

I promise to meet her in Piccadilly Circus We’ll go to Harrod’s buy tea-things have a cuppa Rain threatens I know she hates to get her hair wet after an expensive trip to the coiffeur

I know she’ll have an umbrella even an extra fold-up version in some hidden compartment in her handbag where she could stash the goods for a getaway Still I wished I’d picked her up

When I spot her outside the station she looks tired lost I’m shocked by her appearance normally choreographed elle a pris un coup de vieux but I convince myself it’s the dreary weather the dark light

casting a shadow across her face At Harrods she begs off a shopping spree pleads for a rest on a nearby bench a cup of double bergamot Earl Grey breath shallow cold

Maybe her years are catching her But memories glisten in her clouded eyes a fading image of her son at the Bataclan that night Paris, she says Novembre 2015 Le temps aujourd’hui est pareil

Carolyne Van Der Meer

L’echarpe Marocain

Scarf, you flew in from Morocco Disguised as Africa’s sky yolked

With Saharan clouds. You slid out of Marakesh and stowed away

On a westbound jet to land Around my neck. Your Mediterranean

Silk grazes the meadow of my skin and I am in your mosque all

Mosaic and blue. Muezzin, you Call me from your minaret

To a different prayer. Your holy sea Where I dive deep, deeper, deep.

Jamie O’Halloran