A New Ulster 94

FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF Shahrooz Morakkabbati Langroodi. , Margaret Kiernan, Keith Woodhouse, Damien Carroll, Nina Quigley, Grant Tabard, Alison Black, Margaret O'Driscoll, Marzieh Mirzaei (trans Bawar Maroofi) and Stephen Kingsworth.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 94 August 2020

A New Ulster UPATREE PRESS

Copyright Š 2020 A New Ulster – All Rights Reserved.

The artists featured in this publication have reserved their right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Edited by Amos Greig Cover Design by Upatree Press Prepared for Publication by Amos Greig

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by Shahrooz Morakkabbati Langroodi, Margaret Kiernan, Keith Woodhouse, Damien Carroll, Nina Quigley, Grant Tabard, Alison Black, Margaret O'Driscoll, Marzieh Mirzaei (trans Bawar Maroofi) and Stephen Kingsworth.

CONTENTS Poetry Shahrooz Morakkabbati Langroodi.

Poetry Margaret Kiernan Poetry Keith Woodhouse Poetry Damien Carroll Poetry, Prose, Flash Fiction Nina Quigley Poetry Grant Tarbard Poetry Alison Black Poetry Margaret O’Driscoll Poetry, Artwork Marzieh Mirzaei Poetry Stephen Kingsworth Editor’s Note

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Shahrooz Morakkabbati Langroodi.

Shahrooz Morakkabbati Langroodi. When the first time I saw this title, I thought It’s a joke! Then I realized that it fits in with the soul of him. A post decorative modern Sufi, but verily modern. Sufi doesn’t care about style! So he writes poem, screenplays and anything that contain words and meanings. At the end I found it that yeah: maybe he is a Joker!

He was born in December 1990 in Langarud, Iran.

Some Shath of a Half-Dead Woman

by Shahrooz Morakabati Langeroodi

Translated by: Ali Naser

1 Human Being has to not forget these two: Being mad when logic there Reasoning when madness is

2 Will appear to the eye Goes straight to the heart A thing that blocks all paths To the good-evil's dense, instantly A thing like: the smell of ice and taste of wind

3 The bliss of the soul Is to be a cause to making heartbeats When there is no push, nor touch

4 Kindness?

A river Block it And swim in a bog

5 It is like scratching a wound When going backward to an order Deep in head It Drinks your soul Drop by drop And suddenly You find slaughtered moments there

6 Where is verve?

On all fingers!

Albeit can't dance,

But shaking

7 Flower blooms in the throat of the valley

Tree on the curve of the plain When stillness there

8 Pain is sweetheart When you find out There is no cure for Except by another pain That hides in a coming laugh

9 What is a moment?

A shake on sole Awakening of a dream Sleeping at sunrise On the edge of a valley

10 In corridors of the throat A slope was figure of night I was dropping it in my eye Sticking it to the soul Sometime like a tiny itch That was my friend came to the head bear through its bushes Alas! where is the night that morning has became an ice cube

11 Fog is your alas!

When removed from a path you were in

12 What this pomegranate hold inside

That melt a lot of frozen lava In my mouth

13 No species is known Like this man He barked to the universe From a womb Of a bitch

14 Is spring of the heart When poems get to the lips

then backward inside without any words Without any silence and no doubts!

1

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Margaret G. Kiernan Margaret has a Professional background as a Social Justice Advocate in Diversity and Inclusion. She is active in poetry at open mic events and public performance on Radio , cultural events and festivals and recently in competitions. She is published in an International collection by Black-lion Press and Cathalbui. Also, Pendemic Journal and, The Blue Nib, Literary Journal. She is a member of Over The Edge Poets and Ox Mountain poets.

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“Pig-slayer

Named after an Angel Michael has blue twinkling eyes under bushy brows owns a broad bladed knife ,he carries in a thong tied leather scabbard

His long boned freckled hands hold his stained brown hat beige mackintosh (coat) flaps around his tall frame when he limps.

Favours an up-ended barn door as abattoir bench shackled animal, tied by ropes screams to the wind.

Meticulous rasping as steel kisses stone blood curdling screeches echo back morning has ended, the butcher spits into the ditch he regrets not marrying.

(Margaret Kiernan)

3

Beyond the chiming clock after time is spun-out

drifting shapes, dissipate into the streetlight smog

days spent apart, each within that own space of being

relaxed, into observing small things the ginger cat washes its face

ignores moving, city traffic cat-time slumbering down

released slave to preying wanton charlatan

one eye captures a moving feather falling from a tree

purring, rubbing, staying put sunrays lull a deep ease

drunken state of being

4

fiction garnered into realness

drifts around, suspended from the view watches an ingrown toenail

sticking out from the plastic Chinese flip-flop, shoe

footprints of movement gone to ground.

(Margaret Keirnan)

5

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: KEITH WOODHOUSE

Keith Woodhouse classes himself as just another juggling poet I believe his poetry shows that he is more than just that.

6

GUITAR I don't think or speak, I communicate with my Guitar, Just another lonely Guitar freak, You are what you think you are.

7

JEWISH JUNKY A Jewish Junky, Very funkey, Wanking in Picadilly gents.

A bulging crotch, Thanks very much, He had not a grain of sense.

Took Him a Sheila, A potato peeler, Doing Turkey and very tense.

Till up one night, When her tights were too tight, They laughed at their own expense.

A Jewish clown With a boozy frown, And a diamond encrusted crown.

The Jewish lad, With a famous dad, Saw the whole thing going down.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Damien Carroll Damien Carroll is a child of Dublin. Born in February his horoscope suggests that he is honest and known for being one of a kind.

That line says everything about Damien, never believe in your horoscope.

Damien has been writing poetry for almost 3 years and is a member of the Dublin Writers’ Forum, where he shares his work and is guided by the wisdom of the group.

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Skimming his way through life The moment arrived.

Dad turned and threw the dollar shaped stone into the water.

I held my breath as he gave me my first lesson at skimming.

The counting started as the stone bounced over the glimmering clear lake.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

87 metres.

Then, it was gone.

My father, world champion skimmer.

The virus arrived.

Dad’s final days were difficult as he made his last pitches into the shimmering pools of life.

I held my breath remembering a lifetime of wonderful lessons.

The counting started as his breathing skimmed across the incoming sleep.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

87 years.

Then, he was gone.

My father, world champion Dad. (Damien Carroll)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: NINA QUIGLEY

Nina Quigley lives in Inishowen, Co Donegal, and writed poetry and fiction. Her poems have been widely published (PIR, HU, Force 10,) and won prizes, (Feile Filiochta, Charles Macklin Autumn School, Feile Chathal Bui.) Her poetry pamphlet “Legacy” was published

by Lapwing Publications in 2001. She read at Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series and the Earagail Arts Festival. She read her story “Episode” at a recent tenx9 event. She writes predominantly in English, but has won prizes for poems in Irish, Spanish and Italian.

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GIRL

A girl want open door, room for more with willow wash and root crush, sky yawn and long, lake skin crawl.

She love leaf brush, grass drub and tree tree hush when heron lift, cloud trawl and sky do fall.

Girl be like swan, still when air small, though dove crash and crow cough.

She be slow drip, deep call.

Be window for look, open book.

(Nina Quigley)

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SERVANT

Rain close the door. Out of here, I’m on.

Me own. Fat leaves watch my. What you look?

Drip, shake, sky trees high, skirts green me low.

I’m are mud and servantly walk, find one fallen,

downhearted, only welly can walk it round rounding pool.

Logs cord making face, mooning, long brown frown

making shape. I’m lakewater lip now, trickle drip.

Inch me booting round and down to dinnertime.

(Nina Quigley)

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NIGHT TO DAY

East goes. Pieces falls apart, no seams.

Daylight steals. West is long,

a night song yet of Prussian blue.

Dark blotting trees. Voices over by,

youthful plenty rolling the swell of fields to the greening hedge, me. Staccato

runners are the first now, yellow. Thicken to walkers, a flood. Families, one dog,

two. They call, greet the morning good.

Where the pavement starts I stand.

Get them off the road! Security, I try. But the road they own. Their way.

Back I go returning high viz, ID. Small spotting lights I see, tending

into the boreen they took. Perfect heart of tea lights on the mossy green.

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WASH

When I go downstairs you’re standing at the sink wrestling an unruly yellow plastic basin

that keeps bobbing up, sticking it’s face over the neatly dumped, sausage-like,

foetus-like twists of wrung-out clothes on the stainless steel draining board

that are crowding out the blue china willow pattern mugs tilted, hugging the rim

and the handleless delph cutlery jug with a shy teaspoon inside skulking low

and a lofty fork riding high. You’re wearing black on black and dark blue slippers

trodden down at the heels, and you’re washing, slow and systematic, a washing machine

for blue-checked cotton short-sleeved shirts, drab-green t-shirts and navy blue socks, 15

being rough-handled and snow-boarded in a miasma of biodegradable. When the kettle erupts

into readiness, I wet my tea, turn my back on all this damp industry and go back to bed.

(Nina Quigley)

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EDGY (Nina Quigley) A puff of wind enters through the landing window and coaxes the bedroom door open a crack, with the sound of tearing cloth. Paddy’s out for the count, enormous in the narrow bed, but wakes up abruptly, choking on spittle and a tickly cough. His mood plummets rapidly on his return to consciousness. The white cat slinks in purring and expectant. Paddy groans, “Fuck.” With a sigh he throws off the duvet. He’s lying on his side, and has to heave himself backwards to gain the necessary momentum to make his exit from the bed, but it all backfires badly and he winds up with a thump on all fours on the ground and staring at an underworld of dust devils, odd socks and wads of paper paper under the bed. He hoists himself up laboriously to a standing position with the support of the bedside locker, and plods flat-footedly and robot-like into the bathroom, where he releases a low-pitched drone of piss to spume and fizz yellow in the bowl.

He goes down the wooden stairs, remembering to duck his head to the side at the retaining beam, then on down to the kitchen, where the welcoming committee of two other cats waits, peering at him through the glass door, hungry and edgy. He slips his bare feet into the garden clogs, and heads out into the honeysuckle-textured evening past the china sink with its trembling plaque of cloudy silver water, the waxy dahlias, the pinking over-the-top white hydrangeas and the plundered raspberry canes. He walks with a square, clockwork gait, his ankles brushed by sage and dill. The three cats lead the way prancing down the gravel track, tails erect flaunting their pink and grey anuses, ears pricked backwards to attention and jostling to be first to the polytunnel where another cat, pale and ghostly has taken up residence and blanks him through the opaque plastic.

“Fuck, not another one,” he thinks.

17

At the polytunnel door the cats slip in through a crack while he wrestles with the rusty latch.

When he finally gets in, the sudden slap of heat on his face takes his breath away. Meanwhile, the cats are boiling with excitement at the feeding bowls, pivotting up and down on their paws like ballerinas practising point. With a testosterone yowl, the new boy come sauntering over the rows of garlic bulbs laid out symetrically to dry on the worktable, sperm-like with their tangled, shrivelled tails. The intruder usurps the first bowl as of right. He’s not feral, but he’s very big and butch, and covered in scars. He rubs his face against Paddy’s hand as he tries to dish out the food from the can, causing some of it to spill.

“Get back!” Paddy shouts. The other cats offer the rival a token hiss, but are quickly distracted when their bowls are filled, and soon all hands are intent on wolfing down the food.

Paddy walks out and closes the door, leaving the cats to their quiet industry, and heads back up to the china sink to wash out the can. His clogs make a satisfying crunching sound on the gravel.

At the sink the lid of the can sinks to the bottom of the water in the black plastic basin to join the others glinting there in a bed of silt. He rinses out the can, then fills it with water and sets it on the low, red brick parapet alongside two others. When he reaches up to slide the clean fork back to its place under a lath on the workshop door, something makes him look up, and there above him the heron is making his slow, unhurried passage across the sky, his two feet tucked neatly behind him, and his long neck leaning into the future. Paddy feels a stirring in his chest, an unaccustomed rush of excitement, hope.

He walks back to the house, dead-heading roses on the way, and in the kitchen he starts to prepare a pot of espresso. He shakes the beans into the tray of the old wooden coffee grinder and sits down, gripping it between his knees. As he grinds, his mind wanders back to the heron, it’s

18

broad pale underbelly, its effortless perfection, and again he feels the stir of excitement. When the coffee’s brewed, he takes a mug out to the workshop and sets it down on the workbench beside his tin of rolling tobacco. He sits down on an old kitchen chair, and takes his time rolling a cigarette, aware the whole time that he is being watched. When he finally lights up, he looks over to the silent witness that’s been watching him without comment. It’s a three-legged structure about four foot high, shaped like a elongated pyramid made of pieces of driftwood lashed together with fishing line.

At its pinnacle it has one green seaglass eye.

“Firewood,” he thinks with a frown, but he can’t look away. He’s been working on it now for months now, abandoning it many times for the distractions of the garden or his bed to escape the abiding sense of meaninglessness and futility that has been dogging him since the turn of the year.

“Iron in the soul,” he thinks, as he studies the sculpture. Behind him on the workbench is a twisted piece of metal that he salvaged from a pile of seaweed on the beach one angry, hailstonepitted evening in February. It’s as glamorous a rusted piece of iron you could hope to find, burning with reds, golds and ochres, and a pivotal role is earmarked for it as the heart of the cyclops. Paddy sits and smokes and studies his work, the angles, the posture, the attitude. All of a sudden it hits him that the cyclops standing there three-square and watching him, coiled and animated, is a dancer waiting to dance. Not male, not female, a dancer. About to dance, waiting all these sterile months.

He/she continues to watch him with one green eye as he smokes on smiling to himself. When the roll-up’s done, he stubs the butt out in the ashtray, and lifts the heavy piece of metal.

“Iron in the soul,” he thinks again, and reaches for the hand drill. “Ironheart.”

19

VINEGAR (Nina Quigley) She’s old and bent. There’s a decided hump to her shoulders. Osteoporosis. Her face is pinched and lined under a dry frost of hair. She’s alone, sitting on the metal bench outside the bus depot building. It’s another mild bright October morning. Saturday. A crowd has gathered, waiting for the eleven am express for Belfast. A chevron of wild geese is passing overhead in ragged flight northwards. She makes a simple movement, brushing her eye with the back of her right hand.

Evelyn, standing several feet away, turns from watching the labouring geese in time to catch the old woman’s gesture of self care, its small humanity. She feels the thump of loneliness in her chest and remembers another old woman in a hospital ward, a wizened face and that same timeless gesture. It shocks her, the force of her reaction. The feelings are still there buried but very much alive after all these years. Ten years now. The sense of dread and loss can come at you and have you gagging with grief at the most ordinary of moments.

When the bus pulls up, the passengers queue up and file on board after first stowing their luggage and prams in the hold. Evelyn climbs on board, telling the bus driver her destination, and places her bus pass on the ticket dispenser. It prints out a long slim paper ticket into her hand. She’s in her sixties, small and dark-haired, with close-set, restless eyes. Her movements are bird-like, quick and edgy. An unsettling feeling of alienation tracks her onto the bus. She sinks into a window seat to the left on the lower deck five seats from the front. Immediately she buries her face in an Irish grammar book, shutting out from her awareness her fellow passengers and the world outside the bus.

The bus sets off slow and weighty, and negotiates several sets of roundabouts before it 20

reaches the outskirts of the city at Altnagelvin Hospital. Evelyn’s eyes are rivetted on her book, and she doesn’t look up until the bus is picking up speed towards Drumahoe. She’s battling the rise of nausea in her gut and a tightness in her head. With every twist and turn of the bus, she’s been using the Irish grammar as a weapon to push down the unwelcome feelings triggered by the old woman.

She abandons her book, and leans against the cool, vibrating window glass. She detects the smell of vinegar. It’s emanating from somewhere near her. She wonders for an improbable moment if it is indeed coming from her, this acidic and slightly rank smell. The bus is clean, the seats leatherette and plush, the journey smooth, yet the smell of vinegar persists unsettling her even more. In front of Evelyn sits a young black woman whom Evelyn noticed earlier, queuing for the bus. From where she sits, all Evelyn can see of her is a slice of her black and white tweed coat and a segment of glossy corkscrew black curls. For a long moment Evelyn studies this calming composition in black, white and grey. She imagines herself reaching out and touching that healthy, vibrant hair, and wonders how it would feel. Perhaps she could take comfort from all that youth and vigour.

They are approaching Glenshane where fields, houses and hedgerows are giving way to rocky crags, heather and gushing water. The vibrations of the bus and the brown rush of the open landscape combine to create a rhythmic mantra in Evelyn’s mind. Field, forest, mountain, sheep.

Field, forest, mountain, sheep. Silently, she repeats the words over and over to herself, and soon sleep overtakes her, blotting out her unease. She wakes to a flurry of mobile phone conversations as the bus enters the city.

The traffic is heavy. At a set of traffic lights a bent old woman with her arms weighed down by shopping bags waits for the green man. She’s precariously close to the kerb as the bus speeds by, and looks vulnerable and lost. Later, at College Square, an elderly grey-haired oriental couple limp along on walking sticks past a royal blue hoarding. The bright yellow jaw of a digger looms over 21

them menacingly from the vacant lot behind.

“What’s with you today Ev?” she thinks. “All this frailty and isolation. Must be the day that’s in it.”

When the bus pulls in at the gate, she gathers up her white and yellow chrysanthemums, and thanks the bus driver on her way out. She leaves the Europa Buscentre by the side door and gets into one of the black taxis parked there. She tells the driver she’s going to the cemetery, and sits back to view the Saturday lunchtime crowds. There are people of all races. Belfast, like everywhere else in Ireland, has become truly cosmopolitan in the last decade or so. The cemetery is a high, windy place, overlooking a forest to the south. A slice of Belfast Lough to the north opens into the Irish Sea. A huddle of old graves crowds the hillside, each with its rectangular concrete bed. At the top of the hill the more recent graves are set out as a lawn cemetery. All around the lower perimeter are mature trees planted to commemorate those who have been cremated. Small metal plaques embedded in the turf in front of them bear the names of the dead. Evelyn asks the taxi driver to wait. He cheerfully agrees and takes out a copy of the Daily Mail.

Her boots sink disconcertingly in the soft, spongy grass. She walks to the red granite headstone that stands out among all the black. Taking off her glove she touches the top of the stone as she would someone’s shoulder. She feels nothing. No sense of connection. Only fast-moving images of the burials and her many visits down the years. They both died the same year, her father on his birthday in April after a gradual decline through Parkinson’s, and her mother in late October after a short but brutal illness. It was a roller-coaster. Today is her mother’s tenth anniversary. The base of the headstone is covered with an untidy slew of pebbles, shells and feathers, gathered on 22

beach walks near her home in Donegal. The sight of them makes her smile. She bends down to lift the heavy metal vase with it’s tangle of withered flowers, and carries it over to the tap. When she dumps the flowers into the bin, the stink of corruption catches her by surprise and darkens her mood for a moment. Holding her breath, she washes out the vase and fills it with fresh water. Back at the grave, she arranges the chrysanthemums, and organises the stones and pebbles to make them look less unruly and windswept. As an afterthought, she inserts the feathers into the flower arrangement and stands up to view her work. She’s satisfied. On the other graves around her there’s a wide assortment of grave ornaments. Teddy bears, children’s windmills, plastic flowers, angels, rabbits. There’s no accounting for taste. She knows her parents would be puzzled by her own beach offerings.

-

“Friedhof,” she thinks. It’s the German word for cemetery, literally a place of peace. Not

for the first time she marvels at how the peace process has won out here. The cemetery is truly nonpartisan, the headstones displaying names from both sides of the great northern divide. Her eyes drift over to a copse of trees fifty yards away. She glances at the waiting taxi and heads over to the trees. This is her favourite place at the cemetery. There are cherries, oaks and rowans. The ground is carpeted with rowan berries and acorns. She crouches down and quickly gathers up as many acorns as she can, stuffing them into her coat pockets. She’s excited. When she gets home she’ll plant each one in its own plant pot. In a couple of years’ time, when the saplings are hardy enough, she’ll plant them out in the wild some March day. She stands up and touches the trunk of the parent oak. She leans her forehead against it. For the first time today she feels a connection with something bigger and better than herself. She takes a deep breath and feels clean inside.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and takes her leave.

23

The journey back in the taxi passes quickly, speeded along by the oil of conversation. The current topic is the American presidential election. Hillary the hawk and the disaster that is Donald keep them going all the way to Botanic. The taxi drops her off at the Lee Garden Chinese Restaurant, where Evelyn has a table booked for 2.30. She always comes here after her cemetery visits. It’s packed as usual with big extended Chinese families. Large, round tables are spread with steaming bowls of greens, and platters of dumplings. The waiter takes Evelyn’s order, the daily vegetarian special. She asks for the Chinese setting and settles back to people-watch.

At 4.45 she pays the bill, and leaves the restaurant. As she walks back down Great Victoria Street, she passes empty businesses and offices. Hard times are here like everywhere else. There’s a vacant, depressed air about the place. Back at the bus centre there’s still plenty of life, with people queuing for buses, trundling suitcases, and saying last-minute farewells. She takes a seat beside her gate and waits. A portly middle-aged man stands up suddenly, his beer belly straining at his shirt and popping open a button. He stands very close to Evelyn and gives out to someone loudly on his phone. She can smell his sweat. Evelyn is thinking about moving when a little Indian girl sitting with her father next to her jumps up and offers her a wine gum.

“No thanks, darling,” she says. “that’s very kind of you, but you eat it love.”

They all smile at this exchange, the little girl, her father and Evelyn. The portly man talks on oblivious to the scene taking place right under his nose.

The return bus is a single decker. Evelyn gets another window seat on the left. She has a double seat to herself, so she takes her boots off and brings her legs up under her. Soon the bus is speeding along the M2 motorway. Outside the window, the glamour of evening is working on land and water. A light ground mist softens everything. Effortlessly. The bus grows dark and takes on a 24

surreal quality. The ceiling tiles are a metallic silver. Rows of spotlights line the centre aisle. Evelyn feels she’s being carried in the belly of a whale. At Castledawson she’s alarmed to see her black and white cat on a passing bus. But it’s only a mirage created by someone turning the pages of a newspaper. No Irish grammar tonight. She lets herself float in suspended animation through the two hour return journey. The Glenshane pass is a vast dark well of loneliness. Eventually the bus glides over Craigavon bridge above the glossy mirror of the Foyle. When the bus finally lurches to a stop, she’s the last passenger off.

Back in Derry, there’s a kind of frantic violence in the air, pre-Halloween Saturday night madness. It smells of fried food and cigarettes. Beer, perfume and petrol fumes. The last yellow leaves make starburst patterns on the pavement. People are shouting roughly across Foyle Street, and pubescent girls are tottering about in high wedge heels and short skirts. Their young legs are unevenly and glaringly fake-tanned. Hope and fury are imprinted on their grotesquely made-up faces. The Guildhall clock has a rosy blush. Evelyn walks round to the car park next door and gets into her car. Minutes later, as she’s driving over the invisible border at Bridgend. She reaches her right hand into the pocket of her coat, and fingers the acorns there.

“I’ll plant them tomorrow,” she smiles. It’s good to be going home.

25

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: GRANT TARBARD

Grant Tarbard lives in Laindon, Essex where he was raised and educated. He worked mainly as a computer games journalist before quitting in a blaze of glory.

He appeared on TV a handful of times on the channel Xleague, writing for them as well as a longer stint with Enemy Down to a membership of over 200,000.

Grant has been published (under various names including RT Dekko & Charles D’Mar) in numerous magazines, such as The Rialto, Neon Highway, The Journal, Sarasvati, Poetry Cornwall, Purple Patch, Earth Love, Mood Swing and others.

His work has featured in a small number of compendiums, including Dogma Publishing’s Miracle at St. Bede’s.

Also, he has had poems exhibited at his local gallery a number of times as well as at the Quayside gallery in Maldon, Essex.

He came first runner up at the age of sixteen in Ottakar’s National Poetry Competition with a poem entitled Delicacy

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A Handbook for Redemption 1.

Below are your redemption instructions: seek evening’s light, become a glebe of charred dahlias, slender wreaths beckoning dusk towards the navel of the earth — the soil is the home you were born too. Sink down, you’re as insignificant as a jar of fog dancing on a mother’s whistle, a whistle set amongst a sea of stones. And see tea-time, be a bewhiskered mammal folding black mould into conversation— that gnawing in the breeze spoils the evening.

Become a fugue without a voice, become a cruel mouthed beast, the terror of old London Town, become your own awful self.

Secret Language of the Arthropods I’ve had my heart stop this restless gospel of blood, it fell smoothly away, coolly as a herring gull who bobs for fish. Chests tick-tick in iambic pentameter.

How placidly death eases into us.

In distress our bodies are arthropods, a segmented offal of marrow and pith elbowing silence to the edges rather than concentrating it into our cores. Pale hands foraged my flesh for spat out life, cowled into the milky centre.

My chest lipped with a faint struck flame; du-dum slight lullabies we hum under our breaths, a secret language of the arthropods.

Just written for Wendy Pratt’s writing course.

(Grant Tarbard)

27

Werwolf or, An Hymn for Agnostics I am an animal saturated in flesh and blood, a voice nagged carnivore of cut strung songs, a floating delicate of flattened pink voices. I hang by a folded tongue, the idea of air is suspended in blush lungs, synthetic lungs held by laurels of yew tied with swarthy ribbons. Your child sees a cemetery.

Let your child gawk at the totality of the beast, the contours of my ankle bloat is bought up in parliament. I am the wildlife, I am a sallow lipped curse, this mute grandeur of handkerchief’d bones is the whisperings of a snatching death.

And the werewolf is clothed amongst the fray, they say, their bones must ache like a bell rung.

Theirs is a theatrical agony.

Their blood is a scramble of tar and scrap.

But I'm the wildlife, I am two golden disks circling the galaxy kept in place by a silent face sewn into a shroud unspooling another performance of sunset, superimposed with photographs of clouds, of purple wool pressed against the sky. I'm a florid living symphony, taut as a whip, swimming in an ocean of tepid stares and leaning against my bad ear leaves me raw— God is playing draughts.

I can arm-twist your lovelies: let your child feel awe at the completeness of the beast— fibrous sown cords in a caricature of ticks, a holey shirt thrumming as a kite. A jester’s architecture morphs to a baroque orchestra of keels, tumbles and the conundrum of a cartoon boom of a spriggan’s juggling transformation.

I am the wildlife eating absurd pain, pouring gin into soused paper kidneys, leaking a black reverie without words.

With garlands I did come, welcomed into this city of myopic mongrels and 28

the blessings of blemished saints and paupers.

I can coax resurrection with this queue of martyrs waiting for the number three to Crystal Palace. I don’t need a drab buckram dressed virgin to be my vessel, I’d not have the nerve to put a torrent of bees in the backyard of her ribs. No, I am the descendant of a bit of rough who unlaced your great-granny’s bodice.

I am Adam in my oh-so coat, I feed on myths, whispering myself holy, through the milk-lens of my own history.

And God is Geppetto, the puppet and the woodworm. God is an atheist, is on our lungs leading to chest infections.

(Grant Tarbard)

29

extract from dog 25.

In front of dubious teenage boys’ dog went invisible— a close up of the boys imagining a chromatic procession of beasts circling, an invisible ink washed devil winking, mumbling the score draw as dog clipped off their filthy noses, sold for penny stamps and football stickers, with silvers. Dog said invisibility was untenable to his nervous system, that’s why he required Custard Creams at half time. Sceptics thought a current passed through his fur, or magnets were used to keep him wraithlike, but the trick is in the relief of his breathing out with someone there to snatch it; just another method for making a ghost.

Dog, ferociously deaf, the Elvis lipped thoroughbred throwing a weird thirst of shapes, spinning faster, faster stammering instruction booklets on “how to be unseen” out of his punctured mouth, teeming with grammatical errors, written in downward dog to be our living superstition, buried in a pile of shoes.

Like knuckles they cracked, those gristly manuscripts when opened, as a field of lions ran out.

Only children could see dog in the backs of spoons.

(Grant Tarbard)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ALISON BLACK Alison is from Belfast. She writes poetry and short fiction.

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‘SOUNDS’ Remember to touch people’s heart, I can hear your sounds, I taste the music.

Its brutal your stuck in the past, I am not innocuous, Am happy to be me.

Take me away with you to your heart, Enjoy the good moments in life, Touch your heart.

Ms Alison Black © 2020

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‘FORGIVE’

I should have known better, I forgive you, I saw you the other day, You turned away.

Can you forgive me also?

For mistakes that I have made, I explain where I went wrong, No tears falling.

You lied to me, But you haven’t lost me, Am a lot wiser now, You won’t make the same mistake, We have beaten the odds.

Ms Alison Black © 2020

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MARGARET O’DRISCOLL

Margaret O’ Driscoll lives in Cobh and is currently completing the MA in Creative Writing programme in UCC. She writes poetry and is working towards her first collection. Her poems have been published in QuarrymanV1 and Cork Words Anthology.

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That Bowl in this Land Nine eagle feathers soar to the sky shaped as a bowl sculpted from steel, an allegory of sharing among Choctaw and Irish. Destitutes forced on a road smelling of hunger and winter’s harshness, that bitter Trail of Tears west of the Mississippi, west of the Shannon from place to displace.

Carried from Oklahoma to Midleton on the majestic wingspan of that bird, an empathy connecting kindred spirits, the sun slants through the feathers’ vanes on that bowl in this land and time of plenty, Crested Dog’s Tail and Birds-Foot Trefoil bloom, while a breeze hums ancestral memory.

(Margaret O’ Driscoll)

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Elegy for our dog Nero Who always wagged the truth chasing circles to watch us laugh wriggling dirt for a dinkum whiff who snuffled fissures where I saw only cracks a mongrel clawing at callused dreams – keeping watch with plaintive ears and a sandpaper tongue – whose eyes peeled my skin when I closed the vet’s door.

(Margaret O’ Driscoll)

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Seashore Once I sat beside you in the summer-bright dayroom, wrapped the rug around your knees, you hand soft on my arm, as a limpet on the shore.

The afternoon settled across shoulders sculpted as driftwood, while we observed the harbour beyond the window, sailboats that sparkled like shells.

And we recalled lazy days casting a rod from the end of the pier, when we patiently anticipated a mackerel bite, now you are the one reeled and anchored ashore.

Two nurses dispensed tablets and tea. Look at them you said, gannets dive bombing on biscuits, screeching like herring gulls on the chimney pots of Ballycotton.

Listen, you must take me out of here, this is the season for bass, can you smell that briny salt, the horizon looks lonely and I sense the tide ebb each time you leave.

(Margaret O’ Driscoll)

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Meeting Yourself

On the day you set out begin on the hill where holly springs from a rock

older than OisĂ­n fallen

from his horse then enter the valley.

Poles erect as sentinels dispatch crow-talk along their wires mossy oak shutters close around you hear the silence do not look back the path stretches ahead.

Late evening arrive at a crossroads smell welcoming turf smoke where three local farmers discuss wells run dry and the price of hay.

Neighbours rooted together while branching Upward

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Be grateful for their steady heart

then once again set forth your destination now definite as the swallows swooping overhead.

(Margaret O’ Driscoll)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MARZIEH MIRZAEI (TRANS BAWAR MAROOFI) MARZIEH MIRZAEI NIGJEH Tehran-Iran ®+989394728473 ®marziehnic@yahoo.com Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts, Miremad art University of Qazvin _ Associate's Degree in Painting, Azad Art University of Eslamshahr _Pre-University in Visual Arts, Saipa’s Art School of Tehran Work Experiences _A member of human-based designing exhibition in Culture Department of Alborz state, 2017 _Typography exhibition in Culture Department of Qazvin, 2013 _A member of Abrang workshop, 2013 _Poster designing for several playwrights, 2013 _Psychotherapist for two years in Atieh Mental health clinic, (2010-2012) _A member of Identification-based workshop, 2007 _A member of postal card designing exhibition in Bahman Community Center, 2003 (Total Work Experiences: 14 years, Total works of art: more than one hundred) Skills _ Advance visualizing in different representations, e.g. Expressions, Surreal, abstract, figurative, etc. _Sculpturing _Photography _Painting Favorites Expressions photography

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The bastard words Tore up my tongue Splitted my throne Stopped my breathe But didn't set me free yet!

They continue to tear up Inside this cage My ears, my eyes, my feet and my hands Are some prostitutes who enslave my senses To lead the ritual of prostrate towards darkness And the sounds dancing around the sparkles of this darkness Are some maidens sitting over the peaks of two mountains, waiting to dedicate the origin of their lives to a child; who trespassed God by the sin of masturbation And the bondman Lost their goals in the way of mine.

What's happening in the apocalypse of this ego! poem by marzieh mirzaei translator by bawar maroofi

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Marzieh Mirzaei

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Marzieh Mirzaei 44

Marzieh Mirzaei

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Marzieh Mirzaei

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: STEPHEN KINGSNORTH Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 100 pieces accepted by some thirty on-line poetry sites; and Gold Dust, The Seventh Quarry, The Dawntreader, Foxtrot Uniform Poetry Magazines, Vita Brevis Anthology ‘Pain & Renewal’ & Fly on the Wall Press ‘Identity’. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

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The Snicket I walked hedged in, the uniform, longed for school grounds, too long for run; inviting thump, in chest, on ribs, caged in, the strain for flight not fight, adrenaline, hormone within but all about.

Face front, two privet edge, alone, onward, knew paired, voices behind, told sniggers dare not look or turn.

I heard cleared scouring mouth for spit, and knew the score, gob land in hand, its filter, fingers, slow to land.

Steadfast unaltered gaze and pace, slight swing of arms, chain necklace chime, aware its drip, strings to the slabs, that snicket path, where dawdled fast.

(Stephen Kingsnorth)

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Arcadia The gulf known when she spoke of golf but I heard middle eastern seas; the more so, she watched open-eyed where we had, green, ball bunkered down, address correctly, failed again, feeding the cove so many times, another gulf I failed to breach.

Portrush, sea she had bathed from wee, where now we came grandchildren’s day.

Her uncle told me quick in five how over brow I find the flag, on Ballyreagh, the public course.

I recall wonder that did such, the tranquil bay, a rarity, where I, hand-guided landed ball beyond the grassy knoll before like moon landing and JFK; yet truly though, through, round the rough, not knowing where I was or why.

At Barry’s we spent father’s cash, the only price, to be regaled how, Arcadia, Dad met Mum. I called them so, though she had asked her daughter why she could not find an Ulster boy, Young Farmers’ man; a Frosses friend with own peat bog, or better still, from glacial Glen a field to feed less alien kids, protection for familial plant.

They danced beside those Skerry seas which often roared their Forties own, where forty on, and reaching for court Dunluce and Portballintrae, the rory gales, of laughter, turned to tears when putts had missed the pot.

Dad’s face aglow with Bushmills shots, first tasted, two more, fire by fire; 49

some game debate around the flame, a florid flush, domestic shrine, thus sacred turf the site for pitch, that like the peat, the team was sweet.

(Stephen Kingsnorth)

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Sebastopol Terrace Sinking towers erupt, leave dust high-rise landmarks of the town, bitten groundwork soon to pass, Babel chatter downcast now.

Drizzle vapours billow clouds, turning lemon as they fall, bitter at the sentence served, as some sodden crying gods.

Silent raised though living massed, flattened terrace, speaking razed, lampposts felled when gutters grew, polished steps now drained of blood.

Stray dog, owner five doors down, children scrapped, one gang by tea, larded crust that built strong legs, grew them to the boxing ring.

Milkman, their bank messenger, serving vital news at doors, postman twice delivered, told number six of midnight birth.

Messy hair, turbaned by scarf, covered, so could clean elsewhere, small home space, expansive airs, hope-dares risked by talking wives.

Up the stairs, next mountain climb, no graffiti wicket chalk, balaclava goals had moved, Terrace of Sebastopol.

(Stephen Kingsnorth)

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EDITOR’S NOTE This month’s issue features the work of not one but two Iranian artists, several new writers as well as quite a few names whose words have crossed the world multiple times in dozens of journals and collections. 2020 has been an odd year if this was a game we’d be reaching for a quick save to restart the level sadly we don’t have that option so we must make do with what few resources we have at our disposal.

Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

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