October/November 2024
Autumn Witch Nuala McEvoy
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: February 2025
https://drawntothelightpress.com
Twitter: @DrawnPress
Instagram: @drawntothelightpress
Facebook: @drawnpress22
Drawn to the Light Press is edited, designed, and produced by Orla Fay.
Cover design Autumn Witch by Nuala McEvoy.
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
Happy Halloween! Welcome to magical issue 13 where the realms of the supernatural and dreams mingle. Thanks to all who appear within the pages of this book. Congratulations to those shortlisted for Hold Fast to Dreams Poetry Competition and overall winner Thomas Collins. Cover design artist Nuala McEvoy writes,
For me, Halloween always conjures up that odd juxtaposition of fresh cool autumn air, crunchy orange and brown leaves, and terrifyingly spooky ghouls and witches. As children, we weren’t allowed to celebrate Halloween, but it still terrified me every 31st of October, with ancient tales of banshees and ghosts haunting me in my restless sleep. Autumn Witch embodies all that Halloween represented for me as a child.
Coleridge wrote about a supernatural spectral boat in his Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and what a spooky tale he told! In Barquitos Green and Black, my sinister little sailing boats sail across an eerie blood red sea and sky towards an unknown destination.
Both Autumn Witch and Barquitos Green and Black were created using acrylics on canvas.
I look forward to hearing from you all again during the winter. In the oft quoted words of the late, great Edna O’Brien, “In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature.”
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
Orla Fay, 30/10/2024
The Three Witches Address The Bard
Mr. Shakespeare, may we call you Will?
A crow we come to pluck with you –you wrote us witches nameless picking from the writs of tonsured crowns swirled with forests’ fairy tales.
No Mary, Anne or Joan from your store of family names. And to confound our woes, the title of the Scottish play unspoken in the playhouse –we accused of rousing fork-like-waves of fire.
To dispel this supposed strike, thrice the actors spin hacking forth the phlegm of fog-tongued coven air. Some might say this weird behaviour calls for sticks to stake a pyre, be assured, no downfalls only sweet deliverances puff our lavender scented rooms as tallow flames bless the praying mantis in the corner.
We salute sun, moon and stars as bees brim our vials with nature’s healing tinctures. We grow seeds to flesh and blood and, as the willow bend to genuflect at the veils of birth and death.
We understand you write to the crowd, subject as you are to royal treatises and shillings. We foretell that like your rhymes, our daughters will survive and, no toe of frog or tongue of dog –Will be harmed by witches’ power.
Marie Studer
The Witch
The witch stands steeple-hatted before her in the mirror, black fingernails and wig wind-matted, she can scarcely believe it is her.
Her winklepickers pointed as the bodkin bleeding dry devil’s marks, face green greasepaint anointed, like so many sent up in sparks.
Cupid’s bow bedecked in brackish lipstick, like those tied to ducking stool, in trailing black dress, a bride of Old Nick, darkness blooms in hidden locule.
Descendant of those who slipped the noose and fled to the freedom of the woods, proud outcasts and scolding shrews, wise women touting herbal goods.
Clenching store-bought broom, now she can see, more than just a costume, her living legacy.
Hannah Baxter
The Hour
The slightest change and all seems different
The early morning sun pre-empts the baby's cries
The promising bright sky undermined by White tipped leaves
Glistening in the morning sun.
Silver riches replace summer's gold
The last apples lie upon grass to be gathered
Their sweetness attracting thieving slugs
Halloween's monsters
Hiding from the morning sun.
The sudden end to day's bright light
The sun sinks fast and reddens the sky
Promising more bright blue skies with Winter's frosty chill
Greeting the morning sun.
Daithí Kearney
The Exact Sum
That moment when the moon’s a pyre and they’re waxed and packed for a day on the pier, bikinis and tubs of block, flowerdy shorts and flagons, and the cars won’t start. And why is the sun so close at six o’clock, where the breaking dawn sings the morning’s last birdsong? and he knows he’s at the halting hearth when they sing hallelujahs to the firestorm and he remembers that the flash and dance is beyond Alpha to Omega, he, the helpless corpse in the lather of his second shroud. It’s his time, he who knew
the dots and commas before the burlesque wrote that blood in the arteries communes with the dry ice of a midnight moon.
Arthur Broomfield
Ouija Board
We stayed out in late October, four fags and a box of matches, the board an ochre face of numbers, letters, yes and no, goodbye, a glass planchette, to conjure something from the after. We lit candles we found in drawers around the house, placed a silver earring on the side; invited girls to come and hold hands in the school sheds after everyone had gone, told them not to be scared told them there was no need for holy water, we had done it loads of times. Everybody laughed when someone kicked the leg of the table, we jumped and screamed and ran, and never said goodbye.
Clifton Redmond
Night
Every night we peel off our gloves, leave them on the kitchen table next to our children’s homework journals, and take the sharpest knife we own (usually from a set presented to us by mothers-in-law) and we go hunting.
Between the hours of midnight and four the souls of men are tangible. To prick them in this window leaves no visible scar (we’re not violent people; there is no physical harm done).
It only takes the gentlest of presses to penetrate a man’s soul. They are already wounded: every lie told, every handout of place, every drink poured down the throat of a girl who didn’t know any better or a woman who did and needed it to endure.
Every insult dressed as kindness. Every compliment covering an injustice. Every silence and every demand. So many tiny lacerations in a life.
When they wake they will sense some loss, niggling and unnameable, and dismiss it,
and when driven to drink or drugs, or embarrassed when even the discreet little pills can’t keep them hard, they won’t remember this.
We will never tell. When daylight comes we pour coffee into mugs, ask them how they slept.
Claire Hennessy
The Feast of the Dead
A melancholy smell is in my head
The chill of autumn air encircles me
Death rustles burnished brown umber
Lurid pale yellows dying on a breeze
I see you still, standing at the window watching leaves blow on a moaning wind that last October, hear you say It has swept all those leaves, it will take me too
Did you hear it come in on the south westerlies? Or sense an augury in the fiery pyre?
I sensed it too, felt it hover in the air between us An imposter refusing to go away empty handed
And when time at Samhain stands still belonging neither to the old nor the new a time you so often joked about I still wonder what ancestral ghost came for you?
Teresa O’Connor Diskin
Bean Sídhe
Her reddened eyes are never open, Sitting dark and sunken in her skull. She has wept more than she has spoken For souls chosen in midnight’s lull. No one knows from where she came All fear, questioning why she cries, Why death follows her when stars aflame, Why her wails mark a person’s final sigh? You might see her on a quiet Samhain night In her long cloak, windblown hair, If you do, please heed my advice –Resist the unearthly urge to stare, Just pray it’s not you she means to torment, That your soul is not hers to lament.
Tara O’Malley
The Four Elements of Empedocles
I rejoice when she speaks of the burning of the leaves, and rich brown chestnuts bend branches low.
Autumn has clipped Cygnus’ proud wings, and dark nights cling to bold Hercules.
Below the horizon, Earth sparks Fire in Water’s mane, when She treads Air.
As the axis’ zenith dips they will not be held; see Orion brace at their unleashing!
Marguerite Doyle
The Crone Time
A tub in the scullery taught us how water steals the air from right inside your nose, how apples slip and skelter.
We took on faces, we were little demons on a dark street. The cheap plastic made us sweat. Behind the eyes we could barely breathe.
All this was long ago, before the crone time.
Now we walk with care between the trees. We carry our thoughts like lanterns. Screams from the edges reach us with their long, wild turning.
My dead father fixes an apple to a string, laughs as I jump and snap and try. This too was before the crone time,
but somehow still plays out these nights near the year’s seam. Now the moon’s
closed her catalogue of shapes, left us to our own devices. We unfold pale sheets, carve gourds, hang strings of bought light in the branches.
Katherine Duffy
Festival
Winter dawns on the first of November (Or All Hallows' Day if you're more into that) but it's calm and bright and surprisingly warm so the afternoon light is good for drying, and close inspection of the clothes pegs shows glistening remnants of last night's cobwebs, diminutive legs busy running repairs, creepy-crawlies attending to business and maintaining good house-keeping, not too unlike myself, I suppose, placing the plundered laundry basket back on the floor beside the kitchen door, next to the dishwasher (emptied, re-loaded) next to the washing machine (once more half-full) the kettle (still gently steaming), the tap (still dripping), a neglected tray of vegetables (exposed, unguarded and attracting a swarm of fruit flies) only fit for compost,
but first the bins must be brought retrieved from the edge of the footpath out on the estate, and the empty vessels thunder and roar, petrify the cat who lives next door, despite immaculate groves and avenues, all clean this year where there's precious little evidence of anybody round here celebrating Halloween,
no broken egg-shells or toilet paper streamers or crushed foil from stink-bomb wrappers or charred cardboard from sparklers, screamers,
and the field we used to call Horse-shoe Hill is still smooth and green, mowed and pristine, all scrub cleared away beyond the playing field where once we might have gathered round a bonfire, suburbia basking in first-time sporting glory and watering the fresh shoots of hard-earned history that we'll think to remember years from now when all the forgotten traditions and wisdom, old wives' tales and piseogs and follies are merely footnotes to explain old poetry, the world rotating on its path with no sense of wonder, just mundane tasks, spring, summer, autumn, winter.
Thomas Collins
Instinct
In the spirit of the season I forage for hazelnuts.
Later, when cracked open: trick or treat.
A stall of sunlight sells the spider’s craft, spike of blackthorn for piercing the slug’s back, the honey fungus tenement in its cul-de-sac.
From the undergrowth the mask of a fox peers out a seep of horror in the drama of its eyes: the witch is coming.
James Anthony
Leaves
But I did love other things besides my broken voice with its roar a honk to all but myself probably someplace just shy of when we were all so small that we thought fallen leaves were a kind of good quality wrapping paper from Heaven. They seemed made for the palm of your hand, one meandering road map crunched recklessly against the other leaving no sting or stain and requiring no sweat or instructions for your instructors to unravel, grudgingly. You could lie flat between the bulging biceps of roots and have an accomplice build you a house of them provided you remained very still and didn’t giggle at the unexpected roominess of the place even with all its doors and windows slammed shut. That was a bit of all right when you didn’t have all day
to hang around the house moping and growing
a right brain on the wrong side of the television set, still a bit of a dope but no more of a dope than you were later, smoking dead leaves on all those rented balconies, senses intact, waiting for a sign that language hadn’t been dead to for years, the bill for at least one experience that hadn’t been paid for in full, with thanks.
Alan Weadick
At the stone circle on the hills beyond Inniscarra
Nested on hills within hills, facing a dip southwest, is a ring of stones.
Sun sets here, frequently with no great glow, but casting pink trails like fairy mist across autumn skies.
Sandstone pillars are gloomy in winter light or laced with frost beneath glacial skies.
Spring nights the woman who visits me at this place is at her brightest, in seagull-white dress, hair the colour of blackbirds, cupping the moon in her hands. She doesn’t say a word, only weaves the globe in the air
like it’s a tourmaline on a wave.
This summer night, light stretches from dawn, gives way to brief heady dark. I ask her what she wants; what can I do for her?
Women, men, children, naked, holding stakes with burning rushes on top, their skin pale under firelight, press in around her, placing withered roses at her feet.
Her hair turns grey. She moves off, walking water, leaving shadowy figures in her wake.
Alison McCrossan
Hanabi
Flowers of fire ripping into early November bitterness. It’s only vague now. Years have exhausted the memory, blunted the mustiness of burrowing into the shell of my father’s felt coat, afraid of such delicious rain that could spill from vacancy –singe a hair, scar a fingertip.
Afraid of red-green embers blitzing through night like headlights on a lost railway.
Rosie Aziz
Autumn Colours
Chest-deep in the long grass in his new autumn colours he stands quietly, unmoving, red eye blends into black head, into white band around his neck, rich brown rolling down his chest; contemplating the long dark to come looking forward to his first spring, first fight and the hens he may win if he reaches the safety of St. Brigid’s Day.
Anne Beck
I Know Why The Sea is Dead
Witches don’t drown, they float, And monsters yearn for open waters. It only makes sense to crew a ship, With an otherworldly kind.
The waves this night are strong, Smacking against each other, The sea is dark as treacle and the moon a bloated belly, Dip one crooked finger in seafoam, And tell it to behave.
The crow’s nest is a lovely place To look out beyond the norm. And a witch at sea knows that she Is perfectly at home
Lea McCarthy
Give Blood
Vampires’ brains are full of spuds, They only want to drink our bloods.
Vampires like to stay undead, Avoiding those who are un-bled.
Vampires fly from holy places, Mirrors don’t reflect their braces.
They fear garlic, noughts, and crosses, Otherwise, they’re their own bosses.
They love the dark and all things shady, Daylight makes their skin go scaly.
They’re pale and thin, with pointy teeth, They sleep in boxes underneath
The ground, or anywhere they can. Most don’t seem to have a plan.
I’ve met a few on rare nights out, But all they do is smile and pout.
I couldn’t have one as a friend, That would bring a nasty end.
Once you’re bit there’s no salvation –
Alan Magee
Nocturne
A bonfire flame
Rises, devours, Insatiable as all time.
Stretching skyward, Grasping, leaping, Nothing to cling to, only
Empty darkness, The vast abyss. Stray sparks launch into the void.
The spectral crone Oversees the Disintegration of form.
Leaves of amber And rust bleed in An untameable maelstrom.
Lifelong gazing Toward the heavens Now free, on Icarus’ wings.
The embers glow, A sacrifice, Ritual of smoke and ash.
To purify Transmutation
Starting over
Ashes buried
Food for flowers
Hibernating in silence.
Elizabeth Mee Morrissey
Hallowed Birthday
your birthday is approaching the days are shortening evenings darkening and darkening the closer we get to all hallows eve and the birth of our very own goth jesus
almost
you were a day early, born to the dawn blood-red to warn the shepherds that the horseman would be riding soon born so close to transylvania, the vampires must’ve been salivating now they’re used as wrapping
as I mummify your gift with black tissue paper and set it in a bag printed with bats
ready
Emma Atkins
Conversations With Colin
You meet me after dusk when everyone’s gone home, tall shadow draped over me, my fragile exoskeleton. Can you see the moon from where you are?
You would have hated this, masked up, stuck indoors, sanitised and fearful of connection. At least, I assume you would. Suppose I’m not the right person to ask about these things, am I?
Sorry, just I like to let you know how the world’s been turning since you left and stuff has gone a little wrong right now and all the signs tell us it’s going to get worse before it gets any better.
Mum’s okay. Dad’s still dead. I’m coping like a glass jar falling down a flight of stairs. Tonight, you’re slouched across our sofa, punk rock scarecrow, teasing me about my hair.
Marc Brightside
Trick or Treat
"I am your mother", "I'm your other mother"
A halloween trope like no other
The fear of family trauma dark and deep
Outranking any ghoul, goblin or creep
The people we know, the monsters within
Unnaturally scared of our own kin
A reality for some, fiction for a few
Tonight better be home before curfew
It's not a slasher, nor a jumpscare
It is simply like the song, a family affair
A nightmare on your own street
Any one of us could meet
Not in a basement, not in the attic
Behind any locked door for any fanatic
A roaring temper and a rage like fire
The situation is dangerous and dire
"Are you my mummy?" "Here's Johnny!"
Full of strength tall, big and brawny
Born into it, marry into it, no time to think
It comes quick, fast, sudden, now sink!
So carve your pumpkin and put on a smile
Dress up silly and go out for a while
Be scared of fireworks and a clown
It's easier than what's really going down
Mairead Burke
It’s me
Fingernails clicking
Tap out a staccato
Marked URGENT!
Send me an answer, hit return
Weave me into your threads
Open Windows
Let me in!
Lest I perish out here, screen frozen
Words dying on my fingertips
It’s me, who else?
Back from the dead, (so to speak)
Not done dancing yet
I’m taking steps
Do I still sense the crackle
Of electricity
That spark between us?
Lethal voltage
Heart-stopping
Kindling an unforgettable fire
Or am I locked inside
Fingers scratching pointlessly
At the scorched earth
Of memory
Feeling blindly for a faulty connection?
Chasing a danse macabre
One last night on the tiles, fit
To rattle skeletons from closets
Uneasy spectres, ghosts
Of selves past
Spinning in infinity
An unending tarantella
Always entangled
Mind you don’t tread on my toes
Cathy Dalton
Mrs Werewolf Defends Her Husband
There’s a wildness in everythingthat's how the dark gets in. She tells herself on those nights when the moon is a giant egg and its silver light brandishes a blade to peace of mind.
She expected moodiness, what with his shapeshifting self, the anger, the aggressive tantrums, howling like a loon, aggressiveness untethered in a wolfish way. No wonder Red Riding Hood got spooked.
It took her a while though to get used to the blood in his fingernails, the growl still lingering in his throat, the green forest eyes, the rot-ripe smell of animal pelt. When he came home his naked self reborn
from breaking - how the bones must bend and split to become human again. Uncanny, but nature she thinks, has its unpalatable ways. Counts herself luckyall men are monsters, hers just once a month.
Siobhán Mc Laughlin
Barquitos Green and Black Nuala McEvoy
Hold Fast to Dreams Poetry Competition Shortlist
Whispered by Sean Megahey
Horsefeathers by Maurice Devitt
Where did all the butterflies go? by Jeanie Cartes
Oh, My Life Is Changing Every Day... by Thomas Collins
In Bed by Mary Lee
Famine Fever by Lea McCarthy
Hidden depth by Caitriona Lane
Dreaming of Rocs by John D. Kelly
Burden of Dreams by Polina Cosgrave
Dream Story by Christa Debrun
Threshold by Glen Wilson
Time Cannot Be Undone by Mandy Beattie
Sestina for Brigid O’Donnel, (1849) by Peggy McCarthy
Overall Winner
Oh, My Life Is Changing Every Day... by Thomas Collins
Whispered
The best poems I have ever written were never written my best poems were never written because whispered often in dreams sometimes in nightmares forgotten in morning anytime consciousness always haunting the edge of articulation rhymes pictures colours rolling rhythms pithy wisdoms snarky observations loving the drama hating the beyond reach phrase losing the plot unable to make the turn a dreamcatcher just failing to catch the dream
Sean Megahey
Horsefeathers
I wake in the night, lie suspended either side of a dream, where I’m sitting in a bar with a horse, bookie’s coloured pencil behind his ear. He says very little, distracted by a broadsheet he has folded to A4 size for convenience, holding it awkwardly as he stares at the print. While I think I’ve seen his face before, every guess falls just short of recognition. Occasionally he takes the pencil, scribbles a note on the page but, even when I squint, it’s too small to read. I fall asleep again, the horse is gone, his place taken by a man I once knew but never liked, and he now has all the answers.
Maurice Devitt
Where did all the butterflies go?
I had a dream, night terror at first, where in it, white icky maggots infested the cupboard, and in my hand, I held, a red vacuum, sucking all the horror up.
At capacity, it expanded, the pressurelike a firefighter’s hose, shot aim toward the sky, and from it, a kaleidoscope of wonder, an aerial display of butterflies, danced above my head, walked I, along a bustling pier, sunset by the sea.
Deep down, I believe, It was Santa Monica Pier, but that’s a dream of a different sort.
All of which, led to me thinking, I have only seen, a handful all year,
Where did all the butterflies go?
Jeanie Cartes
Oh, My Life Is Changing Every Day...
My dreams hang like the taxidermied heads of great beasts shot down in their prime and mounted high on the candle-lit walls of a little log cabin deep in a mountainous forest clearing that I visit from time to time –lonely retreats in the late autumn or winter, away from the hustle and bustle of activity, in the season of receding, hibernation, and decay, after nuts and tantalizing berries of thorny possibility have swollen and burst and, again, withered away –safely out of reach so that their treated cloths of night and light will never know what it is to be trod upon, their shadows making nothing bright; the rigid maw of a grizzly bear glaring from just underneath the rafters, its strength never knowing the glory of a golden heavy-weight championship belt on canvas in a squared circle under confetti and spotlights; the jaws of a wolf whose howled tones should still ring out to lovers and lonely wanderers alike who listen throughout the land on otherwise silent moonlit nights;
the antlers of a legendary hart, broad enough to cover with a leap the corners of any eight-by-twenty-four foot net in Croke Park or Lansdowne Road, the Gaelic Grounds or Old Trafford, hanging now above a smoky fireplace, as bereft of meaning as any argentine engraving of Cernunnos, perhaps serving to guide those aspirations to the aether or across the Styx, leaving only Pangur Bán and snowy owls to wait and watch, patiently stalk and strike, less grandiose but smaller, wiser, flashes of sustaining cunning without the fame or glory, fated not for merciless display, but modesty dictated a priori
Thomas Collins
In Bed
after Tracey Emin: My Bed, 1998, Tate Gallery
Sleep:
surrender to a mysterious routine she doesn’t understand – body present –mind absent.
Perhaps dreaming on wild escapades, the mind’s nightly entitlement.
Face, a blank secret –where is you-ness true self?
Entering another’s bedroom she walks into emotions’ boundaries misunderstandings: the theft of time river of emptiness eyes red from weeping.
The gaping holes of need – the hollow transfused for self in the other thirst, the touch of its tides.
Or wonder beyond perception.
In bed with another. Waiting, the discipline that holds the moment open –mystery wraps its long arms around…
Mary Lee
Famine Fever
They say, ‘Don’t stand, upon the grave,’ For fear that famine fingers creep And feel my sturdy footsteps boom And rise from stomach grumbled sleep.
My ancestors, they starved to death, They pinch my pouching lobe of ear, Mock fattened hips and softened curves, The judging prods of yesteryear.
But if they watched how I make the soup, Potatoes boil, and leeks sweat soft. A pour of cream, and crystal salt, I taste a silver spoon aloft.
They’d drool, and clutch my solid arm, I’d be dream they dreamed about. Their broken hands dip in the bowl, They’d handfeed soup into my mouth.
Lea McCarthy
Hidden depth
We found each other last night in the deep for a brief reprise. You called me and I waded towards you and there it was again once more for a precious second, that frisson, a wave between us, that longing, that thrill.
The pull of desire our energy force and you want to know will I come to you. Don’t you know I never left you.
Standing still in dreamland waters, a foot apart, an ocean between us. I forget you not, even upon this disintegration, this awakening. Alive but lost, I lie here waking our past.
Caitriona Lane
Dreaming Of Rocs
The thin epidermis on my cheek sinks into an eiderdown pillow.
I begin to travel and glide on the pearly gleam of song-lines.
I have no option but to let it run − watch that silvery bar bend my rod, break my fine leader and the surface of Ballinderry River. My reel is screaming . . . and my heart is still pounding like the sound of linen between beetle and block: a beat that used to carry across the vast fields of flax, around Wellbrook Mill to where I stand, now, chest-deep in waders. I find myself between a rock and a hard place as Arjuna was with the avatar Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita.
And I am become awe, when I see Sinbad and a fabulous bird in Baghdad. It carries a pachyderm in its sharp talons, and I wonder
if it could possibly glide over the tops of snow-capped peaks.
You’d need a really-thick glove of leathery hide to sheath your hand to hold it, as a hawker, a dreamer; and you’d have to have the heart of a lion and the strength of a Carthaginian giant to tame it and fly it, with such a cargo, across the nightmare of the mighty Alps.
Hannibal ran his Alpine gauntlet in 218 BC. All but one of his thirtyseven elephants fell to a gory death without the luxury of fabled Rocs.
John D. Kelly
Burden of Dreams
Werner Herzog was unafraid to carry his “Burden of Dreams”. Herzog's words: “fury of the language”.
Your actions: fury of the heart.
I crave your fury, I release the viper of my tongue: I said I'd praise your body, I tattooed its warmth on the diary of my skin. I promised to dance for your madness, my feet now etched onto your country's soil.
I told the rain to stop, but it didn’t. I wished to wash away your trouble, and I failed, failed, confused and bloodless.
Oh my god!
I understand you now. I understand him now. I can't stand it.
To carry the dream of you further is the most I can do in my lifetime.
Polina Cosgrave
Dream Story
I am weary and worn like the powdered ink that treads my pages, I struggle to hold myself together, the glue in my spine stretched smooth from use.
But when I’m opened, you tumble forth like titans, an infrastructure of hallowed highways charting courses to stars sown across the night sky.
Emotions are things that move, shapeshifters, ideas are sprites manifest as thought voices, arcana contained in visions in stillness.
I’ve roamed distant countries in hours, excavated the past and broken the atom, feasted on stars, nebulae and galaxies.
I am a luminous cloud and you are my light bearer, the mouth of the mind, trembling on the brink of light and shadow.
Christa Debrun
Threshold Light comes through between the bottom rail and the saddle, the eye that half opens still perceives, I’m the first awake.
I trace the bulges and recesses of the grain as if the stories of those before us live in the panels, this frame was crafted, it makes a world within, a world without.
You foetal posed towards the window, cycle the air with grateful exhale and inhale, dreams that require no input play behind your eyelids.
There were a million lives for each of us, many doors, opening and closing, to end up here, with you, right now seems as much a miracle as anything.
And you turn to face me,
Blue grey eyes opening and recognising, closing again as you smile and say good morning.
Outside traffic builds and begs for busyness, but we won’t respond, the world can wait, it has given and taken enough.
Glen Wilson
Time Cannot Be Undone
after Sleeping Beauty (Sculpture)
Louis Sussman Hellborn, 1828-1908
Recumbent upon marble mausoleum’s seat you befell a deep, deep sleep upon thy alabaster pillow
That orb and sceptre of dominion thrust upon you before birth’s first breath, nor that blotted Knight could draw you from otherwhere’s dark well, into light beyond farewell. Stone roses curl around your feet a planting of immortelle and tree ring’s leaves and cockle shells cannot trumpet out to resurrect you, from ayont that veil
or reverse travels of your travail. You smote asleep mid-sentence as your attention drifted over yonder. Thoughts
left hanging like nasturtiums and apples on a bough ivy vines a trefoil when wings lofted but left your effigy cast in ice mantle. He came when he recalled he had misplaced you but it was too late for you slipped into a malaise and willed yourself away. You watch him now from thy halo of there, his shoulders raven-stooped, lips lemon sliced un-kissed by thy hand of grace. He knows now what he has misplaced, can ne’er be replaced by sleight
of turn nor golden band upon another’s hand. His tarnished armour no amount of rubbing will render pristine
Nor visor cast unto the world will change what was and ne’er will be. For he cannot split thy waxen
simulacrum to find the betraying heart of him and beating heart of thee
Mandy Beattie
Sestina for Brigid O Donnel, (1849)
‘I was carried into a cabin, and lay there for eight days, when I had the creature (the child) born dead.’ - Illustrated London News, December 22, 1849
Way out by the edge of dreams a faint echo of the last curlew call. In fading light, I scour fields with fingernails of black earth, think each sod of clay might hold some fey shards of bone-dust, drenched in spring showers.
A night sky wide with stars showering light into corners where I dream of unearthing a limb, a tiny tooth, the fey breath of my infant boy. Corncrake and curlew hover, their wingtips skim ditches, I think I too might lie in this silent field.
My weighted heart, half-crazed by hunger, the field ghosted by moonlight the colour of bone-showers, I conjure his small chest rising, think I feel his foetal kicks, dream him inside me still, folded like curlew wings in their shell, wet with promise, till the fey
slide of dawn lips the horizon, its fey glow rents earth from sky, opens fields and fragile hearts, reveals curlew haunts. I feel the smack of hail-showers sharp as his first raw cry where I dream him back to the beginning, think morning light might save me yet. I think
of hunger like cloying fog, the fey ghosts of shallow plots, bones dream themselves through clods, the field yields its tiny souls, showering through soil like lost pearls. A curlew
circles overhead, his long bill the mark of curlews ever, he probes mudflats, salt marshes, thinks of juicy insects by soggy shores, craves showers of crab, shrimp and grasshopper – fey creatures of the seas, their time come, to endure in fields, to leave a trace, to live beyond dreams.
I lift my head to a lightening shower, turn from the curlew. My boy wrapped in dreams - his veiled caul, and I think I see one fey tooth gleaming, one seed in a blighted field.
Peggy McCarthy
Notes on Contributors
James Anthony is a Galway-based poet. His work has been published in Skylight 47, Local Wonders (Dedalus Press), New Isles Press Vol. 2, Voxgalvia (Galway Advertiser), Fur, Feather, Pen. His work was shortlisted for the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year (2017), Red Line Book Festival (2017, 2019, 2020) and highly commended in the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards (2017, 2023).
Emma Atkins is a poet and novelist currently studying for her PhD at Middlesex University. She started writing poetry in 2018 and has been finding footholds in the creative world ever since. Most recently, she was published in the Bullshit Lit 2023 anthology and Amsterdam Quarterly's 'Generation' edition.
Rosie Aziz is an English-Kurdish poet from Manchester. Her work has appeared in Capella by Between These Shores Books, Drawn to the Light Press, and Obsessed with Pipework. Inspired by a lifelong fascination with folklore, her poetry often fuses storytelling with a strong dose of brutal honesty and reflection.
Hannah Baxter is a twenty-six-year-old writer from Omagh, County Tyrone. She achieved a first-class honours degree in English with Creative Writing and MA with distinction in English Literary Studies from Queen's University, Belfast. She’s been featured in New Isles Press and shortlisted for the Kenmare ‘Poets meet Painters’2024 competition.
Mandy Beattie’s poetry appears in, Poets Republic, Drawn to The Light, WordPeace, Crowstep, Full House Literary, Verse-Virtual, 5 Words, Abridged and more. Winner of Words with Seagulls and City of Poets Competitions. Shortlisted: Creative Future Writer’s Award; 10th International Five Words and Black Box Competitions. Best of Net nominee, 2024.
Anne Beck grew up in rural Ireland and writes poetry and short stories. Her work has been published in various magazines, journals and anthologies in Ireland. She has also had work published in
British and American magazines such as Scintilla and Nourish anthology.
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.
Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet and short story writer from Laois. He mentors poets online and facilities poetry workshops. His recent collection is At Home in Ireland Selected and New Poems.
Mairead Burke, Murke. 26. Donegal based writer who enjoys writing about human nature and mother nature.
Jeanie Cartes, a mature student originally from Co Clare, Dublin based for nearly thirty years-always had a passion for writing and only recently began exploring poetry as an art form.
Thomas Collins (Tomás Ó Coileáin) is a writer, teacher, poet and editor, from Limerick City, and author of "Inside Out" and "Ar An Leoithne" (Revival Press). Poems in Irish and English have appeared in Comhar, Stray Words, Stripes, Irisleabhar Mhá Nuad, The Stony Thursday Book, The Galway Review, The Ogham Stone, Scothsmaointe Gan Smál, and Stanzas chapbooks.
Polina Cosgrave is a bilingual writer and Arts Council award recipient based in Ireland. Her debut collection My Name Is was published by Dedalus Press. Polina features in the Forward Prizes Book of Poetry 2022. Her work has appeared on TV, radio and in numerous journals and anthologies.
Cathy Dalton lives in County Kilkenny, in southeast Ireland. She has been writing sporadically for some years, but more frequently now. She is a recovering academic and architect, with an unhealthy interest in choral singing, cats, gothic cathedrals and dystopian digital technology. Her poems have been shortlisted and longlisted
in The Poetry Kit competitions in 2023 and included in the UCD Archive of Poetry of Commemoration, 2023. She is a regular et Poetry by The Barrow. She is hoping to publish a short collection in 2025.
Christa Debrun is an academic and poet, she lectures in English Literature in WIT. Her poetry was shortlisted for the Anthology Poetry Prize 2020 and the Roscommon Poetry Prize at the Strokestown International Festival 2020. She was most recently published in The Ekphrastic Review, New Word Order and in the anthologies Addictions collated by Veronica Aaronson and Cathal Buí Selected Poems 2021.
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 Pushcartnominated 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.
Teresa O’ Connor Diskin’s work has been published in Skylight 47, The Galway Review, Dodging the Rain, Vox Galvia, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Irish Farmers Journal, Reach Poetry, Drawn to the Light Press, Magpie, All Saints Heritage Centre Mórbhileog/Broadsheet 2023, Lothlorien, Dawntreader, Poetry in Lockdown Archive, U.C.D. and she was shortlisted for Poems for Patience 2019 and 2022.
Marguerite Doyle’s work has been published in Reliquiae Journal, The Wexford Bohemian, The Waxed Lemon, Hive Poetry Journal, Dreich, Anthropocene, The Ogham Stone and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology, Hold Open the Door. In 2024 she was awarded First Prize in the Mill Cove Gallery Kenmare, Poets Meet Painters Competition.
Katherine Duffy’s pamphlet Talking the Owl Away won a Templar Poetry Iota Shot award and was published by Templar in 2018. Two previous collections were published by The Dedalus Press. Recent work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Interpreter’s House, and Unbridled: Women’s Poetry (WomanWord, 2023).
Claire Hennessy is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of several YA novels. Her short work has most recently appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Southword, ROPES, and Trasna
Daithí Kearney is an Irish poet and musician. From Co. Kerry, he now lives and lectures in Co. Louth. His poetry is inspired by his surroundings and his young family. His poems have been recently published in Paddler Press, Patchwork Folklore Journal, Drawn to the Light and Martello.
John D. Kelly lives in Co. Fermanagh. His poetry has been published widely. Among many awards, he won the Listowel Poetry Short Collection Award in 2020 and was a finalist in the Montreal International Poetry Prize, 2022. Most recently he won 2nd prize in the Plaza Audio Poetry Competition 2023 judged by Anthony Joseph.
Noel King was born and lives in Tralee, Co Kerry. His poetry collections are Prophesying the Past (Salmon, 2010), The Stern Wave (Salmon, 2013) and Sons (Salmon, 2015), Alternative Beginnings, Early Poems (Kite Modern Poetry Series, 2022) and Suitable Music for a View (SurVision Books, 2024). He has edited more than fifty books of work by others (Doghouse Books, 2003-2013) and was poetry editor of Revival Literary Journal (Limerick Writers’ Centre) in 2012/13. A short story collection, The Key Signature & Other Stories was published by Liberties Press in 2017. www.noelking.ie.
Caitríona Lane is a bilingual writer originally from Dublin now living in Connemara. She is a Poetry Irelands Introductions/ Ceadlínte poet and was shortlisted for the 2023 Eavan Boland Emerging Poet award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in
Poetry Ireland Review, Drawn to the Light Press, HOWL, The Storms, The Four Faced Liar, The Echo, The Galway Review, Vox Galvia, Comhar, Aneas, Feasta, I mBun Pinn and elsewhere. The natural and otherworld environs of Connemara inform her creative practise.
Mary Lee’s poems have been widely published and anthologised nationally and internationally, including Skylight 47, Orbis, Crannόg, Poems for Patience competition, short listed twice) Her work has been broadcast on RTE Radio 1. Mary’s third poetry collection: The Stranger, the Dream, the Bird is forthcoming with Revival Press, Limerick.
Ruth Lexton is an English teacher and writer. She has a PhD from Columbia University and BA and MPhil from the University of Oxford. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged and Shooter. She won second prize in the Hexham Poetry Competition 2023 and was longlisted for theAurora Prize 2023.
Alan Magee is a poet living in Belfast. His poems have been published by the Community Arts Partnership NI, Apricot Press, The Galway Review, Quillkeepers Press and others. Alan writes about shared human experiences, nature and mental health, with sensitivity and insight. You can find his work on Instagram. @alan.magee.poetry.
Lea McCarthy is a writer from Sligo. She has a degree in Creative Writing. Lea won the Morning Coffee writing prize 2020 and was shortlisted for the Redline Poetry Prize 2022 and Poems for Patience Award 2023. She has had work published in Sonder, Ropes, Abridged, Reverie and Paper Lanterns.
Peggy McCarthy is a poet from Waterford City. She won the Fish Poetry Prize in 2020. Her poems were shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Competition and the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2022. Her work has been published in Southword, Fish Anthology, Crannóg, Skylight 47, Cork Words and Orbis
Alison McCrossan is from Cork. Publications include Southword, Stand, Orbis, The Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, and Drawn to The Light Press. She was longlisted in The National Poetry Competition, shortlisted in The Bridport Poetry Prize, and was a finalist in The Fool for Poetry chapbook competition. She undertook a mentorship with Thomas McCarthy through The Munster Literature Centre.
Nuala McEvoy started writing and painting at approximately the age of fifty during the pandemic and since then, both hobbies have become her passions. She has had her written work (both poetry and prose) published in online and paper journals and in anthologies, and she has read on podcasts. Her paintings currently appear in two exhibitions in Münster, Germany and in several online journals.
Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal. Her poems have appeared previously in Drawn to the Light Press, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon, The Ekphrastic Review, The Madrigal as well as other publications. Twitter: @siobhan347.
Seán Megahey grew up in Belfast. Erstwhile English teacher, longterm Community Services Manager in Housing and Homelessness Services. He has been writing poems and wee shorts for many years. Lovely to be published. He wonders at the beauty of our world. He mourns at its destruction.
Elizabeth Mee Morrissey is a married mother of 3 children based in idyllic West Cork, Ireland. She was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA in the USA and earned her B.Sc. in Elementary Education from Boston University. She works part-time as a primary school teacher.
Tara O' Malley is a writer from Galway, Ireland. She currently works as a librarian and as a member of the editorial team for Ragaire Literary Magazine. Her work has previously been published in Tír na nÓg Magazine, Paper Lanterns, ROPES Literary Journal and other publications.
Clifton Redmond is an award-winning poet from County Carlow. His work has appeared in journals online and in print in Ireland and abroad. He is currently serving as Take Apart Carlow Community Writer in Residence and is completing a writing project titled No Destination, which draws on the Tullow Road area for inspiration.
Marie Studer recently published her debut poetry collection, Real Words with Revival Press. She is widely published in journals and anthologies. She is a past winner of the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland Competition and The Bangor Ekphrastic Challenge, and her poems have been placed in many competitions.
Alan Weadick has had poems most recently published in Blackbox Manifold, Cyphers, Dreich and upcoming in Howl. He has been long and short listed for the Strokestown Poetry Festival, Listowel Writer’s Week, The National Poetry Competition (UK, longlisted 2015,2022) and was the winner of the Mairtin Crawford/ Belfast Book Festival poetry award in 2020. He lives in Dublin.
Glen Wilson is a multi-award winning Poet from Portadown. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2017, the Jonathan Swift Creative WritingAward in 2018 and The Trim Poetry competition in 2019. His poetry collection An Experience on the Tongue is out now with Doire Press.
https://glenwilsonpoetry.wordpress.com/ Twitter @glenhswilson
https://www.doirepress.com/bookstore/poetry/
