A New Ulster 110 by Amos Greig

Issue 110 January 2022

A New Ulster FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF Harris Coverley, Mark A Murphy, Lani O'Hanlon, Jean Tuomey, Saeed Salimi Babamiri, S.C. Flynn, Michael Boyle, Katharine Noone, Gary Beck and Tom McBride. EDITED BY AMOS GREIG.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 110 JANUARY 2022

UPATREE PRESS

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 Upatree Press

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by Harris Coverley, Mark A Murphy, Lani O'Hanlon, Jean Tuomey, Saeed Salimi Babamiri, S.C. Flynn, Michael Boyle, Katharine Noone, Gary Beck and Tom McBride.

CONTENTS Poetry Harris Coverley

Page 1

Poetry Mark A Murphy

Page 8

Poetry Lani O’Hanlon

Page 14

Poetry Jean Toumey

Page 20

Prose Saeed Salimi Babamiri Page 24 Prose S.C. Flynn Poetry Michael Boyle Prose Katharine Noone

Page 27 Page 31 Page 44

Poetry Gary Beck

Page 48

Poetry Tom McBride

Page 55

Editor’s Note

Page 59

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Harris Coverley Harris Coverley has verse published or forthcoming in Polu Texni, California Quarterly, Star*Line, Spectral Realms, Scifaikuest, Tales from the Moonlit Path, The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, View From Atlantis, Danse Macabre, Once Upon A Crocodile, and many others. A former Rhysling nominee and member of the Weird Poets Society, he lives in Manchester, England.

The Gate I stood in the ginnel in a bright afternoon hollow stomach acid reflux stinging dry mouth I stared at the new security gate the one I didn’t want tall wide irreal unnatural astroturfed onto our redbrick reality uglier than any crime against humanity sat on tall black pillars screwed to the walls leaning on them like a tyrant leans on the weak he ultimately wishes to crush the guy in house behind ours was in his front garden wearing the stay-at-home shorts that only husbands in their late twenties wear engaged in the arduous task of moving plant pots from one space to another and then another “so this is it?” I asked him grinning “yep,” he replied coming to his short grey wall “I didn’t know it would be so wide,” I said “no?”

“I thought they’d be like a short human-sized gate in the middle of a fence” “naw, they said it needed to be wide enough for a vehicle to access it” “shit man...” I leaned into him: “y’know if this had been my house I would’ve vetoed it” “yeah, yeah...” he replied not sure scratching his stubble “fuck it,” I said, “fuck it all. Why don’t we just burn the whole motherfucker down? Right the fuck down. The whole fucking lot. Who needs houses? Who needs gates and fences? Who needs walls and plumbing? Who needs electricity? Who needs prescription medicine? We can go live in the park... where we outta be. Why should we continuously allow ourselves to be fitted into a technological system that demands only more of us 3

more pieces of us regulating us over and over until we’re nothing but interchangeable parts?” “yeah, yeah...” he repeated vaguely I looked at him and he looked at me and we both looked back at the gate “well, see you later man,” I said “see you bro,” he replied and I got in my car and drove off to a location I was not sure I was aware of and he went back to moving his plant pots from one space to another and then another and the gate remained closed for I had no key. (Harris Coverley)

Bottle sometimes you have an idea or a vision and it is like sensing a breath taken in a passing car with the window down and then it’s gone rolling off into the horizon with the rest of the day and a tiny part of you trucks off with it like one of those cans tied to the bumper of a newly married couple rattling along the tarmac shaking side to tinny side and then there’s not even a hint of anything you just staring at the road into nothing the memory of the memory folds into itself an origami made of sand so then you have a moment a scratch of the scalp and you pour yourself another drink and you hope the road the car is on circles the Universe and back to you or failing that you manage to make the next car pull over and you catch that breath in a bottle. (Harris Coverley)

Pile

there are more dead than there are currently alive and quite possibly more than there ever will be alive Newton said that he stood on the “shoulders of giants” but the rest of us just stand idle on a pile of corpses waiting to make up the next level in the pile it does not make me sad merely grimace inside an individual can be lost inside the pile flesh merges into flesh bone into bone blood into red dirt blown away by time’s breeze I can consider my high blood pressure that lump that won’t go away and then think of all the other high blood pressures and stubborn lumps the world over more for the bonfire more for the mountains more for the hills more for the sands more for the soil more for the dust but if you can just craft a diamond or two and hammer it into that beneath to keep it steady maybe just maybe someone on an upper level might just in some distant time ahead after your bones have crumbled have a click in his brain and think: hey 6

I remember him he was all right and then you’ll live for just one more breath and you’d better make it count. (Harris Coverley)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Mark A Murphy Mark A. Murphy is an Ace poet, living with GAD, and OCD. His work has appeared in The Magnolia Review, ISACOUSTIC and DREICH Magazine and others. He has poems forthcoming in Cultural Weekly and Acumen and is a 3 time Pushcart nominee. He has published seven books of poetry to date, including, 'Tin Cat Alley & Other Poems: Not to be Reproduced' by Venetian Spider Press, 2021.

Verklempt

Never one for the path of least resistance Fraylin Marx learns Yiddish

in the sweatshops of the East End as if to second-guess education/upbringing

and the pogroms of gentile and cossack

On Mile End Waste she joins her struggle to the immigrant garment-makers

as ethnic cleansing swallows entire villages

and the Danube runs south of Odessa into the Black sea

Now Eleanor has another cause to fight as native Jew and immigrant

defy Czar and Empire – in life as in death

(Mark A Murphy)

Amanuensis No head for claiming anything as her own – or too self-effacing to attach

her name except as an afterthought and then only to take credit as a ghost writer.

We can only look back and wonder having written and cowritten

on her own account – why such an author didn’t claim or make more

of lawful ownership, except on the insistence of her associates.

No heart for challenging the man she pitied – or too scrupulously devoted 11

to rock the boat

she deliberates for the final time after fourteen years of domestic violence, theft and blackmail leaving but one more word for him…

Love (Mark A Murphy)

Ashes Debacle or Pillar to Post What is hindsight but the chain letter never delivered? Anon. After the the coroner’s verdict. After the Woking crematorium. After Doctor Aveling’s speech.

After the SDF. After the British Socialist Party. After the CPGB display cabinet. * Remember: hindsight is always 20/20. Pure as power. Pointed as pulverised bone.

(Mark A Murphy)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: LANI O’HANLON Lani O’Hanlon is a writer from West Waterford

LITTLE THEATRE

Hey Presto snow tyres we slide, skid skate down Patrick’s Hill to the gold and red theatre. Look down; check your whitened shoes are in the centre of a chalked circle O to stay hidden in this rosy room. applause like rain.

Swish, the curtains open;

Smile, Mammy says, smile. Lights – the colour of sucky sweets.

March, marching lift your feet, swing your arms, right left right left clop clop hop onto the right hop onto the left, balance altogether altogether, toe heel toe heel. Ha ha ha ha ha the devil laughs, he’s behind you, the audience shouts, behind you but it’s only Dad in a black beard. Stage left an angel appears

Mam’s long skirts slide across the stage, a silver scaled frock, her shoulder bared, a curve of moon, she is the one I know skin to skin, breast to cheek, she lifts her skirt to show her legs. * Stars on doors; lights around freckled mirrors. A Fairy Godmother with a tinfoil wand and Ugly Sisters, who are really men, paint beauty spots on their cheeks. Tulle like candy floss floats down over my face, criss-cross ribbons around my ankles, one, two, three. Ballet feet shush shush across scratched boards. music turns and now the swansFionuala Lir banished with her brothers, how cold they are, their snowdrop heads * Watch me with a broom, sweep sweep, waltz and whirl, hair like coal, skin like snow, lips like blood, sing Someday my prince will come. There’s a stepmother with an apple, a slice in my throat a whole kingdom goes to sleep, thorns and briars around the castle marble, cardboard, gold. (Lani O’Hanlon)

MEDICINE FOR DECEMBER More bad news on the radio — the loss of another medicine, olibanum – frankincense. Trees overused, burnt, chopped down. But the Ethiopians take only what they need, cut the bark, gather resin from ancestral trees, make ritual, burn incense, serve coffee with salty popcorn. Antoinette brought me a present from Senegal, an incense burner, a crooked pot, indentations of their fingers in red clay baked hard under African sun. In the chapels of childhood, nuggets of incense placed on coals in a crucible. I cuddled into Gran. Smoke censing the air. A thurible swinging forward and back. After birth, gold, frankincense, myrrh, mysterious shapes in my mouth, from the East, a journey measured out in stars. The Book of Exodus prescribes frankincense blended with spices to be ground and burnt before the Ark of the Covenant in the wilderness Tabernacle. This oil embalmed bodies in Egyptian tombs; dates all the way back to Babylon. Slows down the process of aging, breaks links with the past, a solace for grief, a pulmonary antiseptic. Through my window sycamores and pines sway forward and back, thorn trees claw at the sky. Far from this place Boswellia sacra – bark stripped, oozing. Milksap hardening into streaks. Inhaling, my lungs find the cut where Mam used to be, Dad, my cousin Mary, Antoinette, my grandmothers. Exhaling, they leave again. Inhaling, I breathe with leaves and trees that bleed more slowly and more sweetly than we ever will. (Lani O’Hanlon)

THE HOUSE IN OLD BAWN Late on Christmas day, you bring your children to their father's home, turning away from the closed door; it strikes you how dark the night is. How hard to see your way back to the rented house with its unhinged gate. Overgrown holly bush in the garden. Inside, shiny purple wallpaper and a puffed out headrest on the couch makes you bend your head, hunching up confessor-like. On the radio, Mary Coughlan sings; I can't make you love me if you don't. You put on a coat and scarf, walk, then prepare food, eat. You watch a film with Brad Pitt. He looks like Mick when you first met him, both of you so young outside Mulligan's pub in the snow; kisses beneath a red umbrella. You scrape away layers of old wallpaper, hang new primrose yellow strips, smooth out the puckers with an un-ringed hand. A therapist in your head advises that now is the time to care for yourself. Cold ashes in the grate. Wind moaning through the holly bush. (Lani O’Hanlon)

AT DUSK, AT DAWN at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end. Jack Gilbert

You fall asleep in the armchair a red scarf around your sore throat this evening in January; half-way between your birthday and mine, your breath, the spaces between. And that we would end up here, half-way between Waterford and Cork, in a Gaeltacht, a hobbit cottage. In a while I get up and begin dinner. We close the curtains, and drink wine. You prepare for bed earlier than I, letting the dog out to gallop through the night field. I switch off lights. Read, dozing in my bath. Climbing in beside you. I'll be cold then too hot; when you made the bed you shook the duvet feathers over to my side. In the morning I wake and hear you in the kitchen radio on. That old Fleetwood Mac song, and I have built my life around you... The cat heavy against my hip, our books piled up either side of the bed. (Lani O’Hanlon)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: JG Sherry Jean Tuomey lives in Castlebar. Co Mayo. She is published in A New Ulster 86, Crannog, Crossways, Fish Anthology, Galway Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poets meet Politics 2019, The Cormorant 2, The Stony Thursday Book, Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry, Empty House, Poetry and Prose on the Climate Crisis 2021, ed by Alice Kinsella, and Nessa O ‘Mahony. Her chapbook, Swept Back, was commended in Fools for Poetry 2018 and Blue Nib chapbook 37, 2019. 2nd in Fish poetry competition 2011, short listed in Fish 2013, 2014, Over the Edge 2010, 2012, 2016, 2017, Poem for Patience 2018, Jonathan Swift Creative Awards 2018. 2019, Anthony Cronin poetry award, 2021. Second Light 2021. I st in Jonathan Swift Creative awards 2021. Awarded mentorship with Elizabeth Reapy by Mayo Co Council Arts Office. 2021 A former teacher, she trained as a writing facilitator with the National Association for Poetry Therapy in the US.

Afternoon Drive summer 2019

My mother’s first day out after weeks indoors. We begin with a car wash, a clean carrier might frighten the virus, carry her sickness-free into a new month.

We follow a winding road, a grass track at the centre our only contour. A wet foal lies at a mare’s side, twitch of an ear confirms its breathing.

Between hedges of fuchsia, clouds of daisies, vetch and meadowsweet, something brightens in us, a shift, as if we’d swallowed a shaft of sunshine.

Never before had undulating hills, gardens of lupins and foxgloves, a lake shimmering in afternoon sun, seemed so priceless, so medicinal.

We’ll repeat these trips, I promise, a highway medic flicking the manual, 21

checking the roadmap for a script.

We’ll go to Achill, Connemara, the beach, anywhere to invite lightness into the day. And we have to check on the foal, she says, ensure it has survived.

(Jean Toumoey)

Aftertaste

I flick through gardening books, look up new names, fritillaria, bellevalia search origins, roots, wait for the right day to put on outdoor garb, get back to work,

with an appetite for the sweet taste of burying bulbs, cream cocktail, peppermint stick, apricot, flashback, gelato…

And I remember the taste, bitter as dandelion greens, of watching a keen gardener lose the power to walk to his own back wall, to plant potatoes, cut grass, scatter seeds.

(Jean Toumey)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: SAEED SALIMI BABAMIRI Saeed Salimi Babamiri: Kurdish translator and poet. His published books in Iran are Kurdish translations of “Half an Apple” and “The Mouse's Wedding” a play and a story in verse, both for children. He has many other translations waiting to be published. His major long translation from Kurdish into English verse is “Mam and Zeen” by Ahmad Xanee. It is known as “Kurdish Romeo and Juliet” which is ready to be published.

Law of the jungle

This world which I call cruel, With a settled general rule, In its jungle-like farms, In its very cold arms, It trains some snakes and some beasts, To suck subordinate’s blood at feasts!

Like a one-thousand-mouthed leech, They come to have a party each.

He who has a bit of power, Kills the poor in his tower!

This world for blood-suckers is a good place, Here a heart or some pity you never face.

Clock seconds are nasty nails go in coffins… …of the poor who have no sins!

Ears of hearts are two wings of a steel gate, They are closed to the cries from any unfortunate fate.

Alas! In a world full of pain and full of suffer, In a hell which has just horror to offer, The only thing human’s eyes are open to, …is black gold and what its dollar can do! And what man turns a blind eye to, …is the right any servitor has as true.

This world which I call cruel, With a settled general rule, In its jungle-like farms, In its very cold arms, It trains some snakes and some beasts, To suck subordinate’s blood at feasts!

Oh no! Such a false claim can never go! No jungle has such a wrong rule, No beast can be so much cruel.

Poem by: Amin Gardiglani, Kurdish poet. Translator: Saeed Salimi Babamiri, Kurdish translator and poet.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: S.C. FLYNN S.C. Flynn was born in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has recently been published in Abridged, Cyphers, The Galway Review, SurVision and Neuro Logical.

CLOUD SPIRITS

The sound of rain on a metal roof, an orchestra of cloud spirits drumming just above your head. The first such night is sleepless, but then it becomes the most soothing thing and the rhythm just carries you away. When that roof was replaced by tiles that deadened the sound, Mum kept a large piece of tin on the ground outside her window to hear the rain, to dream of the clouds.

(S.C. Flynn)

COINS

The only collecting I did as a kid was of coins from all around the world; I still have them today in an old suitcase. Anyone who travelled outside Australia was a target for my pestering and over time I gathered a metal atlas that I used to see the world in my mind; Ireland’s harp played a journeying call and Italian lire intrigued me. None of my coins have any real value, but that was never the point; they were symbols, token entrance fees to a festival.

(S.C. Flynn)

MUCH FREE TIME BUT TOO LITTLE FREEDOM

A town of five thousand people that takes an hour to cross on foot under a boiling sun has lots of empty space and parts I hardly know. You walk and walk and tell yourself that somewhere in these streets is the very thing you’re looking for, but each and every corner is another disappointment.

(S.C. Flynn)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MICHAEL BOYLE Michael Boyle is a native of Lavey, Derry, Ireland .His poems have appeared in the “The Antigonish Review”. “ Dalhousie Review.” “Tinteain” and “New Ulster Writing.” He was awarded “The Arts and Letters” prize for poetry in 2014 by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Michael has also written articles for the Irish language magazine “An t-Ultach. He is currently completing his first poetry collection “Whin Bushes from Drummuck.” In June 2017 he presented a paper in Magee College, Derry, on the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. In 2018 he gave a talk entitled “Echoes from the Barn Barrel.” to The North American Celtic Language Teachers Conference in St. John’s, NL. He currently lives in St John’s NL where he conducts a historical walking tour. www.boyletours.com

The Clipping (Meeting for coffee in St John’s Newfoundland.)

I sat down at the Georgetown café with a medium two per cent latte. We talked about remembering, forgetting and non-memory. He made suggestions and we talked about edits.

I told him years ago I had fallen in a well. I didn’t want to tell the complete story. So I paused for a half a second and then I felt compelled to take my wallet out of my back pocket. I said “I have something to show you.”

His square stubby beard 32

stared at me. I rooted around inside the pouch. Only three things thereUniversity library card a faded green scapular to Our Lady and a family photo. Was the paper clipping there at all? Yes. I squeezed it out and passed it over to him. He gently accepted the folded fragile clipping and smoothed it out on the coffee table. A four-inch dark smudged paragraph from “The Coleraine Constitution.”

CHILD FALLS INTO WELL. AMAZING ESCAPE FROM DEATH He said nothing, looked at me. The silence spoke and then we both knew I would be a character in my own poem. 33

Questions keep coming. Why always keep this clipping? and why show it to so few?

Thanks to my Uncle John I was rescued. Why is it after so many years I say little about this story? Why I survived while others died ? Wondering what my life’s destiny would have been? Does my survivor’s guilt still haunt me? Then that last “kicker” sentence “On examination it was found that the child was none worse for his terrifying experiences.”

When I started primary school everyone called me Paddy Joe’s wee fellah that fell in the pump. And the older girls 34

in the Master’s room tossed my frizzy red hair

“Did you see any scary monsters in that well?”

(Michael Boyle)

Waiting To Be Picked.

Before the game stand and wait to hear my name.

At lunchtime I gulped jam soaked scones with the school milk The Master had his ‘tay’ and Miss Mooney had salted roast herrings by her classroom fireplace. No refs, coaches or spectators. Our pitch marked out with four stones for four goal posts Warrior assembled in a motely line two captains emerged. The toss for first picks with a Free State penny. Hen or harp and then take first choice. Advice roared on who to pick first. Ah Don’t ever expect any favors if the captain was your brother or a neighbor. Roars and shouts. Don’t pick him for everybody know he is a right big pachle and we’ll be hammered.

On it went –whistles, boos and hisses. Nicknames, sledging and some shoving too and it’s our World Cup. Might be words and even an odd fight.

Before the game stand and wait to hear my name.

The high kings went down the picking order. They didn’t need scouting reports. If you were fat or clunky you stood in the gap and stayed in goals.

Few left standing the cruelest fate of all If neither team wanted you any where near the ball.

Before I got in the Master’s room I sometimes wasn’t picked at all as if to soften the blow they made me stand by the school gate and stop the ball from going on the road by Rankin’s field.

Before the game stand and wait to hear my name

Many years later after all life’s games and contests. I no longer stand and wait to hear my name called.

(Michael Boyle)

School Interview August 20 1956

A few days before my mother’s fiftieth birthday we went to the Rainey Endowed Grammar School in Magherafelt for our one and only Parent Teacher meeting. My father drove our Ford Eight to the school grounds and he sat in the car. My mother clutched her blue purse by her side. The secretary showed us into Headmaster Fazakerley’s study. I had difficultly with his thick Lancashire accent and he looked stern -but when he smiled my mother and I began to feel more at ease. We didn’t have any bargaining power as I had failed the 11 plus exam. Being so shy I said nothing- but my mother mentioned that I played Gaelic football. The Headmaster nodded and said I could now play ‘rugger.’ He asked my mother about my works habits. She said I did work on the farm. “Splendid Mrs. Boyle. Jolly good show. If he worked on the farm he will do well here.”

(Michael Boyle)

TOWNLANDS FOR JOHN CONVERY and HARRY BOYLE.

(There are a total of 61,133 townlands in Ireland.)

In the fall of 2013 I was on a North American bus tour that visited all the Gaeltacht areas of Ireland. The group also visited South Derry at An Carn, and then to my native parish Lavey stopping at Erin’s Own Gaelic football club in Gulladuff. It was an emotional homecoming, for me, meeting family and neighbors. I said a few words of thanks to everyone for organizing the event. I talked about two outstanding Drummuck heroes -namely Dan Mc Crystal the hurling man and Cassie Murray the Irish language speaker who had just died in August at the age of 95. I should have sat down, because I rambled on about how I grew up in Ireland’s most historic townland of Drummuck. Afterwards my brother Harry and I sat down in the bar for a drink. Local Drumard farmer and storyteller John Convery joined us. He shook my hand and said, “Welcome Home Mickey and congratulations on a great event tonight. You have been away from here for a long time.” John paused for a moment and made an amazing observation as he echoed all the great poets of Ireland “But don’t you know that all our town lands of Ireland are historic.” And I himmed and hawed at the remark. But what a lesson l had learnt in my own native parish after so many years. Again I should have stopped or changed the channel but I stammered like a drunken man falling in a drain and unable to climb out. I told John about my own townland of Drummuck. I explained to him even though it meant meant “hill or ridge of the pigs” that our hills were just about hundred feet high and the land was swampy, wet and marshy. In fact in winter months a great deal of flooding always happened. So I said to John. “Your townland of Drummard means ‘high ridge’. I have been thinking John -why didn’t my ancestors leave Drummuck and settle in a dry place with more fertile land like your own town land of Drummard?” 40

I waited just a few seconds as John paused and ordered more drinks for Harry and myself “Easy answer to that. Mickey. We wouldn’t let ye’s in.”

(Michael Boyle)

Before the Dawn.

( for Cassie Murray.)

( On Friday December First 1961.) A scad of snow blankets the hills and bitter easterly gales batter the white-washed walls of the Murray house.

Tinderbox thatch with a zinc roof on top -Now a huge red glow that covered the sky. Suffocating black smoke saturated the house. Fiery flames spiral into the darkness Andy Mooney raised the alarm and with Cassie he oxters to safety a frail feeble Mary Anne who rarely has ever trod outside on black ice or even on winter snows. Frozen sisters with downed heads struggle, stumble to reach the stable and huddle together. Cassie grabbed a black shawl and Andy’s Yankee topcoat.

Barefoot snow prints showed Andy’s sprint to Ernie Rainey’s to get help. Fire brigade came - but too late. House, all the contents and bric a brac gone forever.

Was it a faulty brick to the chimney? Maybe a spark from the hearth or a burning candle left on with all the papers on the window sill? Not another house in Ireland ever had had so many Saint Brigit crosses made by Cassie’s hand. Blessed crosses hung above all doorways and even the byre. But on that freezing winter morn. Where was Saint Brigit to protect Cassie’s house from the fire?

(Michael Boyle)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: KATHARINE NOONE Katherine Noone’s first poetry collection ‘Keeping Watch’ was published 2017.Her second collection ‘Out Here’was published in 2019, both by Lapwing Publications Belfast. Her poetry is published in magazines and journals in Ireland, U.K. Canada and U.S.A. She lives in Galway and attends the poetry workshop at Galway Art Center.

Hidden Gem

Tucked away in the corner of an empty field, a tree, just a few feet tall its branches arched with a colossal crop of red and golden apples.

Summer slides by, and roses fade. Shadows lengthen, skies turn grey.

But the beauty and abundance of the apple tree last into Autumn, while birds consider flyways, after the last leaves have flown.

(Katharine Noone)

Grand Uncle Willie

You enter New York through Ellis Island to no one. Work as a blacksmith and later on railways, never returning.

In later life, despite huge hospital bills you include a nephew and four nieces in your will, one being my mother.

Not a big sum but a fortune in the fifties, helps us through secondary school, backed up by sales of cattle and eggs.

Far from Galway we engrave your name, on memorial wall at Ellis Island.

(Katharine Noone)

There will always be a Happy Hour

When we awaken, discover that the large tree near our house is not felled by a storm. Severe flooding did not reach our door. On a dark depressing day a postman’s knock, or a neighbour’s call.

Prisoners on high security get an open air break. The long lost offspring returns home. Those in agony ease into their final hour.

(Katharine Noone)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: GARY BECK Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 32 poetry collections, 14 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 5 books of plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions, Desperate Seeker and Learning Curve (Winter Goose Publishing). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value, Fractional Disorder, Disruptions, Ignition Point, Resonance and Turbulence (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Double Envelopment). Motifs (Adelaide Books). His novels include Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). State of Rage, Wavelength, Protective Agency, Obsess, Flawed Connections and Still Obsessed (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Call to Valor). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Essays of Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 and Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck, Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume II and Four Plays by Moliere translated then directed by Gary Beck (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume III). Gary lives in New York City.

Share and… The great divide between haves and have nots is never wider then at Christmas, when the wealthy celebrate on their super yachts with epicurean pleasures, while many huddle in pubic housing without heat, amenities, each day a struggle to endure poverty, while only a few can better the lives of their disadvantaged children.

(Gary Beck)

What Creator is This? The political scene in America has always delivered surprises, men elected to the Presidency who were inexperienced, some of them unqualified, but none compare to Trump, totally unfit for high office. Yet he appealed to enough voters and with a great deal of help from the Electoral College managed to get elected to the highest office in the land, also becoming Commander-in-Chief of a major nuclear power, with absolutely no knowledge of military affairs, foreign affairs, economics, except how to cheat others, an inveterate liar a mean and nasty bully, with a lack of ethics and morals that does not prevent 50

rabid supporters from admiring him, a sad testament to the quality of some citizens, who probably never ask: ‘Should Trump be a role model for my children?’

(Gary Beck)

Depletion Allowance The Kennedy Administration proudly proclaimed the Peace Corps, a democratic gift, humanitarian aid to needy countries throughout the world, and sent America’s best, not always the brightest, but definitely the best for selfless service. And we the people applauded, not realizing we sere sending our best abroad when they were needed at home. But the lure of foreign travel was far more romantic than local residence in an American backwater. (Gary Beck)

Dependency The need to rely on others is a serious burden made heavier by obligations to those being tended, especially the mentally ill, infirm, aged, no hope of cure, just the daily effort of service, care, attention, a continuous demand finally resolved by emancipating death.

(Gary Beck)

High Crimes The officials, elected and appointed, who facilitated the departure of American industry betrayed the blue collar class, a vital part of the nation, jobs lost in the homeland that once supported millions now safely eviscerated, leaving the unions impotent no longer able to resist the oligarchs.

(Gary Beck)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: TOME MCBRIDE TOM MCBRIDE WRITES POETRY

The Giant

The North giant sleeps His nose twitches towards the North

He has looked upon the city since time immemorial. The city whose backward collared men shout high, The books of Samuel and Judges the highest. Their narrow passageways etched and hewn into his base and beyond. The intricate alleyways, his life blood, Profanely crossing, sectioned hardly and devoutly separating.

The North giant sleeps His nose twitches towards the North

Autumn’s carpet smothers his foundations and permeates his jutting and jagged face. A monotone kaleidoscope with one colour as loud as a lion’s roar. Loyally the leaves march up and down Defiantly opposing the anaemic onlooking sky This is their oblivious crescendo Their Fall

The North giant sleeps His nose twitches towards the North

Smoke rises as men try to imitate a November long past The kind titan looks on, helpless to the vultures on his torso This fire is not his. The kind that cracks through the sky, the echoing rumbles, the bursts in the air, the thunder that echoes, the lightening screams and worse…

Silence.

The North giant sleeps His nose twitches towards the North

The light has faded, and a bleak midwinter set in Even that of 1647 had more cheer. The leaves are starting to collapse Their suffocation of the native trees coming to its end. Their crimson fingers falling from the branches Ash, birch, beech, and rowan stand helpless and bare Ravished, cadaverous and desolate

The North giant sleeps His nose twitches towards the north

The world continues to spin and Jadis’s grip slowly loosens, Wooden figures stand hollow and muted. Yet their roots are ancient and deep, 57

Whilst the world forgot their beauty and, even, they forgot their beauty, They were strong and anchored, Some even digging.

The north giant stirs His nose twitches towards the north.

His foundations returning to a prelapsarian dye Jades and malachite dance and sing Harmonising with the hue of a sapphire sky The ancient ways and traditions are once again king. He surveys the surroundings and bathes in its peace But bitterly wonders; is it only a lease.

The north giant stirs His nose towards the north

And under the new season’s shroud, A forgotten foliage begins to awake, Trying to be heard. Looking wistfully up in the hope that any Northern leaf begins to shake.

(Tom McBride)

EDITOR’S NOTE This months issue is jammed full of poetry from all around the world we’ve an amazing selection of poetic voices and styles and there should be something for everyone. Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS ‘IN A CHANGED WORLD’ Over the past number of years technology has transformed poetry publishing: shop closures due to increasing operational costs has had an impact, to put it mildly, shops are releuctant to take ‘slow moving’ genre such as poetry and play-scripts among other minority interest genre. The figures given a few years ago were: we had 5000 bookshops in the UK-Ireland and at the time of the research that number had dropped to 900 and falling: there was a period when bookshops had the highest rate of ‘High Street’ shop closures. Lapwing, being a not-for-profit poetry publisher has likewise had to adjust to the new regime. We had a Google-Books presence until that entity ended its ‘open door’ policy in favour of becoming a publisher itself. During that time with Google, Lapwing attracted hundreds of thousands of sample page ‘hits’. Amazon also has changed the ‘game’ with its own policies and strategies for publishers and authors. There are no doubt other on-line factors over which we have no control. Poetry publishers can also fall foul of ‘on consignment’ practice, which means we supply a seller but don’t get paid until books have been sold and we can expect unsold books to be returned, thus ‘remaindered’ and maybe not sellable, years can pass! Distributors can also seek as much as 51% of cover-price IF.they choose to handle a poetry book at all, shops too can require say 35% of the cover price, which is ok given floor space can be thousands of £0000s per square foot per annum..In terms of ‘hidden’ costs: preparing a work for publication can cost a few thousand UK £-stg. Lapwing does it as part of our sevice to our suthors. It has been a well-known fact that many poets will sell more of their own work than the bookshops, Peter Finch of the Welsh Academi noted fact that over forty years ago and Lapwing poets have done so for years. Due to cost factors Lapwing cannot offered authors ‘complimentary’ copies. What we do offer is to supply authors with copies at cost price. We hold very few copies in the knowledge that requests for hard copies are rarely received. Another important element is our Lapwing Legacy Library which holds all our retained titles since 1988 in PDF at £4.00 per title: the format being ‘front cover page - full content pages - back cover page’. This format is printable as single pages: either the whole book or a favourite page. I thank Adam Rudden for the great work he has done over the years creating and managing this web-site. Thanks also to our authors from ‘home’ and around the world for entrusting Lapwing with their valuable contributions to civilisation. If you wish to seek publication please send you submission in MW Word docx format. LAPWING PUBLICATIONS

POETRY TITLES 2021 All titles are £10.00 stg. plus postage from the authors via their email address. PDF versions are available from Lapwing at £4.00 a copy, they are printable for private, review and educational purposes. 9781838439804_Halperin Richard W. DALLOWAY IN WISCONSIN Mr.Halperin lives in Paris France Email: halperin8@wanadoo.fr 9781838439811_Halperin Richard W. SUMMER NIGHT 1948 9781838439859_Halperin Richard W. GIRL IN THE RED CAPE 9781838439828_Lennon Finbar NOW Mr Lennon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: lennonfinbar@hotmail.com 9781838439835_Dillon Paul T WHISPER Mr Dillon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: ptjdillon@gmail.com 9781838439842_ Brooks Richard WOOD FOR THE TREES Mr Brooks lives in England UK Email:richard.brooks3@btinternet.com 9781838439866_Garvey Alan IN THE WAKE OF HER LIGHT 9781838439873_McManus Kevin THE HAWTHORN TREE Mr McManus lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: kevinmcmanus1@hotmail.com 9781838439880_Dwan Berni ONLY LOOKIN’ Berni Dwan lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: bernidwan@gmail.com 9781838439897_Murbach Esther VIEW ASKEW Esther Murbach lives in Switzerland though she also spends time in Galway Email: esther.murbach@gmx.ch 9781916345751_McGrath Niall SHED Mr McGrath lives in County Antrim Northern Ireland, UK Email: mcgrath.niall@hotmail.com 9781916345775_Somerville-Large GILLIAN LAZY BEDS 9781916345782_Gohorry & Lane COVENTRY CRUCIBLE Mr Lane lives in England-UK and due to the recent death of Mr Gohorry Mr Lane will be the contact for this publication: Email: johnslane@btinternet.com

A New Ulster 110

Articles inside

Poetry Harris Coverley

Editor’s Note

Poetry Lani O’Hanlon