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Drawn to the Light Press Issue 6 June 2022

As of Now Martin Meyler

Contents Laughing The Humming Word there Tulip An Afternoon in Ruhpolding A Standing Ovation Carlow Poem #41 Schumann Islands Lost City pieces of an island The Law of Motion Empty Girl Eve: Misunderstood From Covid to Nowhere Animal Communication (A Lockdown Acquired Skill) In Glory Accretion Tableau Joyful Two Re-wilding Wolf Sonnet Invocation Digital Shrug A Jar of Jam The Perfect Curve Stopped? The Boxer A Phone Call Years Later Carpooling

Rachel Coventry James Finnegan Tracy Gaughan Karen Mooney Maurice Devitt

5 6 8 9 10

Hazel Durham Derek Coyle D’or Seifer Cáit O’Neill McCullagh Martin Meyler Martin Meyler Paul Jeffcutt Gráinne Daly Khushi Jain Deirdre McKernan Crosby Moyra Donaldson

11 13 16 17 18 19 20 21 21 22

Orla Martin Aideen Henry Alan Murphy Mari Mazwell Rose Malone R.J. Breathnach Patrick Doyle Honey Corbett Siobhán Flynn Lynda Tavakoli Karen J McDonnell Hugh Doyle Edel Hanley Gail Sheridan

24 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 38 39

ask Fortress The Spirit of Catherine Howard Rapt Comets firmament song Waxing Gibbous Narcissi Bone My Last Day Low Tide, Omey Island Scylla Bathes Pink Bloom The Shortest Way Home Notes on Contributors

Phil Lynch Kenneth Hickey LJ Ireton

40 41 42

Nadira Wallace Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad Stephen Shields Karen Mooney Karen Mooney A.M. Cousins Rachael Stanley Jamie O’Halloran Anne Daly Lynda Tavakoli Michael Durack

43 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Editorial It is to the Nine Muses of Ancient Greece I turn: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (flutes and music), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance), Erato (love poetry and lyric poetry), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry) and Urania (astronomy). The influence of all these goddesses can be seen in the work included. Thalia is Laughing in Rachel Coventry’s opening piece. Euterpe and Terpsichore sing and dance in Derek Coyle’s Carlow Poem #41 and D’or Seifer’s Schumann. While Polyhymnia embraces the sacredness of the natural world in a cluster of poems. Melpomene makes her sorrow known in Aideen Henry’s Accretion and A.M. Cousins’ Bone. Erato calls in Edel Hanley’s A Phone Call Years Later, finds herself Rapt by Nadira Wallace. Urania, Waxing Gibbous, finds a firmament song and some Comets. Calliope is surely guiding Michael Durack in Finding the Shortest Way Home. And Clio is reminding me of time, and patience and all that has gone before me. All the water is flowing under the bridge, while I stand on burning bridges with dousing reflection and renewed flames of vigour. No man is an island. Thanks to all the poets for their work. I’m grateful to Martin Meyler, Lynda Tavakoli and Karen Mooney for their art and photography. Orla Fay, May 2022

Laughing after Maggi Hambling’s painting

No matter what I say you will never see his laugh as Maggi Hambling’s lover throws back her head in the wild ecstasy of hilarity, a wave captured in the instant of explosion. I cannot show you, how his laughter folds him the other way into himself, a waxing moon stuttering on water. I have no paint, only words and words are so duplicitous, this very evening, for instance, that faceless grin teeters on rivers, oceans, and rain collected in basins, bowls, and saucers. Rachel Coventry

The Humming Word after Wisława Szymborska and Mark Strand

there is something burning below the sternum just to the right of the heart a thirst I guess a hunger too but mostly thirst a yearning for a doorway out of darkness I varnish the iroko gate and doors spray the white dash of the house can’t hear the hum of anything passing by someone empties the septic tank jet-sprays the percolation pipes the gurgling sound is a gurgling sound and no more then silence in the garden I don’t interrupt 6

I have no words to carve with my tongue no hum

nothing to shape

nor am I a body enwrapping a song only the hound of the ordinary inchoate searching for an understate dead oak leaves on the ground in July James Finnegan

there there’s a rope in the snow if you grab it and hold on you can pull Spring out visit the orchard where civilization sits on the edge of the wild and the moon is unavoidable where you can climb ladders blur pleasure, shame let go where there are resident urban carnivores fruit choices bird choices moss down soft as goodness where there is ear-splitting intimacy rocks crevasses trees so big you can sail into their mouths Tracy Gaughan

Tulip Karen Mooney

An Afternoon in Ruhpolding for Greg

A trip scrambled together in the dark hours after the funeral: two months later, a morning flight to Munich, train through Traunstein to Bibelöd, leafy sub-station on the edge of town. May, and the air is hung with a summer haze, walkers and shoppers burrowing quietly about their business, streets and buildings Truman Show pristine. We drift into a side-room at Schuhbeck, a coven of seven friends huddled on bench seats around a wooden table. First taste of German lager and the conversation starts; voices, interlaced and animated, remembering football trips, work, nights out – familiar stories recited like mantras of friendship and love, while feelings, previously unspoken, stutter into being. Hours pass and the swirling chatter funnels into a shared silence, arc lights flickering on the street outside. Maurice Devitt

A Standing Ovation The horizon holds no more dreams for me, Dreams are now inland rivers And the standing ovation of untamed monsters Highlighting my insignificance and surprising significance, As I travel with you on mind-swept waters With diverted tributaries like our singular journeys Down roads of hardship, laughter and continuous pain That swallowed up every star in the darkest blanket, We did not escape the thunderstorms On the trail of no surrender, The arrows of destruction had been fired, Now we have found each other swept up on the banks Of the mighty River Barrow a snake wilful and playful As it bows to our rise to unity Of scars healing on the rain sodden streets

Of Carlow, to entice me to come ashore Into your saturated eyes of the intimacy of home And all that means, Swimming in the warm pools of love, The skies of the past are changing back to blue And the untamed monsters celebrate For the acceptance and passion that is being with you. Hazel Durham

Carlow Poem #41 for Eoin Hegarty

It could be a view of Delft, but no, it is the Hay Market in Carlow. Yes, the boys set up here a long time ago, playing through the ‘Adagio’ and ‘Presto’ and ‘Andante’, all afternoon, every afternoon, without so much as a comma, hyphen, or full stop. Fast to slow (and back again), Ignaz Schuppanzigh leads his cello, viola, and second violin, the Master’s ‘Personal Quartet’, through op. 130, as he has dreamed it and heard its low beat in his head, hands, and ears. Those ears. Franz Weizz is dressed like a goth, an ear-ring in his nose, a rip in his jeans, all dyed black hair and a pale face, but the ladies about town don’t seem to notice, and young mothers are too busy wiping the noses of their snot-faced youngsters clean. There is a faint nip in the air. It is April after all. Joseph Lincke could be Johnny Rotten with his carrot orange hair, rising in fitful spikes, a hedgehog, at the cello. Only Karl Holz looks formal and stiff in his evening suit, pressed and starched for the occasion. It will be a long evening. The town fathers have not turned out for the show. They are too busy picking lint from their navy-blue suits, and tying knots 13

in their beautiful ties. The bricks of the Town Hall have gone from grey to coal-dust black and back to white again. The horse troughs have disappeared and what were green fields have grown into car-parks. Still, it seems the world is waiting, waiting still. The lads have definitely got better where first they stumbled. Now, they make no apologies. Even the trees, leaning down, over, and into the Barrow, seem to raise a finger to their lips. Hush, hush. The boys tune into something on the airwaves blowing downriver from Athy. It seems, they can hear the Busch Quartet, and even the Alban Berg. Listen. Franz Weiss picks up a few licks, a confirmation, a passing backwards, through the fingers, from Karl Doktor himself, and a nod and wink from Hatto Beyerle. The temperature rises in the course of the ‘Allegro assai.’ And then you feel it drop through the ‘Cavatina.’ Like a lone thrush singing in Killeshin, isn’t it? You feel yourself pass through every fit of passion you know, hot and cold – from thirteen to nineteen, and on past thirty – and it leaves behind this portrait of you. Meanwhile, the Chief Architect is over the hill 14

and around the corner, enjoying a sneaky pint on Tullow Street, outside Tully’s, a rich full-bodied O’Hara’s sitting in front of him, its head like a vanilla ice-cream. Not everyone can party in the day-time, but those who can afford the time do. Still, tears flow down his cheeks. ‘That Cavatina, my Cavatina.’ Even though there is no way he can hear it from here. ‘This has been me all along.’ Later, some of the town’s roughs jeer him. ‘You scruffy ruffian of a bollix, you’re frightening the little children.’ And a lone Garda out on the beat decides to move him on. ‘If you don’t cop yourself on, Mr Beat Hoven, I’ll have no choice but to call in the lads in the squad car, and they’ll shift you pretty pronto, down to St Luke’s in Kilkenny, the psychiatric wing.’ At this point, the clouds appear to sneeze. Despite the Babylonian confusion, the Liebquartett play on. Hush, listen. Rumour has it, they can be heard in Morocco. Even as far as Shanghai. Now that’s some distance. Derek Coyle

Schumann Before the Sturm Und Drang the churn of play lull of swing blow of phrases before the injury The stretch of fingers curl and extension before the weighing down man and his piano. The hit of mallet upon string well-tempered aim within a box predictable patterns of sharps and flats before they join polyphony before Clara. D'or Seifer

Islands This is the full spate of want I cannot stop it–my need your lips and how they send your voice to me I want to press and print your flesh onto my skin I search for words to open your palm for I cannot write your hands not unless I can hold them so that we might be fingers ribboned touch to touch as we catch our breath our laughter quenching this drought I want us–unmasked and the half-memory of faces restored with your mouth meeting my name we two now one and no longer islands Cáit O'Neill McCullagh

Lost City Martin Meyler

pieces of an island Leaving the house this morning, found four small items in my coat pocket a fragment of shell, two discs of shale, a pyramid of milky quartz no bigger than a nail. A little later, swimming, sculling softly. I pass into the dawn which pours from the angled windows. The pool fills up with light. I track across it, measured against the intricate crossbeams of the roof. I'm on my own at this end. It's peaceful. At times I forget I'm breathing. I think about the objects which were in my pocket. Harder to think face down, when I count laps, rhythm of breath, angle of entry. Going. Focus. Return. On my back, I think more. I imagine what the sound of shell and shale and milky quartz might be, together. They fit without fuss in my coat pocket, and weighed almost nothing. 19

Everything else I could have carried was heavy like a hardback book, or stone. These are like four words only: more than enough. Martin Meyler

The Law of Motion Everyone, they say, has a doppelgänger: neither duplicate, nor clone, more a strange relative you never could meet. When you give to charity and stuff yourself with cake, your counterpart steals and starves. The turning world will always fetch another side. Paul Jeffcutt

Empty Girl A mother’s daughter refused to be a daughter’s mother in a clinic in Ealing one ninth of October, Though the scan made her focus on how the future might be She still felt it safer to return home empty Gráinne Daly

Eve: Misunderstood Faustian and ferocious she incurs Idle gardens and ignorant men Ribs hungry for a learned feast She slithers around seeking Teal eyes and nocturnal scales Let there be light she says and Old trees drown in gold oceans Violet grapes envy bitten apples Eden blushes and heaves a sigh Khushi Jain

From Covid to Nowhere Time of isolation, one-ness. Challenging loneliness. Phone calls break the silence. Your tone, sets the tone. Sounds of familiarity of where you cycled, Virtual trips through the Dordogne, Toulouse, Paris. Ending calls with “call you later” Never – see ya! That time came when we could meet To fill that dark negative space… No touch, no embrace, no tenderness. The chasm broke me. Subconscious erupts, unable to speak, breathe. How could this be happening to me? Begging subsidence, pain slowly ebbs. A knowing, I cannot go back. Deirdre McKernan Crosby

Animal Communication

(A Lockdown Acquired Skill)

Even when I ask nicely, the mice refuse to leave the house; put up a reasonable argument about winter chills in their small soft bones. The rats in the feed store snigger when they see me. Our little flock of rescue hens, they’re happy to chat anytime so long as you don’t mention the past. A robin has set herself up as spokesperson for the garden birds, perches on the Buddha’s head; gives off at me through the window if the sunflower seeds get low in the feeders. Crows love a good murder mystery story. The dog’s bemused - I love you, he says, what more do you need to know? Cat mostly keeps her thoughts to herself but occasionally mutters- under her breath that where she goes at night is nobody’s business but her own. Spiders are cryptic, talk in metaphors. Flies are an angry lot, snipe-y little comments in passing. You can’t get much sense from those gadabouts, the daddy-long-legs and butterflies speak in little homilies intended for spiritual edification which gets boring. The caterpillars on the nasturtiums have their mouths too full to speak, but I do get a passing thank you for the flowers from the bees on their way to work. 23

Slugs are very knowledgeable about constellations and way more interesting than you might think. I’m not ready, yet, to hear from the worms. Moyra Donaldson

In Glory

Pondered by the weight of life Rue the darkness, catch the light.

Unfelled by circumstance or cost No edge to grief, no clock for loss.

Still the metronome of fear first survive and then to heal.

Assailable, yet heart conspire become a person I admire.

Orla Martin 24

Accretion His body lies nearby in a coffin, shielding his beloved young brother’s. His parents, buried in Arigna, minding his perpetual toddler brother. We lay four sunflowers, one from each of us on his grave, wrapped in absorbable material. How long will it take for the earth to bring them to him, Mommy, how long? Not long. And how will he know which one is from each of us? He’ll know. Aideen Henry

Tableau The Green Man's Foot is verdant and fat, its curved branches loom like fruit bearing limbs: The sun going down below the mundane; an icicle moon that melts over man. A corpuscle rose whose scent is a ruse; a shadowy cloud as brief as a clod. The Green Man's Foot is rooted as fate and lovely as light, yes, sweet as a lute. Alan Murphy

Joyful Two The magpies are courting, in the copse of the flooded field. She nestles in the whitethorn blossoms. He struts then parades his long ebony tail. A coy chase ensues, and He begins again. He fluffs then fans his wings, glacial shards of alabaster in each stretched feather. Throws her longing come-hither gazes, as he skips from branch to branch. Then, He plunges his beak deep in the marsh, as his tail rises – opens – closes to blinding whorls of emerald shimmers. At eventide, they sit atop the fencepost, gazing as deer nibble in the field. On high they whisper sweet nothings. Two heads inclined their tails holding the pose. In the days before they criss-crossed the sky, balance beams in beak, they lay their foundation, twig by twig. Across the Turlough and into the woods. Soon a bulky slice took shape in the crook of the neighbour’s tree. 27

When spring has fluffed her skirts and leafy canopies explode across our village, they will be incognito. Ready at last to raise their young. Out of sight and out of mind. Mari Maxwell

Re-wilding Grey footfall is tentative: eyes huge in unfamiliar dusk. One nervous paw touches hard ground, experimentally. Withdraws. The memory of wildness sleeps in the pelt, constrained by phantom bars. Survival skills unlearnt, the body like a harp whose strings are cut. No appetite for bloodshed when such easy pickings come. Turned lone without the pack, confusion grows. The muzzled voice is clogged from lack of use: a mountain stream dammed in the headwaters. Freedom will release the ancient dreams, the tuning of the forest orchestra. Trees will vibrate to a full-throated howl. Rose Malone

Wolf Sonnet The howling in the night inspired fear, so much we hunted down the lupine bards. Now wolfhounds lay to rest their ancient guards and ancient wolven hunting grounds are cleared. Still vilified as creatures of the dark. Still strangled, poisoned, shot and strung up too. Still trapped to bring in money for a zoo, where eyes that once held lightning lose their spark. In old Baghdad they knew the wolf was just, by claw and fang were demons kept at bay. The innocent are not the ones wolves slay, unlike the prey of humankind’s dark lust. The moon is missing wolfsong ‘neath its glow, for wolves watch over innocents no more. R.J. Breathnach

Invocation Great Mother, open our hearts and let us know again the goodness of the world. Help us shed these lizard skins and prise the rusted armor from our eyes. Too long we have clung to the false creed of barbed wire and fences, lain on stone floors and cowered in the darkness of cellars. Our cupboards are bare, our gourds are empty. Great Mother, unfurl our senses and let our bodies drink the warm kiss of the sun. Let our ears buzz with news of the creatural kingdoms, our eyes grow drunk on the green wine of rain. Lower the drawbridge. Break open the dungeons. Call your servants from the kitchens and crown them as queens and kings. Great Mother, grant us your blessing to re-wild this land with your longing. Steer our hearts so thy will be done. Let the sacred hoop be mended. Let wolf music ring from the forests 31

and wildcats straddle the mountain. Let the mighty bear clans march from the north, bringing music and medicine much older than ours and magic to break our enchantment. Patrick Doyle Digital Shrug We'll not talk about Spray chemicals Dumped dust Coating cars. And pesticides Killing bees. No one likes honey in jars, anyway. It’s just a teaspoon Only kills a few billion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They say wash your fruit and veg While you can I say As there’ll be not much Of anything around Once the bees are dead. Honey Corbett

A Jar of Jam strawberries float in time suspended in sugar waiting for the day to be re-opened their sweet scent will hit the hippocampus elicit ghost sensations hands sticky with juice pan of foaming pink hairline damp with heat jars of clear blue shine waiting open-mouthed to be brimmed with summer Siobhán Flynn

The Perfect Curve Lynda Tavakoli

Stopped? In those ancient days, words ran FeveredMadJoyousUnbroken AcrossParchmentMeadowsUntil Irish monks spancelled them between spaces. Alcuin of York, they say, used a blot of ink brought the known world’s word-gallop to a halt. In poems, letters, a diary’s self-deceit, they’re there – if you care to look. Scroll back. Secrets ember, threatening wildfire run-ons, barely held back by a ● Karen J McDonnell

The Boxer Waiting again for his bell, wondering if it will ever stop ringing. Dawn cruelly jabbing his eyes emerging from his corner sometimes bloody, often bowed, but never beaten. Outside the post office bobbing and weaving This boxer of Rathmines Road upper cutting a sway through a crowd jabbing at life, around his ring weaving between rain drops ducking abuse, this southside southpaw counted out by the world fighting and feinting his way through endless bouts of day losing on points but showing real heart. Until he lays himself out on his concrete canvas,

beneath his apron of tears pealing with roars and jeers the boxer waits, fearing the final bell, unsure what might happen, if it ever stopped ringing. Hugh Doyle

A Phone Call Years Later Why bother a girl you broke up with years ago with a phone call in the middle of a train station in the middle of the night to tell her that the bluebells of Lake Windermere are less blue than her eyes? Why bother to say anything at all when you yourself no longer resemble the saints crowned in sacristy gold above such ancient altars, still thinking you should not have hung up? Edel Hanley

Carpooling Count the puddles on the walk to school. One, two jump! From the zebra crossing with the other mothers breeze through to the blue-black wrought iron gates where he waits – always on time quarter to nine. His hat comes off when he spots you bobbing with the crowd, runs his hand to smooth his hair with a big smile and a bright good morning. Swap small talk about the weather, the clocks that went back. Kick through fallen leaves in burning crimson, fire, mocha. How are the kids? Side by side, you sit and slam shut the noise out with the clicking of seat belts. You’re in. He’ll grin when you pull a quick three-point turn a careful hand placed on your knee fingers laced at the glowing amber light slow down and stop at the red. Bop to the beat as the light turns green – Dua Lipa - Levitating. Gail Sheridan

ask if you don’t know ask those who have no money ask those who have no home ask those who have no jobs ask those who had to leave ask those who had to flee ask those with no voice ask the money-makers ask all the politicians ask opinion shapers ask civil servants ask the teachers ask the clerics ask the street ask yourself ask Phil Lynch

Fortress Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came Sweet creatures of the word sit reading Alone in cells of separate towers Outside the world of flesh decaying Only God’s voice speaks here still Silent tears water dry arid soil From which strange hybrid blossoms bloom The emptiness beyond still singing In ancient chords the elders knew Time breaks into fractured fevers Prayer the only saviour now He died upon a hill in darkness Place of the skull where mothers cry I die each day in this small room At every dawn again I die. Kenneth Hickey

The Spirit of Catherine Howard Do you sense me, as the others do, Henry? My spirit is a kind of silk, Butterfly new I brush by your tapestries And entwined carved initials In the wood That were never mine. I glide over your marchpane displays, Your sweet, savage tooth That bites. Your delights live here, In this court of sugar kingdoms But so do the sprites, The shades, the foreshadows of decay. I will dance a slow dance here Of the spectacle I wanted. Can a ghost be desired? You look up sometimes – Whether at me, I don’t know. But your goblets still dribble over with greed With dead queens watching. LJ Ireton

Rapt i. Feet planted on broken membranes of plastic, I look at the flight-lines of the jackdaws and the airplanes bending–– newly trained to a stand-still true, that is the idea of you. ii. This is not the first time one person’s weight has climbed me and I’ve felt tempted to show the marks made by your teeth as signature for officials–– forgetting business deeply. Again, that boy with the quiver is to blame & his mother standing behind him in wet clothes–– genital-loving goddess, as you’ve been called. iii. Hauling my stiff self to the slope of your stomach, as the 8am moon implies precincts where they woo: fairy moods fully healed from the clockwork. 43

iv. What an astoundingly good thing you are–– constellation of thoughtfulness beside me on the sidewalk, somehow also a frank body at the counter buying parsley, hair branching the pillow later at night when it pleases the universe––or my Lord ––to let me catch your small, magic floods. Words can’t bend fate but anyway I will put my vision down, which is: many days lit by the calm that comes of the unashamed grapple to be one, done.

Nadira Wallace

Comets The music of these spheres is set, trapped in staves, taut, the silence of spaces. The women come to define lids, enliven eyes with the soot of dusk, comb scented oil into tresses, weave jasmine, chrysanthemum, but I am deemed too elephant-eyed, shorn of feminine grace, hair an ebony shock paddy field— not one to barter voice for place. Tongues fork and curl spewing embers of pity, my mother’s face shrinks— a waning moon in the chorus of dissent: comet child, destined for banishment from this constellation of daughters. Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

firmament song (Copernicus) Plato thought a globe the most Perfect of the divine creations, Undoubted in its rigour, Its place in God’s eye: A vessel fit for the firmament. Ptolemy heard music, when he Surveyed the planets: earth And its minions. Fresh to the ear, They could play only a single tune. I study the moon; graph Pegasus, Gemini, the stars in their regions; Remember the fingernail of light As it slid below the horizon; hear the call Of the sun marshalling the planets, Mercury; Venus; our own trusty Earth; Mars; Jupiter; and Saturn, setting them In true motion. Dare I tell how it tunes God’s instrument for me? Stephen Shields

Waxing Gibbous It’s mid-afternoon when you turn up, not fully present, ready to challenge my intentions, seeing what I’m at. You’re one step away and full of promise of all that’s to come but holding back a little, making me want more. Karen Mooney

Narcissi Karen Mooney

Bone My father takes a knife from a concealed drawer under the red formica table and hands it to me. The smooth, bone handle, discoloured where it joins the flat blade of Sheffield steel, see-saws on my palm. “It’s been there for years,” he says. The drawer or the knife? I wonder. But I can’t ask this ghost of a man who turns up in a dream the night before we sort out the contents of his house and life; this man who thinks that nothing has changed and that an old butter knife – the last survivor from the canteen of cutlery, a wedding-gift sixty-five years ago – is all I need to get along. A.M. Cousins

My Last Day When it comes, I hope to be free of clutter, to gather up all the accumulated garbage and let it burn in the purifying element of fire to have my heart cleansed of bitterness to be released from unworthy dreams, from half remembered snatches of worry or regret from the sense of being a separate self. On my last day, I hope to be a feather falling lightly upon you. Rachael Stanley

Low Tide, Omey Island I stand on the bed of the sea. It is festooned like a wedding cake with sandy rosettes of sea worms. There are tiers of strand, layers topped by tidal pools iced by more sand. A sheet of the North Atlantic is licked by a finger of Claddaghduff beach sprinkled with white holiday homes against whipped grey clouds. The tide separates us in shifts. In a few hours, the sea will return from the north and south, joining here, her waves like the hands of the claddagh carrying the heart. Jamie O’Halloran

Scylla Bathes after Scylla by Ithell Colquhoun Your breath comes dressed as a wave that spills across the rigging of my flesh. To hold afloat the stanchion of my ribs, the keel-work of my spine, that curves toward the edges of the bath. So when you pull away you leave me silted, the upturned mouth of a shell that slants an O at the loss of its water bruised sky. Until I grip the sides to stop my slippage, finger ceramic, pruned by an exodus of salt. Untwine the light that skiffs around the breaches of my thigh, the anemones of bone. An untethering from the absenting tide. Anne Daly

Pink Bloom Lynda Tavakoli

The Shortest Way Home Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. (James Joyce “Ulysses”) Before we discovered Euclidian geometry, before we had truck with isosceles triangles or the square of the hypotenuse, experience taught us that one rough path through fields to school could race two smoothly tarmacked roads. On the rugby pitch we practised the art of corner-flagging, the diagonal that led directly to where the action would be. And sometimes an opponent could best be beaten by going through him for a short-cut, a manouevre New Zealanders dubbed the Maori sidestep. As grown-ups we employed commercial short-cuts, sharp practice, chicanery; and ethical short-cuts, dissimulation, equivocation, economies with the truth, while we diverged from the puritanical straight and narrow to Shakespeare’s primrose path of dalliance. Now it is time to slow down, to ignore rat runs and beelines, to heed Bloom’s warning, avoid running into ourselves. Time to follow the ring road’s gentle arc, to appreciate that the longest way round may well be the shortest way home. Michael Durack

Notes on Contributors R.J. Breathnach is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. His work has been published in The Madrigal, Tír na nÓg Magazine, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. His debut poetry chapbook, I Grew Tired of Being a Zombie, is available from Alien Buddha Press. Originally from Pembrokeshire Hon Corbett now lives on the Anglo-Scottish border amongst Hadrian's Wall. Hon draws inspiration from the pleasure and pains of parenthood, travels and life experiences. Hon studies Creative Writing and is working towards a first collection of poetry. A.M. Cousins’ work can be found in PIR, The Stinging Fly and FISH 2019. She is a regular contributor to ‘Sunday Miscellany’ on RTE Radio1. Her first collection of poetry, REDRESS, was published in 2021 by Revival Press, Limerick. Rachel Coventry is a poet and theorist. Her poems are published in journals such as The Rialto, The North, The Moth, Southword, Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, and The SHOp. Her second collection will be published by Salmon Poetry in August 2022. Derek Coyle published his first collection, Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow in a dual-language edition in Tranas, Sweden and Carlow, Ireland in April 2019, and it was shortlisted for the Shine Strong 2020 poetry award. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland. His second collection, Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster is due in the Fall 2022. He has published poems in The Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, and The Stony Thursday Book. Deirdre McKernan Crosby lives in Greystones, Co. Wicklow. Her first published poem, Uninvited Guest appeared in the Bray Arts Journal, 2019. During the Pandemic Deirdre took part in three Poetry Day Ireland events: 2020 theme ‘There Will be Time’ brought about a virtual reading of her poem There Will Be Time –

Covid & Cancer COVID-19 at the Whale Theatre, Greystones. This poem was displayed for public reading in Greystones, as is her poem Diary 1952, PDI theme ‘New Directions: Maps and Journeys'. In 2022 Deirdre read her poem The Card I Was Dealt to celebrate a welcome return to live events. The poem was based on the tarot card The Magician, PDI theme ‘Written In The Stars’. Her work is published in Boyne Berries Literary Journal, The Blue Nib and Pandemic.ie. All preserved in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD Library. Anne Daly is a writer who lives in Co. Meath. Her writing has recently featured in The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon and Ellipsis Zine (Issue 11). She won second place in the Allingham Fiction Prize, 2021. Her debut pamphlet Triptych was published in April 2022. Gráinne Daly is a writer based in Tallaght. Winner of the UCD Maeve Binchy Award 2019, she was longlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year Award 2021. Her writing has been published in numerous publications. 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. Moyra Donaldson is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co Down. She has published nine collections of poetry, most recently Bone House, Doire Press, 2021, and is a recipient of a Major Individual Artist award from Arts Council Northern Ireland. Hugh Doyle was born in Ireland but has lived in Wales for many years, first arriving in 1995, attending Swansea University to study Philosophy and Anthropology. He returned to Swansea University in 2014 and completed his Creative Writing MA (part time) in 2017.His first collection, A Persistence of Questions, was published

by the Tuba Press in the same year. His poems have appeared in The Gull, The Lonely Crowd, & Word Sharing, A Literary Anthology. Patrick Doyle's work has appeared in The Galway Review, Skylight 47 and Revival Magazine. He was twice winner of the 'From the Well' Short Story Competition and runner-up in the Leslie Boland and Shahidah Janjua Poetry Awards. In 2021 he was awarded a Poetry Mentorship by the Munster Literature Center. Michael Durack lives in County Tipperary. His work features in journals such as The Blue Nib, The Honest Ulsterman, and Poetry Ireland Review. 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. Hazel Durham was born in Artane, Dublin. She now lives in lovely Carlow town. Hazel completed an excellent mentoring course with Arthur Broomfield. She won ‘The Inaugural Borris Focus Centre/Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas/Carlow County Library Literary Competition’ in 2019. She has been published in Impspired. James Finnegan, Dublin born, second prize winner in Gregory O’Donoghue 2022 International Poetry Competition, Half-Open Door (Eyewear Publishing, 2018), The Weather-Beaten Scarecrow (Doire Press) due out late Sept/early Oct 2022. James and Livinia and springer spaniel Daisy live a few miles outside Letterkenny in Co. Donegal. Siobhán Flynn is the winner of the Cúirt New Writing Prize for poetry 2022, her work has appeared in The Irish Times, The Poetry Bus, Drawn to the Light, Amsterdam Quarterly and others. She lives in Dublin after a couple of years living beside the sea in Ballymoney, Co Wexford. Tracy Gaughan is a writer and editor based in Galway whose poems have appeared in Crannóg, ROPES, Boyne Berries, The Blue Nib and elsewhere. She is a 2022 Forward Prize nominee,

and a selection of her work has recently been published in the anthology Pushed Toward the Blue Hour by Nine Pens Press. Edel Hanley is researching for a PhD in women’s war writing at University College Cork. She was awarded an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Award for her research in October 2020. Edel hosts poetry and short story writing courses for gifted children alongside the Centre for Talented Youth Ireland (CTYI) and her poetry and fiction have previously been published in Crannóg Magazine, Skylight 47 Poetry, Drawn to the Light Press, Pendemic.ie, Aigne, Bookhub Publishing’s anthology series #mentalhealth4milennials, The New Writer’s Café Magazine, and Quarryman Literary Journal. Aideen Henry has been published in the Irish Times, the Stinging Fly and broadcast on RTE Radio 1. She was shortlisted for the Hennessy Award and Francis Mc Manus Award. Her two collections of poetry, Hands Moving at the Speed of Falling Snow, and Slow Bruise, were published with Salmon Poetry. She is working on her third collection. Kenneth Hickey was born in 1975 in Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland. He served in the Irish Naval Service between 1993 and 2000. His poetry and prose has been published in various literary journals in Ireland, the UK and the United States. His writing for theatre has been performed in Ireland, the UK, New York and Paris. He has won the Eamon Keane Full Length Play Award as well as being shortlisted for The PJ O’Connor Award, and the Tony Doyle Bursary. His work in film has been screened at the Cork and Foyle Film Festivals. He holds a BA and MA in English Literature, both from University College Cork. His debut collection The Unicycle Paradox was published by Revival Press in November 2021. He still resides in Cork. LJ Ireton is a poet and bookseller from London. She has a 1st Class B.A. Honours in English Language and Literature from The University of Liverpool. Her poems have been published

by Marble, Minnow Literary Magazine, Green Ink Poetry, The Madrigal, Noctivagant Press and Spellbinder Magazine. Khushi Jain holds a Bachelors in English Literature from the University of Delhi, and is currently pursuing a Masters in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. She reads. A lot. Paul Jeffcutt has won thirty-three awards for poetry, in competitions in Ireland, the UK and the USA. He has two collections: The Skylark’s Call, Dempsey & Windle (2020) and Latch, Lagan Press (2010). He is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Paul lives in Co Down, Northern Ireland. www.pauljeffcutt.net. Phil Lynch lives in Dublin. His poems have appeared in a range of literary journals and anthologies. He is a regular performer of his work at poetry/spoken word events and literary festivals in Ireland and further afield. His poetry collection In a Changing Light (Salmon Poetry) was published in 2016. Rose Malone writes poems and short stories and has been published in New Square, The Galway Review, the Leinster Leader, and the Same Page Anthology (University college Cork, Ireland). She belongs to three writing groups and takes part in open mic sessions. Orla Martin has had poetry published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Cúirt Journal, Crannóg Magazine and The Stony Thursday Book. Having read as part of Poetry Ireland Introduction Series, her poetry has been shortlisted for awards including the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award, Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize and Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award. Orla works as the administrator at the Irish Writers Centre, in Dublin.

Mari Maxwell’s work appears in Washing Windows Too (Arlen House 2022), and Poetry Jukebox STARS Curation, from the 2021 Belfast International Arts Festival. She received a 2020/21 Professional Development Award with the Arts Council of Ireland and a 2019/2020 Words Ireland, Mayo County Council Mentorship. Cáit O'Neill McCullagh started writing poetry at home in Scotland’s Highlands in December 2020. Her poems are published in various journals and anthologies, and she has read at numerous gatherings in Ireland and Scotland. Recently she was appointed as a co-director of the Wee Gaitherin Festival of poetry. See https://www.highlandlit.com/cait-oneill-mccullagh. Karen J McDonnell's Driftwood was shortlisted for Irish Poem of the Year in 2021. She is currently working on her second collection, for which she was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award. Her debut, This Little World, is published by Doire Press. More at karenjmcdonnell.com. Martin Meyler teaches art in an alt-ed project. Has been published in The Moth and The Cormorant; was included in Quotidian’s Poetry Jukebox project in Belfast. ‘Beside You’ was shortlisted in the Edwin Morgan Trust ‘All Things Are Possible’ competition, in Gutter 21, last year. Karen Mooney’s poetry has been published in USA, UK and Ireland. Her co-written pamphlet with Gaynor Kane, Penned In, was published in 2020 by The Hedgehog Poetry Press who published her debut pamphlet Missing Pieces in March 2022. Alan Murphy is the Lismore-based writer and illustrator of four books of poetry for children and teenagers. He has also contributed poems and visual art to numerous digital and print anthologies in Ireland, the UK and the US. He is a regular reviewer for Inis magazine. Jamie O’Halloran is an American-Irish poet whose Corona Connemara & Half a Crown was awarded 2nd place in the 2021

Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. She was the 2021 Artist in Residence at Bridget’s Garden. Her poems appear most recently in One Hand Clapping, Skylight 47 and The Honest Ulsterman. Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She serves as a chief editor for Authora Australis. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of the Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings D'or Seifer lives in Limerick. She contributes to poetry gatherings such as Filí an Tí Bháin and Over the Edge. D'or co-runs the online poetry series Lime Square Poets. Her work has recently appeared in Skylight 47, The Banyan Review, Abridged, and Ink Sweat & Tears. Gail Sheridan lives in Waterford city with her family. Gail works as a community drug worker and stared writing poetry at the start of the pandemic. Gail is a member of the ‘Landscape of the Body’ writing group with Lani O’Hanlon and Gail’s work has been recently published in the Waxed Lemon literary journal. Stephen Shields lives in Loughrea, County Galway. He writes both poetry and fiction. His poetry has been widely published in Ireland and the UK. If you are reading this, the list now includes Drawn to the Light. Rachael Stanley's poems have been published in journals and anthologies, of which her most recent published work appears in The Wild Ireland Calendar for 2022 published by The Irish Peatland Conservation Council. In 2019, she was commended in the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Competition. She lives in Dublin. Lynda Tavakoli is a writer, poet and occasional photographer from County Down. Her photography is often inspired by the natural world and the beauty of her surrounding countryside. Lynda's debut poetry collection, The Boiling Point for Jam is published by Arlen House.

Nadira Wallace is a doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London and has written literary reviews for Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter’s House, The Modernist Review and SPAM Magazine. Her creative work has been published in Shearsman magazine, Love Spells & Rituals for Another (Independent Publishing Network, 2021), AWWStruck (Poem Atlas, 2021) and exhibited in Greece (Text-Isles, Art Park Gallery, 2021). She also had an academic article on magnificent diction recently published in Textual Practice.

No Man is an Island No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne

Editor: Orla Fay Published by Drawn to the Light Press ISSN 2737-7768 Next issue: October 2022 https://drawntothelightpress.com Twitter: @DrawnPress Instagram: @drawntothelightpress Facebook: @drawnpress22 Patrons: Anthony Wade Drawn to the Light Press is edited, designed, and produced by Orla Fay. Cover design As of Now by Martin Meyler The works included in this issue are copyright of the poets and artists ©2022 and may not be reproduced or changed in any way without the permission of the individual author. Drawn to the Light Press is ©2022 of the editor. All rights reserved.

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 6 R.J. Breathnach Hon Corbett A.M. Cousins Rachel Coventry Derek Coyle Deirdre Crosby Anne Daly Gráinne Daly Maurice Devitt Moyra Donaldson Hugh Doyle Patrick Doyle Michael Durack Hazel Durham James Finnegan Siobhán Flynn Tracy Gaughan Edel Hanley Aideen Henry Kenneth Hickey LJ Ireton Khushi Jain Paul Jeffcutt Phil Lynch Rose Malone Orla Martin Mari Maxwell Cáit O'Neill McCullagh Karen J McDonnell Martin Meyler Karen Mooney Alan Murphy Jamie O’Halloran Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad D'or Seifer Stephen Shields Gail Sheridan Rachael Stanley Lynda Tavakoli Nadira Wallace

ISSN 2737-7768