burning bush 2 issue 5

7/28/2019 Burning Bush 2 Issue 5

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The Burning Bush 2, issue five, June 2013

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The

BurningBush2

issue # 5

June 2013


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The Burning Bush 2

issue five

contents

Editorial 4Brian Kirk 6 Food Lover

7 Town FoxesStephanie Conn 8 Absolute Desert

9 LepusNeil McCarthy 10 Jungle of the Bourgeois PigKathy DArcy 11 Pregnant 4-6 WeeksDenise Blake 13 Lighting the FlameMorgan Harlow 14 ValerieHugh Fulham-McQuillan 15 Themes on the Character

and the ActorEileen N Shuillebhin 17 The MountainJessica Traynor 18 The Water TableEmily Cullen 20 AmaryllisEvan Costigan 22 UddersChris Murray 23 Dark PoolGraham Connors 24 Real WordsNancy Anne Miller 26 World Fair 1957Doireann N Ghrofa 27 Elegy for a City TreeMichael Gallagher 29 SmokerJohn Saunders 30 Out of DateKeith Payne 31 The Yellow Paisley ScarfMarion Clarke 32 Cantrer Gwaelod: The lowland

one hundred

33 Haiku 1Nell Regan 34 LimenGragir Dill 35 Dawn Birds

36 MovementAnthony Hegarty 37 To This of the Other I Am TooNoel Duffy 39 Old Shoes

40 On LightKevin Conroy 42 Odonata LampyridaeTyler Farrell 43 Three Family Rummage

Anjumon Sahin 45 Some Useless Notes or the Two Voices


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Chimera Lay 47 No TranslationFrancis OHare 48 Street Music

50 Astral WeeksAfric McGlinchey 52 Walls

Susan Sweetland Garay 54 The Interpretation of DreamsDavid Murphy 56 Files in AmberNeil Banks 58 Unsaidamon Mag Uidhir 60 MaisieJames Chapson 62 The RoyalsKenneth Keating 63 What Im Looking For

64 The Peccable IMary Madec 65 Persephone: Coming of Age


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Editorial

The revival of the Burning Bush, as Burning Bush 2, under the editorship of

Alan Jude Moore, is important. It provides a venue for new and emergingpoets as well as continuing to reaffirm with on-line work throughout theworld the viability of a global literary culture that does not create any sortof empire. Where the internet failed to become the great equalizer we hadhoped for twenty years ago, it has become the great feelie for social mediaand information availability to the point of obfuscation and isolation ifwere not careful consumers and readers.

So, why bother contributing to the mess and publishing in an on-line

literary journal like Burning Bush 2? Because it is a part of the emergingglobal literary culture -- at least for those fortunate to have access to theinternet as many throughout the globe still do not. Within the May issue ofBurning Bush 2 we feature works from writers throughout Ireland as wellas Australia, India, Spain, Bermuda and the U.S. These include past andpresent winners of prestigious poetry awards as well as emerging writers.

Self-congratulation is rampant on the web, so its worth casting a brief eyeover some of the facts of institutional and global investment in

endeavours such as ours. Just a few years ago, Oxford Journals users at teninstitutions visited just 61 journals a quarter of a million times, and viewedtwo-thirds of a million pages. Based on the study of this usage alone, UKuniversities and colleges spent 79.8m on licenses for e-journals as earlyas 2006/07 (out of a total serials expenditure of 112.7m). Four years ago,it was estimated that 86.5 per cent of titles in the arts, humanities andsocial sciences are now available online. Ten years ago, Ulrich's listed over34,500 online, active periodicals of all types. Active academic/scholarly e-journals weigh in at nearly 43,500. (Ten years ago.) Of course, noneof thistakes into account on-line poetry journals, blogs, writers sites, and so on

that continue to shape the creative milieu and for which an accuratecataloguing algorithm has yet to be found.

There is a lot of money and a lot of traffic in on-line journals. Unfortunately,none of us see it...yet. That is, the grassroots publications like Burning Bush

2 that are slowly, surely and significantly altering the literary landscapeare flying under the radar until the point at which we pacifists end upaccidentally knocking over the ivory tower upon which the radar sits.


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As guest editor, it was my great pleasure to work for Alan and enjoy hisdiligence and professionalism. In keeping with the open nature of thejournal, works were forwarded blindly and correspondence took placebetween us regarding many of the acceptances. (Perhaps too much

discussion or this would have been out a few weeks ago.) Now that werelive, we hope that you enjoy the lives presented in the current issue andencourage you to continue to contribute to both the journal and its life.

David GardinerChicago


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Brian Kirk

Food Lover

It rained all day, the hours began to drag,I fed the dog and tried to eat somethingBut since you left each mouthful makes me gag.

The bottles on the shelf to me they nag,But wine will only make my stomach spin,It rained all day, the hours began to drag,

All food now only tastes of stubbed out fags.

I want to eat, I know I must be starvingBut since you left each mouthful makes me gag.

Drink only ever makes me fight or brag,It never kills the pain or soothes the sting.It rained all day, the hours began to drag.

Before the open fridge my spirits flag,The pasta and linguini taste like string

But since you left each mouthful makes me gag.

Till you come back to me the time will lagI miss you love and (of course) your cooking,It rained all day, the hours began to drag,But since you left each mouthful makes me gag.


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Town Foxes

How did we get here, knowing what we areand what we need to live?

This place that we call homeoffers us nothing but still we remain,scavenging and cowering by turnsamong hostile hosts.

Vermin they call us, rabid plague-ridden curs,and would have us slaughtered,

where once they named us noble,cunning, wily, even sly.

We are foreign to our natures, delirious,fearful to the last,unwanted immigrants.

Brian Kirk is a poet and short story writer from Clondalkin, Dublin. Hewas shortlisted for Hennessy Awards in 2008 and 2011 and the Over TheEdge New Writer of the Year Awards in 2008 and 2009. He won theinaugural Writing Spirit Award in 2009. He has been highly commended inthe iYeats Poetry Competition in 2011 and 2012 and the 2012 Bare HandsPoetry Competition. His work has appeared in The Sunday Tribune, TheStony Thursday Book, Southword, Cranng, Burning Bush 2, Revival, BoyneBerries, Wordlegs, Bare Hands Poetry, Cancan Poezine, The First Cut,

Abridged, Shot Glass Journal and various anthologies. He blogsathttp://briankirkwriter.com
http://briankirkwriter.com/http://briankirkwriter.com/http://briankirkwriter.com/http://briankirkwriter.com/


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Stephanie Conn

Absolute Desert

It has been pouring for days and in a country such as thisit is hard to imagine the driest place on earth,but at Atacamas centre the loose lying sedimentproclaims a lack of that which might wash it all away millions of years without a single drop of rain.

Here nothing rots, the dead remain preserved forever deadbetween the barren hills and freezing desert nights.Yet further south, algae and lichen make the most

of marine fog and perennials, and woody scrubsuck on clouds entrapped by faulted mountains.

And though the arid plains are littered with abandonednitrate mining towns, the Peruvian song-sparrows singand lemons still grow on the shores of the salt marsheswhile the villagers in Chungungo catch fog in mesh netsthat moisture may condense and trickle into copper troughs.


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Lepus

Their collective noun is drovethough they mostly live alone,

content with a solitary life,

or become one of a pair,growing brave in the spring;chests puffed out, as if

fluid has filled the cavitiesand dropsy has caused a long-forgottenfrenzy, that gives rise

to a meadow dash in daylightor a moonlit boxing matchbelow the moon hares dark patches;

that ancient celestial ancestor,as a distant cousin is driven southby the hunter and his dogs.

Stephanie Conn is a primary school teacher from County Antrim. Herpoetry has been published in a wide range of magazines and journals.Recently, she was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Prize andher short collection Talking to Tsvetayeva was highly commended in the

Mslexia Pamplet Competition. She is in the final stages of her MA inCreative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB.


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Neil McCarthy

Jungle of the Bourgeois Pig

for Denisa Pisu

Your father talked me down from a high window ledgethe morning he lit a cigarette in the kitchen, pouredme cold coffee, and told me of how alien it felt to havehad the freedom to lie in the grass in a park in Vienna.This choice of action is something Id never thought of,like so many things I have taken for granted to date.I furrowed my brow and jiggled memories in my head

looking for a comparison to believe in when I heardyou recite to your court at Caf Kafka the feeling youhad, and the watchful eyes upon you, the first timeyou tasted a banana. Those of us in attendance smiledas we looked for the comedy in such an odd situation,conned by every thin comparison that sprung to mind.

We are watered down by choices, caught pants aroundour ankles at a crossroads with no signs, everyday staring

inanely at giant menu boards and convincing ourselvesthat an iced lemon mocha with whipped cream and vanillais just what the doctor ordered. We have no use for effortlike we have no use for maps, our geography beamed fromsatellites to the palms of our hands to whatever jungle wechoose. And I am blown away by distance, sitting listeningto a man from Moldavia recant for me his translations ofEminescu in a bar in Los Angeles, the clientele shrill as anorchestra tuning up; his index finger pendulating gracefully,

assertively, as if a flouted conductors baton.

Neil McCarthy is an Irish poet currently living in financial exile in LosAngeles where he teaches English and complains about the heat. In recentyears his poems have appeared online and in print in journals such as

Magma (UK), Poetry Salzburg Review(Austria), Popshot(UK) and The SHOp(Ireland).


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Kathy DArcy

Pregnant 4-6 weeks

After sitting on the cold tiled floor for a few minutes I think that might bebad and get up. I look at my face in the mirror. My mother was ten yearsyounger than me when she had my brother Michael. Did she look likethis? It was so normal for them, but she must have felt something, the firsttime at least. I put on makeup not enough to be obvious, just to makemyself look flushed with pleasure and go next door. It smells like boyafter the makeup. He's face down, twisted with a cold, white arm hangingover the side. The Father. We made a baby. I push his shoulder gently. Hegrunts. I do it again.

'Ah leave it will you, I'll get up when I'm ready!'

I leave it.

Downstairs I make toast and jam and a cup of tea, and sit in the cold kitchenchewing, reading yesterday's paper. We'll need to have the heating onmore, it can't be cold like this. I think? We'll need to get a proper rubbishcollection. And a baby seat. He'll need to get his driving license. He'll need

to drink less. He'll need to give up smoking in the house, at least. No altogether. It stays on your hands and on the walls and things. We'll needto move house. We'll need to find a school, you have to enrol veryearly. Should we homeschool? Would I be able? I think so. But then hewouldn't be socialised. I could put him in lots of groups. But that costsmoney and school is free. More or less. It would still be cheaper to keephim at home than to send him to school, and then we could use the extramoney for the groups. We will have no extra money, ever again.

I don't know how I feel about it, I mean I'm over the moon, I can't believeit, I'm overjoyed, you know? I'm the happiest man on the planet! But youknow, it's such a huge thing, I mean I know people do it every day, youknow, but it's my first time and it's a big thing, you know? I want to be . . .I want to be the best father I can possibly be, you know? I want to give herthe world, I want to spoil her rotten. I want her to have everything. I'mgoing to give up smoking. But in the meantime can I bum one of yours?


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Kathy DArcy is writer in residence with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre, Cork,and has published two poetry collections: Encounter(Lapwing 2010) andThe Wild Pupil(Bradshaw 2012). She studies and teaches Irish women'sliterature with UCC's MA in Women's Studies programme, and also teaches

creative writing. She originally qualified as a doctor, and now works withhomeless young people in Cork city.


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Denise Blake

Lighting the Flame

The paraffin lamp was a wedding present.A working ornament: a base of polishedbronze to hold the oil, a small dial to controlthe level of cotton wick, a pronged metal cricheld the glass chimney for flame and light.

The pair of us, in our early twenties,setting up home with matches, keroseneand open flame in our small living space.

Neither of us willing to ask the eldersfor advice on how to make the lamp work.

We caused smoke, and soot and nearly, a fire.The low yellow flame brought a dim glowunder the frosted-glass shade and no heat.We cast the lantern aside until we learnedof the net mantle hanging like a tiny birdcage.

We needed to place the mantle equidistant overthe base, strike a match, flash oxides off the surface.What remained was a delicate meshing,strong enough to contain fire and white-hot heat,create incandescent light from a small blue flame.

Denise Blakes second poetry collection, How to Spin Without GettingDizzy is published by Summer Palace Press. She is a regular contributor

to Sunday Miscellany RTE radio 1. She is on Poetry Ireland's Writers inSchools Directory.


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Morgan Harlow

Valerie

Valerie died before we reached the end of second grade. She lived at theend of a dead end road; a slope crowned with oak trees behind the housefell off on the other side into a sandy quarry, giving us the feeling we hadthe whole world to ourselves. On Valentine's Day of that year a heavypacking snow fell, and we built an igloo around the trunk of a locust tree inher backyard. In the course of our excavations in the snow we came uponthe leathery bodies of fallen locust pods. As if wresting them by hand fromthe icy Arctic Ocean, we pounced on them with our wet mittens and theyclung there, biting. We alternated coming to each other's rescue and being

saved until the monsters were defeated and then pressed, Simon Rodia-esque, into the walls of our domed hut.Our boots never thoroughly dried overnight or during the day in our

school lockers. By the end of the week, Valerie came down with a kind ofcroup. I wasn't allowed to visit her but her mother let her talk on the phone.Valerie said she was tired of Eeyore-ing as she called it, that heavingdonkey-like breathing that can oddly enough be a source of pride, aprivileged hallmark of sickness to an otherwise happy child.

Her voice was weak, and I asked What? What? and she started to cry.

After our last conversation, her mother got on the line. "Valerie is too sickto talk," she said. I heard Valerie in the background coughing and crying,and her father saying, "when you feel better."

That night I dreamed Valerie, thin and always cold, stepped through herbedroom wall, floated mid-air outside the window, and at last drifted overthe road barricade at the end of the dead end street, leaving the house andits surroundings--curled silver maple leaves blown against the front door,daffodils beginning to flower around the trunk of the locust tree--as thoughher existence there had been something not to be believed in, after all.

Morgan Harlows poems and other writing have appeared in WashingtonSquare, Seneca Review, The Tusculum Review, The Moth, and elsewhere. A

debut poetry collection, Midwest Ritual Burning (2012), is published in theUK by Eyewear Publishing.


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Hugh Fulham-McQuillan

Theme on the Character and the Actor

Consider three deaths: the historical assassination of the Roman EmperorJulius Caesar, the fictional recreation of that assassination in Shakespeare'sJulius Caesar, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Three principals feature. The first is Marcus Junius Brutus, the originalpolitical assassin. To avoid confusion, we'll refer to him by the name Caesaris said to have uttered with his last, blood drowned, breath: Brutus.

The second and third principals are among the greatest Shakespearean

actors in 19th century America: Junius Brutus Booth, and his son, JohnWilkes Booth. There will be no attempts to round out their characters inorder to empathise with them and/or better understand pivotal momentsin history. Aspects of their lives will be discussed, but only briefly and inrelation to events that are bigger than men. They will remain photographs,left in the sun for too long.

The centripetal force which propels these three principals and threedeaths is a fictional character. It is the Shakespearean role of Marcus Junius

Brutus. It is the spider at the centre of this web that manages, with its stickystrands, to pull together and compress vast tracts of time and geography.

This character contains aspects of the historical Brutus, for it is a role basedon his deeds. These aspects may be psychological, or physical. We are madeof atoms and molecules. They continue after we die and become parts ofother things or beings, until they die or are destroyed and so on. It is notinconceivable that these particles have a sort of memory, or that they maygravitate to that which is similar to one of their previous structures: the

role of Marcus Junius Brutus, played by both Junius Brutus Booth, and hisson, John. This is one possibility.

Another: popular psychology books state, to be confident, you have to fakeit till you make it. If this is true, then the minds of men who are paid to

pretend to be other people must be questioned. I cannot provide answers.I can only provide two excerpts and a quote.

The first is found in a letter from Junius to President Andrew Jackson in

1852: You damn'd old scoundrel... I will cut your throat while you aresleeping (he didn't).


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The second is taken from the diary of his son, John Wilkes Booth, a lesseractor but more successful assassin. It was written in 1865, days after killingLincoln: ...I am here in despair. And why; For doing what Brutus was

honored for ... And yet I for striking down a greater tyrant than they everknew, am looked upon as a common cutthroat.

When John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, he repeated a line, first uttered byBrutus, that echoes through centuries and continents: Sic semper

tyrannis. It is a cursed line. Tyrants -those who treat men like puppets-are rarely defeated. In fictionalising the Roman assassination, Shakespearefastened reality to fiction, creating a mbius strip, a trap from which JuniusBooth escaped. His son was less fortunate.

Hugh Fulham-McQuillan is from Dublin and is currently pursuing a PhD

in psychology. He has previously been published in The Irish Times, WordRiot and Power's 2012 Book of Short Stories.


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Eileen N Shuilleabhin

The Mountain

In my dreamsI still hear the windscorch the mountain sidepeeling granite ridges bare.Night sooths the bruisingseeping black slickened oilinto crevicesdistilling into air.I listen to an ancient

breathingburied here beneath this creaking world.

I light a bonfire on the hillsidekindling made of ragged scars.Flames fever at first then burstfall to embers.Heather and thistleloneliness like a death

bristles underfoot.

Ghosts of childrenplay among ruins.

Family faces familiaryet strange.Women barefootwash clothes in streams.

In my dreamsI still see the mountain.

Eileen N Shuilleabhin grew up in Carna in the Connemara Gaeltachtarea of Galway. She currently lives and works in Galway city as a socialworker and psychotherapist. Her work was previously published in The

Galway Review, Apercus Quarterly, Boyne Berries, Scissors and Spackle, andEmerge Literary Journal.


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Jessica Traynor

The Water Table

On my night-walk to the cityI taste water in the air;the river has escaped again.

Below me the vengeful seaforms water-table committeesthat mutter in the shores

and the approaching shadow,

hood up, shoulders rolling,could be the death of me

like the man whod stoodin Henrys Street that afternoon,crack-addled, screaming his love

for the children of Dublin.Shores shudder beneath my feet

as the city forms new cracks

along fault lines I cant see;as water rises throughhundred-year-old drains,

shell-shocked, frostbitten;as it pours through catacombed riversflooding our venom back to us.

The shadow lunges, laughs, is gone.Beneath us, the sea sleepsbefore the next great push.


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Jessica Traynor is from Dublin. Her poems have featured in Southword,Poetry 24, the SHOp, New Irish Writing and The Stinging Flyamong others.She has won the Listowel Single Poem Prize and has been shortlisted forthe Patrick Kavanagh Award, the UCD Anthology Award and theStrokestown International Poetry Competition and has had poems highlycommended at the iYeats Competition and the Fish Poetry Prize. She wasawarded a literature bursary from Dublin City Council in 2010 and

featured in the 2009 Poetry Ireland Introduction Series. She was thewinner earlier this year of the Hennessy Literary Award.


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Emily Cullen

Amaryllis

for Kevin

I descend the stairs to beholdyour Amaryllis, finally open.Morning light floods inupon the kitchen tablewhere two proud stalksare gallant sentinels.Bewitched, I touch

their elative petals:trefoils of carmine red,blooms of burnished wax.

I recall your gestures:how you raced round the cityto buy these flowers for our guest.We three sat drinking tea,willing their bulbs to sprout,

but she had to leave last night,before their world unfolded.

The amaryllis amplifyhow complete I feelto be loved by youfrom the inside out.Six yellow stamen whisperof your attention to detail,

alertness to the natural world.

Soon they will be pendulous,shedding, one by one.But I will rememberhow they hold their headson this stark December morning;how their sturdy eleganceirradiates everything.


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Emily Cullen is a writer, arts manager, harpist and scholar, currentlybased in Melbourne. In 2004 she curated the national Patrick KavanaghCentenary celebrations and was selected for the Poetry IrelandIntroductions series. Her poem 'Primavera', which features in her second

collection of poetry, forthcoming soon, was recently chosen as 'poem of theweek' by the Australian Poetry organisation.


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Evan Costigan

Udders

Unsure which way to look when the Mongolianmother lifted her top on the bus, he fixed onthe puckering space between baby and breast,appreciating the shape and size of bottle teats,until breasts flopped from everywhere.

He was back to topless models under teenage mattresses,reflections of boys with busy elbows in the rewoundand replayed shower scene in Playmates of the Year 1990;

when two-dimensional breasts in textbooks drew titters,and the rumour that girls with curls had bigger nippleseventually proved unfounded.

Uncurling her top, she stared his way with a smile,but he looked away with a shudder of shamewhere a herdsman was driving sheep and goatsthrough pampas grass towards humpy hills,and resolved to stay on in this landscape

until thoughts had pasteurised, and he could lookupon the breast as just another udder.

Evan Costigan has had poems published in New Irish Writing, Cyphers, TheMoth, Cirt Annual and elsewhere. He won the 2012 Francis LedwidgePoetry Awardand has been shortlisted in several competitions, includingthe 2013 Listowel Writers Week Single Poem Competition. The recipient ofa poetry bursary award from Kildare County Council Arts Office in 2012,

he was a featured reader at the Art Bar Poetry series in Toronto, Canadarecently.


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Chris Murray

Dark Pool

Ripple-skiffed by bird and stoneTree is held in Dark-water,

The flowers fight up.

Chris Murray is a City and Guilds stone-cutter. Her poetry is published inRopes Magazine, Cranng Magazine, The Burning Bush Online RevivalMeeting (Issue 1), Carty's Poetry Journal, Caper Literary Journal, CanCan

(WurminApfel), Bone Orchard Poetry, Women Writers Women Books,

Southword Literary Journal, and the Diversity Blog (PIWWC, PENInternational Women Writer's Committee). She has reviewed poetry forPost(Mater Dei Institute),Poetry Ireland Reviewand Writing.ie. Her poetry

blog is Poethead.She is a member of the PEN international Women WritersCommittee, and is web-developer for the Irish PEN Committee.
http://poethead.wordpress.com/http://poethead.wordpress.com/http://poethead.wordpress.com/


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Graham Connors

Real Words

for Colm

He told me with words,his own words, the real wordsunhappy and scared.I didnt have to gleanmeaning from a lookor a half-cocked smile.He didnt try to hide it,

he didnt lie about itor how he felt.But I didnt believe him.I dismissed his wordsas just that - words.I laughed it offyoull be fine, buck-up,get back on the horse.What a thing to say

to a friend who was askingfor my help, for my hand.

Three weeks later he was gone.And what I wouldnt givefor that hand right now?

If I had those three weeksId listen and Id tell him

that he is so importantand I would be usingreal words.


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Graham Connors has previously been published in wordlegs magazine, 30Under 30 Anthology, Allegory magazine, Under Thirty magazine, The

Bohemyth, The Lit Garden, Link magazine and long-listed for the DoirePress International Chapbook competition. He is the founder and editor ofNumber Eleven Magazine as well as contributing editor for the DublinInformer newspaper. He successfully staged his first play, The Mortal

Pitch, in both Wexford and Dublin. Originally from Gorey, Co. Wexford, hehas lived in Dublin for the last ten years.


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Nancy Anne Miller

World Fair 1957

The large globe showingonly continents on a wire meshof circles, so modern in the 50s,today looks like a large baseballcoming undone as I travel Route 8.

I remember attending, tastingmy first cotton candy, a dyedpink bee hive hairdo, mimicked

the peak my locks streaked upinto as I rode the roller coaster

down. The merry go round steelponies chromed as American carsand just as flashy, eyes bright asheadlights, stirrups trailed leatherlike mud flaps on trucks passing.

I won a teddy I was too old for.My father relived his USA child-hood while we ate popcorn sodelicately, as if it was foam pack-aging his memories were boxed in.

Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet with an MLitt in Creative Writingfrom University of Glasgow. Somersault, a poetry collection about Bermudais forthcoming from Guernica Editions(CA). Her poems have appeared inEdinburgh Review (UK), The International Literary Quarterly (UK), Stand(UK), Mslexia (UK), The Moth (IE), A New Ulster (IE), The Fiddlehead (CA),

The Dalhousie Review (CA), The Caribbean Writer (VI), Journal of Caribbean

Literatures (USA), The Caribbean Quarterly (JA), Postcolonial Text (CA)

Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Language, Literature and Culture (PR), andtongues of the ocean (BS) among otherswithpoems forthcoming inAgenda

(UK) and Magma (UK). She is a MacDowell Fellow and teaches workshopsin Bermuda.


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Doireann N Ghrofa

Elegy for a City Tree*

Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs. From myfavourite spot on the floor, I look up at the blue sky and the chestnut tree.

Diary of Anne Frank, 23rd February 1944.

Behind the bookcase in an airless annexe,Anne sits on the floor. Cold creeps into her bones.Through magpie eyes, she stares at the sky,imagining the whispered symphony of leaves.Above, treetops swing and sway.The flutter of a leaf is a beckoning finger,a green key. She imagines herself becominga wooden woman, sinking toes like rootsto drink deep of soil, to squirm among worms.Each night she dreams of green:the caresses of sunlight and starlight,the squawking quarrels of crows,the swell and growth of glossy nutslike the prickle of a first adolescent blush.Under a harsh bark, spiral rings spinas concentric circles hum like a heartbeat within.Tattoos of time revolve around her sapling core.She can almost hear the swirling spin of stories toldechoing silently around those that are yet to unfold.

*The tree Anne Frank saw was a white horse chestnut, over 170 years old. On August23rd 2012, the tree fell.


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Doireann N Ghrofas poems have appeared in many literary journals inIreland and internationally, most recently in France, Mexico, USA, Scotlandand England. The Arts Council of Ireland has twiceawarded her a literature bursary (2011 and 2013). She was a winner ofWigtown Gaelic poetry contest, the Scottish National Poetry Prize in 2012,shortlisted for the Jonathan Swift Award and Comrtas U Nill both in2011 and 2012. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series.Doireanns Irish collections Rsheoid and Dlasairare both published byCoiscim. Her pamphlet of English poems Ouroboros has recently been

selected for the longlist of The Venture Award (UK). Her website iswww.doireannnighriofa.com
http://www.doireannnighriofa.com/http://www.doireannnighriofa.com/


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Mike Gallagher

Smoker

It was the way she asked, I suppose,casual like - yeah, that's what caught usby surprise: Kathleen, giz a fag. Not oneof her own brood, note - wouldn't give us thesatisfaction. She had never smoked, railedagainst it, and all of us smoking like troopers.No, she asked the daughter-in-law. Light!Strange that, not even a splutter; didn't inhale, mind,(we could tell), but still, not the splutter you'd

expect. Just sat there, casual like, in her chair bythe fire while all around her the laying oftable, the grandkid's scribbles, the reading of paper,even the nine o'clock news, stopped. Dead.No one spoke. Oh, we all glanced - askance at her, quizzicallyat each other. Some raised eyebrows. Half way through,she flicked it fire-ward. Pressed the pause button.Life re-started.I'm glad I stole the photo. Still look at it. Glad I caught

the mischief in the eye, the fun-of-it-all curl of the lip,the rebellion on the tongue, unspoken, daring a challenge:Feck ye all, I could smoke, too, if I wanted to.

Mike Gallagher was born on Achill Island, Co. Mayo but now resides inLyreacrompane, Co. Kerry. His poetry, stories, songs and haiku have beenpublished in Ireland, throughout Europe and in America, Canada, Japan,India, Thailand, Nepal and Australia. His work has been translated intoChinese, Croatian, Dutch, German and Japanese. He won the Eigse MichaelHartnett viva voce contest in 2010, was shortlisted for the HennessyAward in 2011 and for the Desmond O'Grady International Poetrycompetition in 2013. He is the editor of thefirstcut, an online literary

journal. His first collection Stick on Stone was recently published by RevivalPress.


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John Saunders

Out of Date

We are huddled in a grassy hollowwhere some beast has left its shape.The clouds are a whirlpool of confusion,what blue we can see is filled with emptiness.

Wrapped in the worth of each otherwe try to mend our threads of imperfection,brush out the matted yarn of history.Your bones press against me like daggers.

I wish I knew now what I once knewwhen I was lit by the light of youth,before I became another memory,a one man band of out of date stories.

John Saunders first collectionAfter the Accidentwas published in 2010by Lapwing Press, Belfast. His poems have appeared in Revival, The MothMagazine, Crannog, Prairie Schooner Literary Journal (Nebraska), SharpReview, The Stony Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, Riposte, and on line, TheSmoking Poet, Minus Nine Squared, The First Cut, The Weary Blues, Burning

Bush 2, Weekenders, Poetry Bus andpoetry 24. He is one of three featuredpoets in Measuring, Dedalus New Writerspublished by Dedalus Press inMay 2012. He is a member of the Hibernian Poetry Workshop and a

graduate of the Faber Becoming a Poet 2010 course. His second collectionwas recently published by New Binary Press.


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Keith Payne

The yellow paisley scarf

Youre sitting on a rock by the side of the roadI know you from the fag crutched in your hand,the faded gold packet ofBenson & Hedges you offer me.I catch the cast of your eye and know youre not there,youre elsewherewhere youre life wasnt stopped in its tracks.

Instead of falling to the floor that Sunday morning- as they tell it

you picked up your paisley scarf,patted your breast pocket for your smokes,placed a kiss on your wifes cheek- your kids crownsstepped across the threshold and out the door.

But something had to give that beat that your heart skippedthat dropped you to the ground

and with the hundred pound you left meI took Spanish grindstrying to work out the difference between the simpleand imperfect past.And this paisley scarf I wear about town.

Keith Payne lives in Salamanca, Spain. His poems have appeared inAlimentum, Incorrigbly Plural, Mombaa, The SHOp and The Stinging Fly,among other publications. Most recently, poetry translations appeared inForked Tongues: Galician, Catalan and Basque Womens Poetry in

Translations by Irish Writers, Ed. Manuela Palacios, (Shearsman, 2012,) andThe Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. He has also translated stories byArgentine Alan Pauls for Mountain-Islandglacier, (Broken Dimanche Press,2012,) and Catalan Victor Balcells Matas from his collection Yo matarmonstrous por ti, (I will kill monsters for you, Delirio, 2010,) one of which

is forthcoming in The Stinging Fly Translation special edition, Summer,2013.


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Marion Clarke

Cantrer Gwaelod: The lowland one hundred (A Haibun)

According to legend, between the islands of Bardsey and Ramsey on the westcoast of Wales, a sunken kingdom lies twenty miles from the shore. In an earlyversion of the tale that appeared in Llyfer du Caerfyrddin, the Black Book ofCarmarthen, the land was lost to floodwater when Mererid, the maiden of thewell, succumbed to lust and neglected her duties.

stream of moonlightfrom the lip of the well

water gushes

A later story attributes blame to the keeper of the sluice gates, Seithennin,who was a notorious merrymaker. One night, at spring tide, a storm blew upand huge waves pummelled the sea wall, but Seithennin did not stir from hisdrunken stupor and the sea swept through the open sluice gates, submergingthe land.

heavy rain.beside the rockpool,

a limpet ticks

Contemporary explanations cite the memory of gradually rising sea levels after

the ice age as the cause for such folklore, although the sunken forest at Borthand Sarn Badrig seem to suggest that some great tragedy did overcome acommunity there, giving rise to the myth.

frosty nightall the stars in the sky

in the sea

Today, local people say that if you listen closely you can hear the bells of thelost city ringing out from beneath the water of Cardigan Bay.

Sunday morningmy father's voice

calling us for mass


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holiday breakup ...her cheeks bruisedby the breeze

Marion Clarke is a writer and artist from Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland.She is a member of the Irish Haiku Society and her poetry and fiction hasfeatured in several print anthologies and online journals including TheLinnet's Wings, theviewfromhere, The Heron's Nest,A Hundred Gourds, Notes

from the Gean,Shamrock,Alight Here: The London Tube Project, The Poet'sPlace, Issas Untidy Hut, The One Word Challenge Anthology, AHA Anthologyof the American Haiku Association and most recently Bamboo Dreams. In

summer 2012 she received a Sakura award in the annual VancouverCherry Blossom Festival haiku contest.


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Nell Regan

Limen

Rain has bitten away much of this month

but left us this foot-lifting morning, glistening, with its evening like anopeningpalm or attenuated mind. Above us, ridgeswhere each next sighted peak promises renewal, the city a coastling in itsbays andsight of the sea recalls a fatheron the strand, his last child inhis arms. Look - waves.

Thinks. Like this. He extends and moves his arm.

They stand at the watersedge, wrists flexing over thresholds of meaning.

Nell Regan has published two collections of poetry, Preparing forSpring and Bound for Home, both with Arlen House. Her work has appearedin Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, The Iowa Review and Poetry Daily andbeen translated into Russian and Chinese. She has also published non-fiction. She was an Fellow at the International Writing Programme, IowaUniversity in 2011 & lives and works in Dublin. See also

www.nellregan.com.
http://www.nellregan.com/http://www.nellregan.com/


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Gragir Dill

Dawn Birds

For Alfred J. Hitchcock

Night ebbs to a limewash lie, warm duvet of sleep and its memoriesslip down to the floor. Hooded crows rap my windowwith imperious caw, with a hate I cannot fathom. There is no reason inthis.

I lie there, try to understand, put some parts together,co-ordinate response - catapult, poison, needles pushed in window frame

all tried before (this is not their first campaign), all failing.

How can I hold to some semblance of my sanity as their smearsopaque my window with their slime spit, faeces, semen -or is it blood? They go on some crow message in their smart black shirts,leave me, failed scarecrow lying there,checking my responses, physical, emotional.

Then comes low, below my radar,belling nightmare call -the owl.


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Movement

Wind moves in a golden harvest field,each ear admits the sway, moves in slow swing.

Small cloud-shadows on the shining surface of the baya prussian blue, the sea foams with remaindered lace;

Sky is not alive above the moving cloudsthough vapour trails gash eastwardand the burnished sun goes west.

Distance driving on good roads,your thigh in parallel some inches from my own,

your hand restless as I tend the wheel,shift the gears.Too long, and silencestiffens like cloth unwashed.Too much.

The road grows small and twiststhrough purple hillsaround a bend; then, attent on roadside fencepost, watchful,

a sparrowhawk at an angle from the transverse wire,from the vertical.

I slow to stop, he looks at me through the screen,shows me how to fly.

Gragir Dill teaches contemporary Irish poetry in the University

of Ulster, is a much-published poet in Irish with a recent secondcollection in English Outward and Return, (Doghouse).


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Anthony Hegarty

To This of the Other I Am Too: Another Psalm for David

How surely gravitys law,strong as an ocean current,takes hold of the smallest thingand pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Rainer Maria Rilke.

Our embrace as beings is so huge,So Spirit held,To this of the other I am too,

And therefore safe.

Its not yet light.Just a few hours since we touchedTo discover distancing, a moving away,Not a culmination but a draining down, an emptying outInto this not-dawn-departure for your flight.

And will we hug before you go?

You dressed for the street I in my underwearAnd this canal-side roomAt the top of the steep stairNarrow, closing in, a losing of all space,Of that space it never really had.Too tight even to trim your toenails in.

And will we kiss before you go?Just that gentle token of touched breath

I have come to know,But you, already light years on,Are expanding outward whispering,(Softly as you can)It isnt necessary.


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The Rilke that you read,Seated in that timbered room,(Though I thought you should have stood)With its old leaking roof

Blest by the summer sun,You read surely, how surely,Gravitys law takes hold,And pulls us towards its heart.

And I suppose with that embraceBeyond this,Beyond all of this,What need have I of this declined kiss?

Surely I have that hug of gravity,That safe pull towards the heart.To this of the other I am too.But safe no, shortly it may let goWith all that unexpected lightness of flightUnravelling, unbraiding and whispering,(Softly as she can)It isnt necessary.

And somewhere at my spines endI feel a lessening, a chill,To this of the other I am too.

Anthony Hegarty is an ecopsychologist and writer living in CountyGalway. He has written for The British Psychological Society TranspersonalPsychology Review(Spring 2012) but this is his first attempt at publishing

his poetry. His Masters degree thesis was about the therapeutic effects ofswimming with dolphins off the West Coast of Ireland.


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Noel Duffy

Old Shoes

I hadnt seen you in three years, your visitto Dublin from rural south Devon markeda holiday as much for me as you.

We met in Rathmines where we once livedand went for coffee to escape the rainthat drove you from this country and my days.

You had a box with new boots, bought

to replace the worn out shoes that you hadwhen we were still together. On our way to my flat

the rain returned and your feet got wet.You threw off your old shoes for the new,and asked me to toss them in the bin

these shoes that had that had taken youto Guatemala, Oman, the dark woods

of Wisconsin and the darker streets

of London till, finally, your wanderlust spent,the refuge of rural England. It lashed againthe morning you left, your new boots keeping you

safe against the elements and, I sensed, me.We parted with an unconvincing embraceand promise to speak, whatever love we once had

having walked its course and reached its end,the feeling worn out like your old shoes in my bin.I was relieved when the garbage men came.


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On Light

Truth is sought for its own sake... Finding it is very difficult

and the road to it is rough. For truths are plunged in obscurity.

Alhazen (965CE/354AH 1040CE/430AH), Doubts Concerning Ptolemy

Ibn al-Haytham, known to all as Alhazen,sits in his chair looking at the windowopposite him, the rectangle of light revealingthe jasmine tree in his small garden, finally in blossom.

Hes been under house arrest for nearly tenyears, this window and its light particularlyfamiliar to him. He had once promisedthe sixth Fatimid caliphate and their Caliph,

Al Hakim, that he could regulate the floodwatersof the Great Nile by means of a dam. Al Hakimbelieved him and gave him everything he neededboth in terms of materials and men yet even the great

Alhazen soon recognised that it was a doomed

plan and feigned insanity of mind and purposethere in the heat of the delta to have his lifespared as the water flowed by him, unstoppable.

And thus he sits here in his chair oppositea window he knows too well. Yet when he looksat it he doesnt feel anger or regretfor the years lost in this room; no, for Alhazen

has used this time well, conducting manyexperiments on the nature of light, the daylightfrom this window the only source he needed.Here he has written his masterpiece on optics

outlining research and offering experimental proofson refraction, reflection, spherical aberration,parabolic mirrors and the magnifying power of lens.Yet, one experiment stands above them all,


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evidence to overthrow a millennium of opinion.Alhazen had simply placed a thick, black fabricacross the window and secured it tightly, then madea small aperture at its centre, the rooftops

and mosques of the city suddenly projectedupside down on the wall opposite, showingfor certain that light travels from an objectto our eyes in straight lines and by no other means...

Alhazen, though, feels different today.He has just heard of the Caliphs deathand with that news he is free to leave this enclosure.

So he sits in his chair looking at this window

for the final time, nostalgic for all it hasgiven him. He stands at last and turns to the door.He thinks he might like to go to the marketand buy fresh pomegranates.

Noel Duffy studied Experimental Physics at Trinity College, Dublin, beforeturning his hand to writing. He co-edited with Theo Dorgan Watching theRiver Flow: A Century in Irish Poetry(Poetry Ireland/Poetry Society, 1999),and was the winner of the START Chapbook Prize for his collection TheSilence After in 2003. His collection In the Library of Lost Objects waspublished by Ward Wood, London, in 2011 and was shortlisted for the

Strong Award for best debut by an Irish Poet. His second collection, OnLight & Carbon will appear in autumn 2013, again with Ward Wood.


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Kevin Conroy

Odonata Lampyridae *

There were glow-worms in the ghostly bushes,fireflies flashed in synch, as you pulsedthe humid air with words my lightening lucifer touching, just enough, now here now there.

There were dragonflies along the river,blue-bright tandems in tight embrace,as I winged it humming in the jewel-bright airseeking a touch, a thrill, a chase.

You were lightning fire, a big eyed dragon Iout to euphemise an Odonata and Lampyridae;your cryptic light in words I cannot matchin any way our worlds can ever touch.

*Fireflies (Lampyridae) or glow worms are beetles that use synchronous flashingpulses in courtship communication to select compatible mates; Dragonflies (Odonataor toothed one) are insects of a different order top predators of insects.

Kevin Conroy lives in Naas, Co. Kildare and has published in The SHOp andThe Moth. He was also the recipient of the inaugural 2012 Poetry Ireland /

Trocaire poetry competition award.


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Tyler Farrell

Three Family Rummage

Signs sang locals up the crest of Hill Cr.with the deal hungry who looked and soughtwhat and where did those hubcaps come fromwhile we sat grandmas lap on the davenportgreen for sale the back porch, in and out of kitchensgarage boxes filled with old shirts and coatstoys and useless trinkets, dishes priced at top dollar.My mother, my aunts tailoring every one time needcounting the money in the box, joy to squelch

the haggler. WellI couldnt take anything lowerthan twenty dollars for that coat. Its brand newand the seed company patch is quite unique.

And the kids are looking at the toys and I amtrying on an old shirt of my grandfatherswhile the poker face people hit the pavementwith some old junk for a few dollars here andsprings Veronica pushed on an elderly lady

with a walker thinking her neighbor boy couldfix her bed with them. And Father Upanupout of his classics lurking in the booksready to ask for them, a donation to the churchperhaps. All the while my aunts holding ontostuff out of spite. She laughed at the ridiculous offerof fifty cents for a Monopoly game. And hereI thought the idea of a rummage sale wasto get rid of stuff, to clean house, to unburden.

But, as always, my family would considerthe money angle, greed over clutter. A thoughtglory flash of timing and profit, old supply soldto the poor and the needy, the selfish and greedy.


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Tyler Farrell was born in Illinois and grew up in Milwaukee. He haspublished poems, essays, and reviews in many periodicals, and abiographical essay for James Liddys Selected Poems (Arlen House, 2011).He teaches writing and literature at Marquette University and currentlylives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife Joan and their two sons. He has

published two collections of poetry with Salmon, Tethered to the Earth(2008) and, his most recent, The Land of Give and Take (2012).


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Anjumon Sahin

Some useless notes or the two voices

Notes from a night walker once I foundIn the dark green bottom drawer of my old apartment.I walk in the black of the night day after day and find you day after day.It was time to move; time to scrape what was needed and discard theuseless.So it does not matter that you are not the same for I am not the same either.In three years how did I never see these loose brown sheets?I sit in the bright light of the day night after night and I am invisible to you

night after night

Did she know me? Did she know that I was gonna be there?So it does not matter that you cant see me for I cant see my reflection often

enough.I am sure they were meant for me, meant for me to be read and meant forme to be read sooner.To my dearest me,I had to read them, know the story that they tell and know it now.Emily did not relent till she found the old-little boy, why should I?The way my tongue rolls and the way it goes back all the way to my throat

and releases itself creating the vibration that makes the ear drums dance.There is no name, it just says me.Gauguin gagua or was it linguine, I do not understand the words but I like

the rhythmMy rooms never been this naked before; not even the painting of the black

lilies is left here.I concentrate on the smells in my room not on you and when I cant buy them

I draw them.Am I the me she is referring to?

I draw them in all colours and shapes and imagine their smells floating in myhead.Pages of obtuse commentary on clouds followed what I could vaguelydecipherI kept his red sock, they remind me of the day when I had a Blueberry kulfi,

saw the water and did not climb the stairs.Maybe it is time to go, leave behind the sheets just like the old placeNew Year is new when old people are with you.But we do have to begin anew

I restore it to where I found it, no receivers to find here.I knew you would leave me, I knew it was only a matter of time,


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So it does not matter for I remember only the smells and the colours and the

words.The last line that the right corner of my left eye caught was writtenIn the bottom left corner, a tiny note: Use Silk threads instead of dental floss.

She was a no one.I will still be me, eating Kulfis, sitting here swimming in the sea of my own

story.No mystery, no history, no story. It was a waste of time.

Anjumon Sahin is originally from Assam, Northeast India but has lived inDelhi since 2007. She is currently pursuing her M.Phil degree in English

literature at the University of Delhi where she also works as an assistantprofessor.


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Chimera Lay

No translation

I want to live where rain strikes hard,but doesnt sting my face if I talk back.Where clouds have holes for climbingthrough to escape from everythingonce good that you have broken.I have a secret place betweenmy ear and neck, where it is softand knows a language you cannot translate.Its been touched many times before

but on the way to something else.I wonder sometimesif my skin will forgetyour carelessness.When you come close,to watch the tearsspill from my eyes,run down crows feet,into my ears; your words

wash far from comprehensionand I know its best to say nothing.Like lonely men perched alongthe bar, hands wrappedaround a beer grownwarm; like sittingwith a song that keepsme in the car longafter the engine

has stoppedrunning.

Chimera Lay can occasionally be found panning for answersin the mountains of the Beara peninsula.


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Francis OHare

Street Music

O cold, wet streets of Newry,on a rainy Friday night,glistening with mystery,under streetlamps, starlight,your names compose a litany,a prayer, a lonely flight

beyond the valley-vapour,chip shop, taxi-rank,

night-club, pub, river,canal, cathedral, bank,town-hall, courthouse, Ulster-bus station, dank

small-town air pervadingmy soul like John Coltraneon Spiritual, the tinklingjazz-piano strain

gently harmonisingwith horn, like wind and rain

that blows and falls through allthese streets, this town, this me -alert, observant, neutral,aware of historyand Wallace Stevens angelof necessity; poetry

in tune with what is here;lovers late night rows,shouts for taxis, laughterspilling out of shadowslike rain from a shop-front gutteraround midnight nows


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the time for me to listen,in this almost-silence,to the sound of falling rainon wet streets, its soft opulence

a rich drip-drop refrainheard after the last note ends;

River, Quay, Canal,Mary, Mill, O Hagan,Dominic, Talbot, Castle,Baggot, Barrack, Catherine,Chapel, Church, John Mitchell,Kiln, Kildare, Monaghan.


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Astral Weeks

A sweetheart from another life floats there -

W B Yeats

As long as this music existsIll be twenty-two and wandering througha cherry-blossomed avenuein leafy-with-love that loves to love Belfast,

an impromptu symphonyof starlings and skylarks constantly singingsoul-paeans to the sunshine, church bells ringing

out in epiphanythe sweet, sweet, summer-time of the past,until out of sea-myst-ical evening, mysteriously, you shimmer,

vision-like, sauntering, your perfume driftingthrough my mind like guitars,

the first silent starsin sapphire skies glistening, heavenly, listening

to the wind and the rain in my soul, sense-transcendentof, ballerina-like, pain,to breathe in your hair, to be born again,my arm round your waist in that pure instant

in the lilac and bluewonder of being, in cool night air,and we forget who we werebefore we were here, wet with raindrops and dew,

in the eternal now,cherry-blossoms falling weaving arabesques of feelingas we stand at a railing,a train blowing out its harmonica solo,


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and then well have kissedas we watch the moon shineover Shalimar, feeling almost divineas long as this music exists.

Francis OHare, born in 1970 in Newry, Co. Down, was educated atQueens University Belfast, and University of Ulster, Coleraine; he nowworks as a teacher. He co-authored Outside the Walls (An Clochan Press)with Frank Sewell in 1997. A selection of poetry was included in PoetryIntroductions 1 (Lagan Press, 2004). His poetry collections include: Outsidethe Walls (An Clochan Press 1997); Falling into an O (Lagan Press 2007)

Alphaville (Lagan Press 2009): Somewhere Else (Lagan 2011) and Homeand Other Elsewheres (Evening Street Press, US 2011). His forthcoming

work, My Bohemian Fantasy, will shortly be published by Lagan. His workhas been widely published in magazines in Britain and Ireland.


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Afric McGlinchey

Walls

That roar might be the ocean outside, but just as oftenit seems to be occupying your head like echoesof last nights dream

And no matter how hard you rub, the windows wont clearand anyhow, theres all that rain, and wind battering and yesterdayit was hailstones, piled up against the front door like leaves in autumn

Were incubated, while walls shake and pipes rattle

perhaps the house will grow a prow and stern,set sail on these floods

Soaked socks, soaked boots, soggy laundry cloakingevery piece of furniture and steam rising,fire spitting, kettle hissing fourteen times a day

We make the treacherous journey to the creameryfor wood and plasterboard to put up a wall,

create a new study for writing

and even the men out in their yellows and spadesdigging ditches for the run offare wellie-deep in it, floundering

and it roaring down the fields, breaking through wallsthat have stood there for hundreds;feels like a planet thats changing its mind

and we take to bed early, sleep on late, our world shrinkingto six feet of safety, twined legs warm,wrapping us up like a package

but my body is seizing, the wheels barely turning,and yesterday you couldnt reachdown to the ground


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and our only comforts a bottle of wine and dinnerin front of the fire, the clothes, the sawdust,long planks of wood piled on the carpet

The night talks in its sleep, the soggy house drowning,the charm of crystal, the swallow,wearing thin

The day sealed in its grey blur, flits to a darkness was that it? Again? What did we do?Pressure building, like elephants pacing a room

And still it persists, between hailing and lashing, hands running on walls,

the scream thats kept down, like a dog clamouringjust for a walk....a walk...a walk.....

Afric McGlinchey grew up in Ireland and Africa. She is a workshopfacilitator, editor and reviewer and tutors poetry online atwww.africmcglinchey.com. Her work has appeared in various journals,including The SHOp, Southword, Poetry Ireland Review, Tears in the Fence,

Acumen, and Magma. Her debut collection, The lucky star of hidden things,was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry. She won the Hennessy Award for

Emerging Poetry in 2011 and the Northern Liberties Poetry Prize (USA) in2012. She lives in West Cork.
http://www.africmcglinchey.com/http://www.africmcglinchey.com/


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Susie Sweetland Garay

The interpretation of dreams

I look out the windowsurrounded by naked vinesand fog so thick I can no longersee the birds who used toswarm so joyfully.

It feels like its been agessince I walked under a blue sky.

I read a book once that saidas humans when we feel an emotion,while we are feeling itwe cant imagine thereever being a time when weno longer feel that thing.Though logically we knowits not true, we feel thatit will last forever,

the good or the bad.

Its that kind of fog.

When I was young friendswould come to me foran interpretation of dreams.

It was not hard.

There was meaningwaitingright belowthe surface,asking me to reach downand pull it up into the air.


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I wonder if I reach upinto the fogwhat kind of truthwill drip down on me.

Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay received aBachelors degree in English Literature from Brigham Young University,

spent some years in the Ohio Appalachians and currently lives in theWillamette Valley with her husband where she works in the vineyardindustry. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of

journals, online and in print, and is a founding editor of The Blue HourLiterary Magazine and Press, http://thebluehourmagazine.com/.
http://thebluehourmagazine.com/http://thebluehourmagazine.com/


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David Murphy

Files in Amber

According to those with knowledge frogmen, policemen, coroners certain factors prevent bodiesreturning to the surface: river temperature,tidal flow, clothing density, water depth.

Experts all agree: in winter conditionsa human body builds enough putrefied gassesto float after five hundred hours or so.

Five hundred hours a three week periodwhen the moon matures from new to old,when a small mammal gestates,when a hens egg evolves into a chick.

Twenty-one days the durationof a multi-stop, island-hop cruise the trip of a lifetime never won;

longer than nine miles submergedbetween jump and beach; a rate ofone two-hundredth of a mile per hour,by my dead and grim reckoning.

When she jumped at sunsetthe water must have been breathtaking.Gold flowed in veils above her head.Her eyes stared up: one fleeting look

at honey-layered eternitycolouring the river flowing downfrom Ladys Well, nectaring the waterwith amber tears of goddesses,of demons and nightmares.Did her whole life flash in front of her?


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That life I know so well flowsbefore me now, licks the soles of my feet,the base of my spine, ruffles the hairs on my head.

Never-ending ripples in the rivernudged her body to the shore;randomness of colliding tidesresulted in her discovery,the removal from beach to mortuary.

A nun in civvies covered the devouredside of her face. She dimmed the lights.I stepped forward to bend my head

in mute act of identification.

I recognised her in silhouette.

Three weeks, twenty-one days, five hundredhours one minute might have been enoughto heal the scars a word.

The past is more substantial these days.

Memories float in pools beneath my eyes denser, heavier, soggier.

Memories weighed down, embedded everlasting remembrances flowing inan alluvial computer; crystalised, glowing.Incorruptible files in memorys softest amber.

David Murphys poetry has been published in various magazines andanthologies in Ireland and abroad, including The Poetry Bus, StonyThursday Book, Every Day Poets, Boyne Berries, Minus Nine Squared,

Revival, About Place Journal and Indigo Rising. He is also a short storywriter and novelist. His website is www.davidmurph.wordpress.com
http://www.davidmurph.wordpress.com/http://www.davidmurph.wordpress.com/


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Neil Banks

Unsaid

I expected, being out the pier so early, and the storm already through itsgears to fourth, that Id meet no one, let alone himself.

Waves rushed in like row on row of white anger. I imagined them being theenraged souls of infantrymen sent over the top, gallantly advancingtowards oblivion doomed dashed against a wall of enemy fire. Eachwaves end was like another shell exploding.

The view beyond was largely whited out in a veil of spray and cloud, with

the island visible through it only in outline, like the future, or the face of abride.

Himself saw me and nodded, took out a fag. He tried to light up with hisshoulders hunched over, his hands cupped round match after match. Thewind triumphed every time.

He approached me then. Id asked nothing but he shouted to be heardabove the noise that non-stop noise bouncing off the low sky, like the

roar that hoors up the flue when air sucks under the fire and flames growfierce. That noise fairly bellows. Out there the sound was similar, but cold.

He was, he said, at the edge of despair. Hed traced his troubles back to aday last summer when he stood with you, looking out to the island. Out ofnowhere some demon made him wonder aloud how well he knew you, andyou he told me said with a sad certainty that you didnt think you andhe were quite the match, but that youd wait and see.

He was hunting this evil spirit now, hoping to throttle it and thus regainthe moment a second before hed opened his gob at all.

I cant forget his windblown head, his face red and wet from the cold andwind and spray. His small eyes gas-flame blue were mad with passion,alive with sparks like wartime nights. He told me ever since your queerexchange that things were tempestuous a good word, dont you think?Demented, he maintained, was the only word suited to him after so muchsearching for a way back to where his own words and yours could be

unsaid.


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Unable to hate him, I held open my coat, nodded at the matches in his hand.He leaned his head into my makeshift shelter. We were like soldiersourselves, chums. The sight of him there bowed before me and the start ofa bald patch on his crown almost cleaved my heart. He drew back, lit, and

asked me what diabolical cause had me abroad on such a wild morning,and was I demented too?

I left him yonder, smoking, sniffing around for demons. Back at the harbourall the boats held by strong moorings rolled this way and that, and thusmimicked your indecision.

This is your war, really; not mine, not his. When the battles done though,when your mind like that storm has settled, you will roll this way or

that, and one of us will have lost.

Neil Banks lives in Bray, County Wicklow. His poems have appeared in The

Stinging Flyand Shot Glass Journal. His fiction has been broadcast by RTERadio and published by New Irish Writing,Cranng Magazine and others.


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amon Mag Uidhir

Maisie

So he said there's not much goodin having a bee-loud glade andkeeping the double-glazing shut.

And I said you won't find meputting up with a draught.

Then he said you should just listento the bees and the birds.

And I said there's no birdsout there, only crows.

And he said crows are birds.

Then I thought what can I knithim for his birthday that hewon't like, that I can scold him

for not wearing, ungrateful pig,for the rest of his days?

And I said hand me downme knitting basket, will you?

And I thought I'll have the houseoff of him if he doesn'twatch out.

Then he said I've a thirst on methat'd cut a throat.

And I thought if only it'd cut yours.

But I said why don't you pop overfor a jar and see if your pals are in?


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And he said yeah I might in a while.

And I thought they're like childrenreally, though with a child you

can always look forward tothem leaving home for good.

amon Mag Uidhir is a Dubliner living in County Kildare. He has hadpoems published recently in Cyphers, The Moth, Cranng, Revival, andonline in Misty Mountain Review. He edited Icarus while attending TCD

during the 1970s and currently maintains an online shrine to the sonnetform atwww.sonnetserver.com
http://www.sonnetserver.com/http://www.sonnetserver.com/


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James Chapson

The Royals

I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not.But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? . . . pandas and

royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.

But arent they interesting? Arent they nice to look at?Hilary MantelLRB Vol. 35 No. 4 21 February 2013

Come quickly, children! Look!Its feeding time!See how the Royals pace about!

That black stuff the keepers are shovelinginto the trough? Thats caviar.

Watch how the Royals lap it up!Theres a shortage of it now, you know,

and when its gone the Royals might

become extincta shame, just when newbreeding stocks been introduced.

Enjoy them while you can. Those grizzledold ones wont be around much longer,and the darling young ones Im afraid

are accident-prone. Theyll never reachthe grave demeanor of the old,which is what theyre valued for; otherwisetheyre just one more endangered species

no one cares about.

Oh my! The young ones are at it again!Come along, children; weve seen enough.

Jim Chapson was born and raised in Honolulu. He has for many years beenliving in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his work is known only to a small

and rapidly dwindling cult. His most recent book of poems is PlotinusBlushed, from Arlen House, 2013.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/contentshttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/contentshttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/contents


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Kenneth Keating

What Im Looking For

for Mr. Gillis

I'm talking to myself at night because I can't forgetdancing to electric pop like a robot from 1984I said You look so fine that I really want to make you mine.I thought that I heard you laughing.

All my life I've been searching for somethinga bitter sweet symphony, it wasn't me,

when we touch, when we kissdon't tell me cos it hurts.

Touching you, god you're touching me,I love it but I hate the taste.I know that I should let go, but I can'tI got something to put in you, my empire of dirt.

By now you should have somehow realised

ashamed, lying naked on the floor,I'm into having sex I ain't into making love soI'm done, done, and I'm on to the next one.

Dancing to electro pop like a robot from 1984and I still haven't found what I'm looking for.


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The Peccable I

Marengo soon leads the me to a lake,Lac du Bourget, where the you occupied

gone out into the flaccid fixed outside -financial or perhaps economic -the guilty I swim in the your absencefloating and drowning peacefully beneath the our sheetssubmerged in temporary infiniteheld comfortingly, ensconced, dug inenveloped and posted to Land Foreign, Distant Position -Thebur - quasi nostalgic and realcovers cover the my face, the my body

embracing in suffocation of self.

Head swollen hard with thoughtsthoughts indescribable, indigestiblefingering, implicating the methe they it burst forward uncontrolled but desired -from the mess the I is driven outBlondi and Bella swimming-snapping at my heelsnaked masculine confused

the usual uniqueness unaltered and alteredbut the I will revert to normal.

The uncleansing shower, the implicationthe class, the you leaving for the workthe I sitting at the our homethe death the rebirththe breakfast the penitent I eatsthe she and the you

indescribable, indigestibleskin enveloped, exiles exiledand the peccable I tacitly sit and dream.

Kenneth Keating is a poet and academic. Originally from Navan, Co.Meath, he now lives in Dublin and has published in various journals.


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Mary Madec

Persephone: Coming of Age

At the end of the Spring season, she plays in the ragged grassesclumpy, uneven, wet like the hairs on the mount of Venus,

the sentinel peaks rising in the distanceby the tender early light, now her breasts;

in the waters of the inlets her arms and legsstretch like promontories.

She is aware of the suck and tug of the earthtaking her into itself, into its dark folds.

When she thinks of her hips, they are a boatcarved out of an old apple tree she remembers.

She longs for a river; she would give herself to its bed,its mud and stones like flesh and bones.

And she knows, as a salmon knows, that she would go with itinto the dark places water flows, on its way to the sea.

Mary Madec has previously been published in Poetry Ireland, the SHOp,Cyphers, The Recorder, Natural Bridge, The Foxchase Review, Iota, and TheStand(forthcoming). She won The Hennessy Prize for Emerging Poetry in

2008 and in 2010 her first book In Other Words was published by SalmonPoetry.


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About the Editor

Dr. David Gardiner is a writer and editor who has lived and worked inManhattan, Dublin, Coleraine, Chicago and Boston. He has been visiting

scholar at Boston College, New York University and the University ofUlster. From 2006 - 2010, he was founder and editor ofAn Sionnach: A

Journal of Literature, Culture and the Arts (New York / Dublin) as well asDirector of Creighton University Press where he published the works of PatBoran, Gerald Dawe, John F. Deane, Theo Dorgan, Eamon Grennan, SeamusHeaney, Derek Mahon and Paula Meehan, among others. He has writtenfive books, edited ten and authored over sixty journal publications. Hispoetry publicationDownstatewas published by Salmon Poetry in 2011. Hispoetry has been featured in publications throughout the U.S. and Ireland.

His most recent collection is The Chivalry of Crime.
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=20&a=20http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=20&a=20http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=20&a=20http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=20&a=20


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