Patrons: Anthony Wade
Arthur
Broomfield
Attracta Fahy
James
Finnegan
Simon
Lewis
Editor: Orla Fay
Published by Drawn to the Light Press
ISSN 2737-7768
Next issue: October 2024
https://drawntothelightpress.com
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Drawn to the Light Press is edited, designed, and produced by Orla Fay.
Cover design Observing Life by Mary Howlett.
The works included in this issue are copyright of the poets and artists ©2024 and may not be reproduced or changed in any way without the permission of the individual author.
Drawn to the Light Press is ©2024 of the editor. All rights reserved.
Editorial
I’m delighted to share issue 12, Summer 2024 with you. As always, thanks to all who submitted and contributed to the magazine. Of the cover design Mary Howlett writes
Observing Life is a mixed media collage incorporating many layers through the use of acrylic paint, inks, stamps, written word and magazine images drawn from nature to produce a three dimensional piece of art.
The subject is reflecting on and observing life and how nature supports and inspires her through the colours and textures in the natural world around her.
A strong theme in the issue is that of sight and we are offered many-sided views of its importance. Poets also explore relationships with children, grief, faith, love and intimacy, and nature.
Have a lovely summer and see you again in the autumn!
Orla Fay 23/06/2024
“we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Do Not Lean Out of This Poem!
Do not lean out of this poem!
To do so, risks death or serious injury, Or worse, that your mind should wander!
Do not lean out of this poem, whilst it is in motion. Keep your head, arms, legs inside the words!
Do not lean out of this poem! Admire the view, the folding air, The way noise wraps around your feet.
Do not lean out of this poem! Imagine a fixed point just ahead – jiggling towards it!
Do not lean out of this poem! Think of someone you love, Of the time it takes to reach them!
Do not lean out of this poem!
Stamp your sweaty feet! Clap your swollen hands! Turn your 360 degrees!
Alan Magee
In praise of trimmed fingernails
Every fingernail cut and shaved down to a perfectly smooth arch is another hymn to myself, a quiet hill carrying the song of yes, yes, yes.
Christian Ward
Snatched Lunch (Number 748)
We ate on the cusp of spring two sardines freed crucified in butter laid out on white toast
Two tea bags bleeding out into a rust oasis
Gesturing, not with hands, but with launderette mouths, we ate until the bottom of winter
KG Miles
How
to Make an Apple Cake
Into her cupped hand Aunt Eily sweeps crumbs, clears the oil cloth for baking, her recipe, passed down by word of mouth.
She shows me how to grease the tin, line it with brown paper to stop it sticking, the oven ready to receive the offering.
Two fists of flour, two lumps of yellow butter, two tablespoons of brown sugar, one egg, cradled in her palm, struck on the rim of a mug to separate the yolk. A green apple shredded into long strings, moist from the juice of summer,
each puzzle piece folded, stirred, kneaded with care, again and again. Sides of the bowl scraped clean, wooden spoon licked dry.
A halo of white, she pushes hair out of her eyes, flour on her apron, her nose, her chin, her lips.
Mary Howlett
On My Sixtieth Birthday Clontarf Castle Hotel
Mist spools in over the seafront where a yellow digger bangs on the headland, its outstretched arm, fist like Brian Boru ready for battle, posters placed along the strand describe the wrack of Clontarf history.
Long pipes from oil containers
blow black smoke like a broken exhaust; pollution rising into silver cirrostratus; inlet strewn with rusty oil drums. Purple storm cloud over the city threatens to pour its grief down onto the dull jade sea.
A ship saunters into the harbour
bringing people from England to Ireland, small yachts idle on the bay sway in the wintery sting of wind in the nuclear grey summer air, over this strip of industry.
A haze of blue mist thickens on the mountains, shrouding fields, the only green in this landscape. A veil casts over the bay, digger vanishes in the fog, as the storm approaches, soaking into my skin like a baptism into the elder phase of my life.
Roundwood House Revisited
i.m. Pauline
Though we know every wrinkle on the road, the gate is always a surprise, subtle indentation, hidden pocket in the hedgerow, prompting us to brake and swing the car sharply into the short driveway, our route guided by a pantomime of trees, sashaying in the light summer wind.
The house appears, squat and precocious, Georgian conceit on the landscape, a slice of someone else’s history, so much hidden by the Palladian symmetry, conspiratorial wink from the untaxed windows. Distracted by the split of a hare on the lawn, we fail to notice the welcoming committee:
dogs, geese and chickens, roused to attention by the crush of wheels on gravel; they approach like a team of surveyors, curious but cautious. We twist the tricky handle on the bold front door, step into a hallway filled with absence, preparation happening elsewhere: the priming of a Bombe Alaska in the kitchen, the clink
of table-setting from the dining-room and the moss-tattooed logs being ferried from the woodshed. We stand and savour the upholstered comfort of familiarity, the elegant sweep of the staircase leading our eyes upwards to the balustrade above the hall, memories of you standing there.
Maurice Devitt
Glitz
Sol, the sire of life, makes butter run. We’re on the terrace. Shaded. Breakfast. Fruit and pastries. Coffee creamed with Baileys. Decadent. The street beneath, still sleepy, muses why last night we stopped mid-road to gawp a moonless heavens splotched down its middle with a billion melded suns.
A primal call to confront infinity? Elements intuiting whence they came? Or inculcation that the distant, vast and barely comprehended demands our awe?
It could, of course, be glitzthe straining flame before us on the table, oil oozing iridescence after rain, a dusty shaft of sunlight through a crevice –that lures the eye and later we take home and, granting our perceptions import, flesh with meaning.
Daniel P. Stokes
The Polyglot I dreamt I was a polyglot. I knew it allFast, guttural, The soft lilts And the ones that seemed to click, Like fingers as they talked. I was a collector of soundsA smorgasbord of noises to taste. After sleep it seems I lost my occupation, Culturally lobotomised. They spoke to me In my own language
But I couldn’t understand anything.
Charlotte Cosgrove
A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Word
It’s funny how you think you know a word, until you don’t.
Saturday night, bath night, clothes folded, shoes polished ready for inspection. Confession.
Haircut in Ned Hinchins boiled sweets shinning faces. Mass. Fast forward, my sister’s telling me, ‘They see a mass’, not like my mass, a different mass. I’m reeling.
A domineering mass pushing my mass aside.
A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde word.
It’s funny how you think you know a word, until you don’t.
Carmel Hogan
Girl from the bog after Sam Hanna Bell
All I ever wanted was to be wild. I have no authority to speak of the bogs and wetlands of Ireland. The land of my father. Although we never met he passed to me an untamedness, a want to have dirt under my fingernails, to follow the path not of society but of mayflies and moths. To listen to the wind that can sound like a hiss, or a whistle if you are really listening.
The snake-hipped blue smoke from burning peat moss an ancient portal for the bog people Don’t call for me, for I have no name left I walk the bog and it will have my bones.
Satya Bosman
Termonfeckin
(Village on the east coast of Ireland, the name means: "Féchín's Refuge.")
Fleeing East, my path is blocked by the sea
A cold expanse, dark, and temperamental
Misty veils of roaring spittle flying high from Waves, creeping up the sand with a whisper
Hunting sandpipers sauntering on the beach
Under my feet, shells break
Some creature's home, crushed
A broken cottage lost in the dunes
These homes and mine
Shards, slowly sanded away
Then polished
Till only memories remain
Expectations, abundant
Never came about; only anguish is left
Where love should be Like the sea
In blind rage she slashed
At all she finds near And therefore dear, Lover and home alike, slain And crumbled underfoot
So, here, on the beach, I acquiesce Like a shard, washed by salt and sun For fate to polish, and polish, until Nought remains
Marc Gijsemans
The Wolf Pack
Given -
The area of estimation
The art of the understatement
Wasn’t all that it was cracked
Up to be.
Fleshed out into the directives
The only barrier was the sea.
Offshore the wind.
Plotting the trajectories
The waves crashing along the coastlines
Spray billowing up, The annual rainfalls
Air overpressure
Compass and bearing.
Periscope up.
Static.
Frank Murphy
Stirring
Wet, waking, sleep-crusted world unfurl –stretch from curl; watch swallows tail-dipping low over dozing cars.
Seagulls brawl, break silence crying in a stand-off over bits of bread, slick backs shining under the silky drizzle.
This time is theirs between dream and deed: the lull before the earth gears up and whirls away again on a different dance.
Ruth Egan
Galilean ode
As this poem stirred into life on a cold February morning, nobody expected the inquisition, yet there it was, affirming: Earth is the unmoving centre.
This is the anniversary, and this is the theme.
The old heretic presumed revelation could be found as much in the book of nature as in ancient tomes; he will recant his foolishness.
As the poem took shape it revealed its structure: unrhymed, with leaden feet, dissonant, incomplete, a surreal joke, a runny yolk.
Crescent Venus, jug-eared Saturn, mountains of the moon, and the tides, the tides, ah yes, the sloshing tides.
A poem is an imitation
of an instance of a form at a third remove from reality. It elides detail for pretty words and a wave of the hand. It cannot handle the truth.
So, as the inquisition turned to go did he actually murmur low, “yet it moves”?
But that’s not our volta. That comes three centuries later in the form of an apology. All looks good under the eye of eternity.
Liam Boyle
On Seeing
When all the lights were out opal moonlight lit the long hallway; water flowing from a steel roof tank was the only sound after a long day done. Silence slipped into my being, into each disc of my shadowy spine.
I can think of you at the footlights all those years, lines learned and ready, facing the crowd, absorbing ethereal energy, synchronising with invisible faces beyond the glare, yet present, enigmatic, palpable as the Danish ancestors you never knew about, but have history in a parallel existence;
how we all belong to a deeper history we barely know of, ages before Aurignacians, Gravettians, hunter gatherer peoples: Fournol, Vestonice, Oberkassel, Villabruna, Sidelkino. And now, as you no longer see the words clearly, degeneration progressing as it does, you find ways to learn the shadowed lines from the page. You can sense where to come in when lights go down.
Mary Turley-McGrath
The Constellations after Cataract Surgery
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
— Psalm 147:4 (NIV)
Like gauzy curtains drawn across the retinas of aging eyes, my cataracts begin imperceptibly, gradually dimming daylight, morphing darkness after sundown into starless night.
I have long since lost sight of almost all the heavenly bodies that brightened my undergraduate stint as aide to the revered retired admiral who taught astronomy at our beloved University of South Carolina. Meanwhile, noting the remarkable progress in research to spare seniors like me from the abyss of blindness,
and with Charleston-based practitioners proficient in innovational use of lasers to eradicate cataracts, I have a procedure that proves to be providential.
Weeks pass. Then, on a winter night made clear by mass of cold Canadian air, I happen to look heavenward—and am startled to see Cassiopeia (the Queen), Orion, Andromeda, and other constellations lost for years but not forgotten:
An awesome outcome making me a faithful astrophile again.
Eugene Platt
Why We Look
This wild world is beautiful. It fools us into believing it is permanent but every object disappears into something else.
Some men dig with pens. I dig with my eyes.
I find skies that burn with smoking vapour. Volcanoes flowing drinkable silver. Playful air, hilarious breezes.
Personality brims forth from such natural places. I find a world longing to be treasured. I find myself in it and longing for the same.
I have sat, like any other person, on a softened corner of this world and believed that it was all for me.
I have felt my heart tugged by sauntering beauty. I have expected this to be exchanged for some cruelty. Not once have I been asked for anything in return.
Leah Keane
My-hope-ya
As someone who had 20/20 vision
I am adjusting to the blurring elision of middle age; this loss of precision no longer triggers my panic button but it’s taken time to arrive at this stage: the shock of misreading paragraphs completely sudden blindness at the page before me, myopic perception I nearly took for truth.
Today I laughed at my double-takes as I misread sorrow as marrow, hoarse as hearse, postgrads as postcards and thought there was a new Irish Poetry Army then grasped what my errors reveal about me. And why shouldn’t we make this standing army official, if for nothing else, but to toast the ghost of Kavanagh?
I claim my marrow, hearse, postcards in a poem, like slips of the tongue on the page. If writing is a partial letting go into the unconscious, let’s see what else I mistake.
Emily Cullen
A Way To See Things Well
Usually, when I'm wondering if this is worth it an argument conjures reminding: it's night and you're naked in the road or moon light and not at your best:
hard-lined frown is high-lit and worn, lean tentatively stiff while hands grasp feeling for glasses.
I don't have to explain why it was beautiful.
I was waiting to be asked.
Craig Cox
Signatures Under the Floor Mats
Sitting in wheelbarrows, Roses growing on high walls, Racing dogs down the fields, Making an obstacle course out of the connecting fences, My signature is written under the floor mats.
The wheelbarrows are now rusted, The roses no longer bloom, The dogs are dead and the fields have since been dug up, The fences are no longer ours
The floor mats have probably been replaced, Thus, my signature erased,
A home that is no longer ours.
Clare Fagan
Perton
Ridge
The day ajar with light. Driving towards Pattingham, I pull over, stop the car, take to the fields. How high the wheat is this season. Seeing the tall stems, huge husks, nodding in the wind, the whole patch brimful at the edges with mallow and hawkweed and, down among the grain stalks, harvest mice, money spiders, soldier beetles, a summer spinning with yellow wagtails…
How can we not love these things?
Neil Leadbeater
Nature the artist
The waves roll away
Two feet high
Towards Jamaica
The Divina, ploughs a furrow
Through the Caribbean Sea
White rinse
Lying on top of waves
Formed by the ship
I see
The sapphire sea
The horizon
Ever straight
As we leave ‘Ocho Rios’
And I watch waters
Once ruled by pirates
Mesmerised
John Conroy
Sea Solace
You wash me with your generous wave, no care for the months passed since my last visit.
Relentless, with your graceful offerings of pink and purple hues, whistling winds, pure vastness.
Space provided for all here, whether it be within, or above your salty body.
The gulls who visit above only draw me closer, teaching me to glide like their wings, submerge to the motion like your swell, “Loosen your grip”, I hear you whisper.
When I am with you, you are embodied, our separateness forgotten.
Yet while away, I am granted ample access, so that I may open my valve. A vacuum lets you flow inside, taking up residence as a pool inside my ventricles.
Perhaps it feels like home here, since I experience
all four elements at once, presented in an idyllic scene of artwork, each cell nourished.
In moments of serenity both Yin and Yang dangle above you in perfect harmony, bringing all disorder to equilibrium.
Hazel Doorhy
Siren
Her eyes were mussel-shell-blue, entrancing with their gaze.
A mop of sea-spaghetti hair, floated down on jellyfish breasts.
Below her periwinkle navel was a tuft of carrageen
concealing unexplored depths, fathomless mysteries.
I never witnessed it myself but they say she took men unawares, in the prime of their lives. That in their last moments
they were smothered by octopus arms, and feeling the cold clutch of her liquid embrace, they tasted her salty tongue.
Faye Boland
Her garden the daffodils are first to notice her absence they tell the trees who’ve been too busy unfurling new foliage to pay attention the March wind spreads the news the bushes reach out rousing the dormant vegetable patch alerting the pots of geraniums on the patio the three young men only the trees remember as small boys clear the undergrowth by the border mistaking precious plants for weeds uprooting her autumn crocii her delicate oxalys
dumping them in sorry clumps on the compost heap behind the shed the three young men only the trees remember as small boys scatter her ashes under the lilac they helped her plant when they were children
Kathleen Gray
My Little Lamb
I wished to warm the little lamb
Who braved the winter snow
So meek and mild, this little child
Unsure of where to go
Wandered out on weary legs
In simple camouflage
Their coat of merely simple threads
Not made for such a stage
Soon the winter snows shall melt
The daffodils will cheer
Noisy warmer air is felt
As caution disappears
The loudest entertainers may
Beguile the innocent
Please listen close to what they say
Don't be ambivalent
Danger meets this little lamb
Who braved the winter snow
Now seeking out a new exam
Determined all to show
How quick their dancing feet adjust
To facing up to foes
I hope they're never left in just
The emperor's new clothes
Daithí Kearney
The
Full Set
She's missing one piece from each toy she owns: the little pink hat from her second doll, the "hang up" button from her wooden phone,
The felt Velcro sprinkled cinnamon swirl, the carrot from her fruit'n'veg jigsaw, her stubby dark blue colouring pencil,
The string from Christmas Teddy's front right paw, the lid of her green plastic stacking egg, most of the money from her Shop till drawer,
The green Play-Doh that ruined her trouser leg, the red crayon she tested on Grandad's seat, the Jenga set now without several pegs,
But every waking moment is a treat when spent with one who makes our lives complete.
Thomas Collins
Seasoned Childhood
Passed out bouncing balls and cast aside Barbie dolls huddle in dark corners.
Now they are running for buses. Scrolling on phones, and dressing their faces in liquid smiles. Or hibernating in anarchic caverns. Sullen and monosyllabic. Until I call them down for dinner.
Appetites sated, they burst. Into a mardi gras of laughter and boisterous play.
My girls once again.
Barbara Dunne
Aisling’s room
She was almost not born in that room lots of sockets, sheets, screens and green lines. Her mother’s breath shuddered in long recline while the gas pumped in and waves resumed. He stuck a needle in her spine — Don’t move! a head emerged, then plonk, it sat upright — no, held — chest splayed, our daughter, still and quiet — slow words around her body like a glove.
Intubated under the red lamp her whole hand wrapped my finger like a clamp. Her caked-brown sole beside red bulb reminds me now of how long love unbroke the bind — white wires, round discs, flatline green no more — she beams bright yellow beside the grey-blue door.
Tomás Ó Ruairc
Mother to Son after Langston Hughes for Lorcan
I ain’t been on a free ride. I’d climb the stairs carpet threadbare sometimes in the dark, to bitter tiles with burning cold water, it had to be done. My life’s eroded, on uppers and lowers with plaque and cavities I’ve ground down my molars.
Young kids laugh at time - they’ll do it later hands in pockets, chewing gum like cud. You work those bristles, up and down, back and front, nooks and crannies but look around too. Turn the music up have a foam partyyour tongue a dancefloor the brush a DJ finger in the air shake your tail feather!
Make your own rhythm it’s between you and the mirror, can you see yourself? Don’t give up, floss those gaps, remember mouthwash too all that swirling and sloshing; life’s ride will throw dentssmile.
Anita Gracey
Kicking Bobby Schiffer
What were we, sixth graders maybe? He was odd looking, meaning not like us. Slanty eyes. Tubby. Flyaway red hair. Slovenly. Spoke, the few times he did, with a lisp. But what mostly set him apart and made him a favored target of abuse was that he took it all, abuse that is. He didn’t put up a fight or run off. I was content poking fun at him behind his back with two of his more avid tormentors, my pals, Zack and Jerry, but refused to join in the shoving, slapping, or punching that they reveled in so much. I was ribbed for holding back but I genuinely felt sorry for the kid. One day, though, I tagged along, only to watch, I vowed. As soon as school ended for the day, we dashed to take up positions in a nook in Needless Alley on Bobby’s route home. As soon as he passed us, Jerry jumped out, pulled Bobby’s arms behind his back and downed him. Zack squeezed ketchup on his hair and they both started kicking his legs and torso, laughing hysterically all the while. Bobby, looking his usual helpless self,
didn’t cry or utter a word. “Go on, Phil, kick him,” they urged, and I knew I’d lose all of the little credibility I still had with them if I didn’t play along, at least this time, so I gave the kid a half-hearted kick in the ankle. It felt liberating, I had to admit. My pals high-fived me but that look of betrayal in Bobby’s eyes, directed only in my direction, haunts me still.
Philip Wexler
Hear Me Old Woman
listen old woman what do you hear
the chew of teeth on quill the whisper of threads
the wheel is turning old woman what do you hear
the crackle of wood burn the bubble of berry broth
the black dog stares go to the pot stir old woman stir you do not hear nor see look old woman the story is over
the dog will rouse itself from his dark corner unpick your design the dog goes through the motions
ask the dog old woman not the blanket
he has heard the silence beyond the cave he has smelled the empty wind he has sensed the deeper darkness outside he would sing of an unravelled planet unready again to take the dream cloth vision offered up offered up to the memory of light
go black dog seize a flaming firebrand set the world alight go
Patrick Lodge
Based on a Lakota Sioux story about an old woman in a lost cave who weaves a porcupine quill blanket that her dog secretly undoes while she tends a cooking pot. To complete the blanket design is to end the world.
Isn’t grief a mad one?
Spoon sits idle, I feel its stillness as creases iron out from skin holding my bones to manoeuvre into nights fold. I sit as spoon. Ear attentively opens itself taking wind arousals only night can hear, almost as loud as seas roar beyond green fields bounded only by lights dived that falls to jut-end and I comb manes from memories. Looking to plods grazing evenings, damp falling, my bones ache to feel rounded girth and fly.
What is it that brings these hours to knees?
Drape blankets of oneness sailing to
moon’ s smile, loss tucked in nestled side by side between bare and dog’s dreams and I think of all chords waiting for me to arrive…
Polly Richardson
Benediction
It’s been a year of sex & death, but aren’t they all? Disappointments, new estrangements? Yes & yes.
The workforce hasn’t learned to miss me yet. & yet, pizza & a movie trick me into lulling, remind me escape is an easy thing to do for an ex-con. I go on writing little lines about happenings or not-happenings, not-me-I-wasn’t-theres.
Sometimes strangers read them & tell me I have the prettiest smile beneath this ogre mask.
I thank them & swear next year will be better. I’ll remember to write their names in a book of hours.
Ace Boggess
Black Smoke
The sign reads slán abhaile as we fill up on fast food before the crematorium. And when Rock with You by Michael Jackson booms, I expect an entrance of a different kind, far from these wooden afternoons. I thought of you bouncing down our driveway draped entirely in maroon one summer’s evening.
Later, we drive home in silence outside the crashing rain like end-of-days. In the car the stereo plays black smoke rising.
From the rear-view mirror I watch spray from the wheels swell up, then drop away, like forgotten laughter on the breeze.
Slán abhaile- safe home.
Loosestrife
i.m. Howard Lee
I could touch you last year when you stitched the verge, purple-hemming every road.
Your bright mourning stipples today’s disused pastures. September shuts summer down and you crowd emptiness.
Loosestrife, purple, you drift in masses, filling fields the way any wild thing will.
The way, my friend, ever wild, you fill me still.
Jamie O’Halloran
Outside The Gates
“There is no salvation outside the Church”. “Salus extra ecclesiam non est”
Letter LXX11 of Cyprian of Cartage {RIP 258}
Now I know there is a God, he said, as I watched his life drain away. His certainty, a lasting consolation for the doubt that pierced my heart.
The gates are closed. Sentenced by a decree, I stand guilty without trial. Without Saints to protect me or community to support me, I wander in a wasteland.
There is no colour to lighten the darkness of this place. No light to see the way, no map for direction. The judgement awaits those deemed, irredeemable. Where will I find salvation?
Patricia Donnellan
Abyss
Older lady with the dried-fruit skin, a well-intentioned, boiled sweet dispenser decked out like the universe’s grandma, asks if I’m okay, if I’d like another drink.
‘You just have such sad eyes,’ she says. ‘Who was it?’
I don’t tell her the truth. The truth is, I’ve been listening to Joni Mitchell and pretending her songs are about me; truth is I fell through the cracks again and may have slipped a disk along the way; truth is her ham and cheese panini smells are making me quite hungry but I can’t afford to splurge right now. The truth is overrated.
I must be losing it if they find sadness in my hollow plastic eyes, my frozen stars, their abyssal dark. They were made to keep the light in.
Marc Brightside
First Night after Thom Gunn
We are deep into the reckless swell of night, my arms a vise like blue hugging tight around your waist.
Your grey walls whisper as your breath grows steadily to pattern the warm signal that will turn us out and give way to the feeling of how blissfully strange we really are to each other. I am so new and sensational, burying myself into what dark remains between your chest and where your arm around me is scent-warm and cavernous.
I keep awake to marvelwhat could you know of me, here in the thinning dark? -
and the signal comes as your breath stutters and colour begins to pale, sharp and eventual.
Your turn then to shift and hold, as we stagger into the light.
Danny O’Sullivan
Moon Woman after The Man Stealing The Moon photographs by Daniel Antoniol
Moonlighters corral me in jam jars, ruck sacks, and rufous wheelbarrows.
Bundling me into Beemer boots, like a John Boy or a Nidge.
I am a oversized sliotar hirpling on a hurley on Croghan Hill. Invoking Aaron Gillane, to send a ransom note to the stars.
Christina Hession
We Choose the Moon (A Ghazal)
Small step, giant leap, footprints on The Moon, the whole point of the Space Race The Moon.
A new super-terrestrial frontier; astronauts and cosmonauts chase The Moon.
Satellite, Sputnik, Vostok and Soyuz, Gagarin and Tereshkova face to The Moon.
Shepard and Glenn, Gemini and Apollo; Armstrong and Aldrin touching base with The Moon.
Cape Canaveral and Kapustin Yar, launch pad and liftoff to case The Moon.
And Michael, my child self, awaiting splashdown, for gravity to negate the embrace of The Moon.
Michael Durack
Christmas 2023
A murder in the air on Christmas Day.
Wood splintering like bone under the eggshell moon, serenaded by a corvid choir. Snippets of buzzard song in the peripheral, the crows are sampling their avian brethren.
Across the sky between the darkness and the light they dance.
One two three. One two three. Da da daa da da da.
Oh to be a murder on the wind.
Crow song in my throat. Darkness on my wing.
R.J. Breathnach
Notes on Contributors
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.
Faye Boland won the Robert Leslie Boland Prize 2018 and the Hanna Greally International Literary Award 2017. She was highly commended for the Desmond O' Grady Prize 2019. She was shortlisted twice for the Poets Meets Painters Prize 2023 and was also shortlisted for the Drawn to the Light Press Prize 2023, the Irish Times National Poetry Award 2022 and the Poetry on the Lake XIII International Poetry Competition 2013. Her first poetry collection Peripheral was published in September 2018 by The Manuscript Publisher (the Hannah Greally Prize).
Satya Bosman is the founder and co-editor of the Black Cat Poetry Press Her poetry was commended in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society Folio competition in 2023. She has been featured in several publications, most recently 14 Magazine, Fawn Press and upcoming in Dreich
Liam Boyle lives in Galway, Ireland. His poems have been published in various outlets, including Skylight 47, Vox Galvia, Lime Square Poets and Confluence magazine. He has been a featured reader at Over the Edge in Galway. When he’s not playing with words he enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.
R.J. Breathnach is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Meath, Ireland. His work has been published in ROPES Literary Journal, The Wexford Bohemian, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. His debut poetry chapbook, I Grew Tired of Being a Zombie, is available from Alien Buddha Press.
Marc Brightside is a UK-based poet published both nationally and internationally, his work characterised by darkness interspersed with
humour and introspection. His debut collection, Keep it in the Family, was released in 2017 after placing in the National Poetry Competition 2016; his second, Personal Impersonal, was released in 2020.
Thomas Collins (Tomás Ó Coileáin) is a writer, teacher, poetry editor, and father, from Limerick City, and author of Inside Out and Ar An Leoithne (Revival Press 2020, 2024). Poems in Irish and English have appeared in Comhar, Stray Words, Stripes, Irisleabhar Mhá Nuad, The Stony Thursday Book, Revival Poetry Journal, The Ogham Stone, Scothsmaointe Gan Smál, and Stanzas chapbooks.
John Conroy is a writer of poetry and prose for over twenty years. He has been published in various booklets including the Tallaght Sounding series. He has also had some poetry published in Boyne Berries. He loves catching the moment and painting pictures with words. He lives in Tallaght, at the base of the mountains, with a view of The Hellfire Club.
Charlotte Cosgrove is a poet and lecturer from Liverpool, England. She has published two collections of poetry Silent Violence with Petals (Kelsay Press) and Neurotic Harmony (Alien Buddha Press) as well as having work published online and in print. She is the editor of Rough Diamond Poetry Journal
Craig Cox is a poet, sound artist and teacher. To make contact, e- mail craigcoxart@gmail.com
Emily Cullen is the Meskell Poet in Residence at the University of Limerick where she lectures on the MA in Creative Writing. Her three poetry collections are: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003).
Maurice Devitt is a past winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland and Poems for Patience competitions, he 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. His second collection, Some of These Stories are True, was published by Doire Press in 2023.
Patricia Donnellan is a member of Portumna Pen Pushers group. Her poems have featured in publications including The Works, Sliabh Aughty Magazine, Walk With Me anthology 2020 as well as Shorelines Arts Festival, Mountshannon Arts Festival and Scariff Bay Community Radio. Her work was Highly Commended at SiarScéal Festivals 2014/2019.
Hazel Doorhy is a previous attendee of Over The Edge workshops, Open Readings, and has previously published in Vox Galvia.
Barbara Dunne is a writer, poet and artist living in Connemara. She has been previously published in New Word Order, Drawn to the Light Press, HOWL, orangepeel, Crannóg, and many other fine journals. She was highly commended in the recent Desmond O'Grady International Poetry Competition.
Michael Durack grew up on a farm near Birdhill, Co. Tipperary. His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications in Ireland and abroad as well as airing on local and national radio. He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and three poetry collections, Where It Began (2017), Flip Sides (2020) and This Deluge of Words (2023) published by Revival Press.
Ruth Egan is an Irish poet originally from Limerick and now living in Dublin. She has had work published most recently in Rathmines Writers Workshop anthology Beneath the Clock (2019) and also in poetry journals The Passage Between (2018), A New Ulster (2017) and Verbal Art (2015).
Clare Fagan is from Mullingar, County Westmeath. She has poems published in The Westmeath Examiner (2021), Get a Grip Publishing (2023), The Creator Magazine (2023) and Drawn to the Light Press
(2023). She is a postgraduate English student at Maynooth University. She is also working on a poetry manuscript.
Attracta Fahy, Psychotherapist, who earned her Masters in Creative Writing NUIG ‘17. She was Winner of Trócaire Poetry Ireland Competition 2021, Irish Times; New Irish Writing 2019, & placed 3rd in Allingham Poetry ’23. Shortlisted for: Saolta Poems for Patience 2023, Jacar Chapbook Competition 2023. Fish International Poetry Competition 2022. She has been published in many magazines, including Poetry Ireland Review, Stingingfly, Banshee, Crannóg, and anthologies at home and abroad. She is currently working on a full manuscript.
Marc Gijsemans was born in Flanders, Belgium. He has poems published in several magazines, (like Boyne Berries) most recently in Scrimshaw, a collaborative magazine by AT University Sligo's Writing and Literature students.
Anita Gracey has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Washing Windows – Irish Women Write Poetry (1-1V), Abridged, Honest Ulsterman, Corsham, Sonder, and Poetry Jukebox. Recipient Good Relations Award 2023. Awardee Irish Writers Centre’s, Northern Soul Roadshow 2024, represented County Antrim in Poetry Ireland Day 2024 on Eat the Storms podcast.
Kathleen Gray is a Scottish writer and translator who lives in Paris. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Pharos, Reflex Fiction and New Feathers
Christina Hession is a native of Dunmore, Co. Galway. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCC. Her poetry has been featured in several Irish poetry journals.
Carmel Hogan is an emerging writer from Kilkenny. A family person at heart, she writes poetry and stories inspired by her life experiences. Her work appears in White Twine and Old Suitcases, a miscellany of poetry and prose and is due to be published in the 2024 Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet.
Mary Howlett lives in Waterford, she paints in watercolour and is a selftaught collage and mixed media artist. Her work has been exhibited locally in the beautiful village of Dunmore East. She also writes poetry and short stories, she has come to writing late in life and is delighted to have had her work published in journals, anthologies and local publications.
Leah Keane is from Castlerea, County Roscommon, Ireland. She graduated with a BA in English, German and Creative Writing from the University of Galway in 2018, and is now living in Freiburg, Germany. Her work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Chasing Shadows and The Squawk Back among others.
Daithí Kearney is an Irish poet and musician. From Co. Kerry, he now lives and lectures in Co. Louth on the east coast. His poetry is inspired by his surroundings and his young family. His poems have been published in Martello, Field Guide and In Parenthesis amongst other publications.
Neil Leadbeater is an author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His latest publications are Falling Rain and Cityscapes and Other Poems (both published by Cyberwit.net, Allahabad, India, 2023). His work has been translated into several languages including French, Dutch, Nepali, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.
Patrick Lodge is an Irish citizen with roots in Wales. His work has been widely published. Patrick has been successful in competitions for poetry and short stories. He reviews for poetry magazines and has judged poetry competitions. His three collections are published by Valley Press UK. He is currently completing a fourth
Alan Magee lives with his family in Belfast. He regularly reads his poems at Purely Poetry NI events, where his work has been well- received. He writes on a wide variety of themes around shared human experiences, with sensitivity and insight. You can find him on Instagram @alan.magee.poetry.
KG Miles is the author of the bestselling Troubadour Tales books and the subject matter of these, Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas and The Beat Poets, have inspired him to take a poetic path. His first Chapbook Poetry For The Feeble Minded is to be published in November.
Alan Murphy's most recent book is All Gums Blazing. He has contributed visual art and poetry to numerous digital and print journals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the US, and exhibited throughout Ireland and abroad. Dublin born, he lives in Lismore, county Waterford. www.avantcardpublications.com.
Frank Murphy won The Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award for Poetry 2009. He has been short listed and placed in many other competitions. His work has been published in many places, most recently in Red Headed Writing, an anthology prompted by the music and lyrics of Willie Nelson.
Jamie O’Halloran is the author of Corona Connemara & Half a Crown, a winner in the 2022 Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Pinhole Poetry will publish her fifth chapbook this summer. Her poems appear in Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, Banshee, Crannóg, and others. She lives in Connemara.
Tomás Ó Ruairc lives in Lucan, Dublin with his wife, Sara, four daughters and two dogs! He blogs at Sifting the Silence on Bazinga - https://bazingadotlife.wordpress.com/ He is a contributor to previous editions of Drawn to the Light, the Cathal Buí Poetry Publication 2021 and Channel magazine
Danny O’Sullivan is a poet and workshop facilitator based in Manchester. They live near a beautiful nature reserve and often try to come up with their best ideas by following the paths along the River Mersey. Appearance here will be their first publication.
Eugene Platt was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1939. He graduated from the University of South Carolina and holds a Diploma in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College Dublin. He read in the inaugural Dublin Arts Festival in 1970. His 2022 collection Weaned on War was published by Revival Press. He is poet-in-residence of
Saint Stephen's Episcopal Church in Charleston. Lives in Charleston with his wife Judith.
Polly Richardson is a Dublin born poet , now writing and living on the Dingle peninsula Kerry . Her work has appeared in many e-zines and anthologies both nationally and international. She’s currently working on her second collection.
Vinny Steed from Galway is widely published abroad and at home. Winner of the 2020 Allingham poetry competition he published his debut chapbook Catching Air the same year. His full debut collection Hell Bent will be published this year.
Daniel P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes. He has written three stage plays which have been professionally produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival.
Mary Turley-McGrath has four poetry collections: New Grass under Snow, (Summer Palace Press, 2003), and Forget the Lake (2014), Other Routes (2016), After Image (2020), from Arlen House. Her poems appear in anthologies, including Hidden Donegal (2022), and Future Perfect (2019). Mary has won and been shortlisted in competitions. She holds an M. Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin.
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet with recent work in Acumen, Dreich, Dream Catcher, London Grip, The Shore and The Westchester Review
Philip Wexler has over 200 magazine poem credits. His full-length poetry collections include The Sad Parade, The Burning Moustache, The Lesser Light, With Something Like Hope and I Would be the Purple. Bozo’s Obstacle will be released later this year. He also hosts Words out Loud, a poetry reading series.