ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)
Featuring the works of Mel Waldman, Anthony Watts, Caroline Johnstone, John Doyle, Jensen Byrne, Conor O’Sullivan, Neil Ellman, Johnathan Hamilton, Richard Halperin . Hard copies can be purchased from our website.
Issue 68 May 2018
A New Ulster Prose On the Wall Website
Editor: Amos Greig Editor: E V Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents
Editorial Mel Waldman;
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
On the Verge I Come from a Strange Unkowable Place Inside the Psycotic Hour The Bird Woman of 57th Street Night People of New York The Damned Bless Us with their Presence
Anthony Watts; 1. Eden 2. The Coffin Tree 3. Lachrymae Caroline Johnstone; 1. Afterwards 2. Remembrance 3. Tea and Sympathy 4. The Unfinished Poem John Doyle; 1. Eze Graveyard, Cote D’Azur, France : Three Songs 2. Sherlockstown, County Kildare 3. Knockbue Railway Station, County Cork, September 12th, 1962 4. Squalls 5. Some Things… 6. All Those Cars 7. Combine Harversters… Jensen Byrne; 1. Epilogue Conor O’Sullivan; 1. Cabin Rules Neil Ellman; 1. Puppet Theatre 2. Dance of the Earth and Stars 3. Moon Animal 4. Color Explosion 5. Combate
Johnathan Hamilton; 1. Stew 2. Pot-Washing 3. Samson follows Goliath; A Panoramic 4. Obligatory Leprechaun Patterned Novelty Pants 5. Tell the Ponies, You Like Strawberries Richard Halperin; 1. Christ in the Snow 2. Dancing on the Moon 3. A Pocket of Light in the Window 4. The Innocent and the Beautiful 5. To Leon 6. In 1928 Poetry Review On The Wall Message from the Alleycats Round the Back
Poetry, prose, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 23 High Street, Ballyhalbert BT22 1BL Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 50 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Or via PEECHO Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://anuanewulster.wixsite.com/anewulster Published in Baskerville Oldface & Times New Roman Produced in Belfast & Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland. All rights reserved The artists 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) Cover Image “K’Ling” by Amos Greig
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. ” Aristotle Onassis. Editorial I was reading the April 1969 issue of The Honest Ulsterman and was struck by its editorial and how the issues debated in it are still relevant to this day and how they still haven’t been acted on and yet its 2018! Same sex marriage, same sex relationships and abortion rights all outdated when compared to the rest of the UK. What gets me is the recent referendum in the Republic has shown that that country has managed to step outside the old ultra conservative stances of the past. While I’ve tried to keep politics out of A New Ulster these are human issues and these basic rights are being used by both the main parties here as manipulative stances. As a historian who studied Irish history I see certain similarities between what happened in Ireland in the 1918/22 period and what is happening now. Something needs to change or people are going to find themselves left at the wayside. We’ve lost another animal this month this time from a brain haemorrhage we found him dead in his field. As tribute I’ve used his image on the cover his name was K’Ling and he is the reason we’re still here I was a very dark place when he called out to us one day while we were out walking. He gave us purpose and we were fortunate to be a part of his life even if it was for such a short time. All I can say is I’m glad he didn’t suffer. Finally, I see that A New Ulster was mentioned in an Article in the Irish Times Literary segment in an article on magazines and ezines in Ireland. Sad to say they used our old link instead of the new address but that’s okay...
Onward to creativity!! Amos Greig Editor.
Biographical Note: Mel Waldman
Dr. Mel Waldman is a psychologist, poet, and writer whose stories have appeared in numerous magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, PULP METAL MAGAZINE, and AUDIENCE. His poems have been widely published in magazines and books including LIQUID IMAGINATION, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, THE BROOKLYN VOICE, BRICKPLIGHT, THE BITCHIN’ KITSCH, CRAB FAT MAGAZINE, SKIVE MAGAZINE, ODDBALL MAGAZINE, ON THE RUSK, POETRY PACIFIC, POETICA, RED FEZ, SQUAWK BACK, SWEET ANNIE & SWEET PEA REVIEW, THE JEWISH LITERARY JOURNAL, THE JEWISH PRESS, THE JERUSALEM POST, HOTMETAL PRESS, MAD SWIRL, HAGGARD & HALLOO, ASCENT ASPIRATIONS, and NAMASTE FIJI: THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY. A past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis, he was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature and is the author of 11 books.
ON THE VERGE By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net (upon viewing John Marin’s exhibit On the Verge of Wilderness at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art OMAA & reading his 1914 letter to Alfred Stieglitz)
On the verge of something real like the efflorescence of ethereal love in the everflowing landscape
& the eerie sea & the ephemeral sky swirling through a turquoise veil diaphanous & divine invisible spheres of holy light blossoming & burgeoning glowing gloriously within the multicolored flowers & fruits & flowing majestically within the sprawling solitude of the numinous moment always becoming & seeking visibility love seeking love
On the verge of something beautiful like spirals of light sailing upward shooting stars Heaven-bound blooming within wild blueberries & strawberries & dancing with seagulls on the rocks outside Jackie’s Too in Perkins Cove & darting & flitting
along the Marginal Way on celestial cliffs adorned with wild roses red, pink, & white Rosa rugosa blessing earthly travelers with otherworldly visions soothing swirls & spirals bathed in opalescence pirouetting across the vastness of the sea & sensuous hypnotic sounds rolling rushing waves
crashing into bestial rocks sacred cliffs crushing the chaos-serenity of ineffable beauty beatific panorama whirling seascape in luscious luminescence unbearable holy light soaring in the kaleidoscopic sky wild waves dancing within a delirious dreamscape whorling into the red sun & galloping into the gorgeous sunset intoxicating hallucinatory vista On the verge of haunting transcendence in search of the Source On the verge of
miracles everywhere
merging with the Universal Mind On the Verge of Wilderness & love seeking love On the verge of Creation
I COME FROM A STRANGE UNKNOWABLE PLACE By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net I come from a strange unknowable place a selcouth Un-Being
the land of no-land the sea of no-sea the sky of no-sky I come from the unfathomable nothingness the no-place of no-time creation ex nihilo & I am the beautiful image of the Ultimate Nothingness & still, I wear the mask of grotesquerie & the everlasting imprint of trauma for I am the savage image of my trauma
I am I wear the shroud of suffering the shock & upheaval of my battered being I am my trauma that sleeps in the bestial Abyss & awakens as my Identity I am Trauma & yet, an otherworldly voice within-a turquoise gemsits in a circle of celestial opalescence & sings of transcendence for I am also the Transcendence of Trauma I come from a strange unknowable place creation ex nihilo & I am the beautiful image of the Ultimate Nothingness
INSIDE THE PSYCHOTIC HOUR By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net
Swirling around the rim of madness inside the psychotic hour I sail across your sacred center an oval omphalos into your mind passing through the membrane of your unfathomable universe joining you in the convex mirror of your being
& inside the psychotic hour I rush slowly through phantasmagoria
the whirling wilderness of your bestial brain merciless to your mutilated self & listen to your ethereal visions of eerie anguish in the harrowing Hieronymus Bosch landscape adorned with Dali heavens above the deep delirious earth & Dante’s demonic House of Fire
& inside the psychotic hour I witness the cacophonous music of trauma a cornucopia of graveyard colors shrieking chaos 4 apocalyptic horses otherworldly stallions colored white, red, black, & pale galloping into the Stygian crypt the black night of the broken battered brain plummeting into the obsidian abyss of obliteration
& inside the psychotic hour
I am one with you in the seething summer of molten sorrow/madness therapist & patient swirling/whirling in the cauldron of August agony waiting for the end of summer/suffering looking through the convex mirror of your being in the Healing Room
THE BIRD WOMAN OF 57TH STREET By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net (on reading Nikki Giovanni’s poem The New Yorkers) In the winter of despair, I retreat into the raw womb of the city circa 1969 & gaze at a distant dark Manhattan of unfathomable bestial beauty & I see you againthe old lady on 57th Street sitting on a cold milk box selling papers, youa grotesque beautiful Bird-Woman, the name I christened you, rocking back & forth staring out at us-the passers-by, with hallucinatory hypnotic eyes invading
our psyches & shrieking the otherworldly sounds of an exotic bird. You, the Owl-Lady too, the 2nd name I christened you, own your little space-universe & wear colossal eyes black and eerie on a heart-shaped face that bore into my soul. What do you see when you look inside me? & where do you go when you vanish suddenly in the swirl of the night? Now, when I see the night people, I remember you & the young man I was & the thoughts & dreams that possessed me when I passed by your eerie spot or stopped to buy your papers, you-perched on a preternatural milk box. For a few seconds, did you possess me? Did we possess each other in the evanescence of our shared dream before vanishing into the fluid night flowing into 1st light? In the winter of despair, when I return, what do we see?
NIGHT PEOPLE OF NEW YORK By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net (on reading Nikki Giovanni’s poem The New Yorkers)
Come forth, old children of the night, Come forth, beautiful freaks freaking out in the bestial light, Come now, into the cold night, I beckon you, the damned, drifting in the seething circles of darkness. I see only hellfire shooting out of the Shadows like the cannonballs of oblivion blasting through invisibility after a red sunset. Night people of New York,
come forth & reveal your unfathomable selves buried in broken-down soul cases. Come forth & reveal the ineffable sins we conceal beneath our diaphanous skins. Come now, into the crimson night. I see you in the corner of my 3rd Eye clutching a cornucopia of non-existence yellow-orange swirls peering through the oval mirror of twilight & into the deep of the night glazed eyes rolling around in phantasmagorical spheres glittering ghosts slithering & slinking along the opalescent streets of Manhattan & now I feel you creeping & crawling across the olive skin of my trauma-covered face seeking the bleak landscape of the bereft the graveyard of my barren burnt-out brain cells I feel the fire of your anguish, you-
the homeless huddled in nowhere battered bag people carrying death in a bag mixed with vanishing life-vestiges youthe swirling spirits frozen in unreality touch me & set me on fire & I feel youCome forth, Come out, I feel you & we are one tethered to the night
THE DAMNED BLESS US WITH THEIR PRESENCE
By Dr. Mel Waldman mwaldman18@optimum.net mwaldman18@earthlink.net (on reading Muriel Rukeyser’s poem-Seventh Avenue)
After dark, the damned bless us with their presence. The city opens up like the maw of the fire-breathing Chimera & they come forth frozen freaks thawing in the sizzling night. They come forth fallen creatures of obscurity &
roam freely through our streets, the dazzling dreamy labyrinths of New York City, illuminating our glittering avenues with their bestial darkness. . After shedding the skin of invisibility, they come forth & bless us with their presence. Yet we rush away from the damned until they dissolve & vanish in the shadows. On sultry summer nights in the cauldron of the seething city, I catch a glimpse of the damned in the corner of my left eye & in a furious flash, the pariah-beasts of New York force-feed me apocalyptic news of sin & suffering in the city that shrieks the crimson blues & gazing into & through their bruised barren eyes, wounded windows of Hell-on-earth,
I see the ominous everlasting wasteland they see & ineffable evil slices my thick swirl of boyish innocence & my everflowing river of faith with a chasm of doubt & a heavy shroud of anguish covers me crushes my spirit & I too vanish in the shadows until a beautiful alchemy transforms me if it does & my trinity ofknowledge pain & will becomes the light buried in the pitch-black abyss if I accept the Holy 3 & I grow into a transcendence if I grow &
this is the blessing bestowed by the damned if I receive it WHO ARE WE but fugitives from the silent blessings & secret divinity of the damned? WHO ARE WE if we don’t face the evil we see? WHO ARE WE if we do not receive the blessings of the damned? WHO ARE WE if we don’t ask why?
Biographical Note: Anthony Watts Anthony has had four collections published, the latest being The Shell-Gatherer (Oversteps Books http://www.overstepsbooks.com/cat/the-shell-gatherer/ ). His poems have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Anthony has won First Prizes in several poetry competitions, including Poetry Space 2013, Poetry Pulse 2014, Wax Poetry and Art 2017 and S.T. Coleridge Memorial Prize 2008.
Eden (Anthony Watts)
This one was different – he was an experiment gone wrong, an accident waiting to happen.
Hardly had he opened his eyes on those vistas of innocence than he saw his fate hanging like a grenade in the branches.
As he reached out to claim it he was already planning to pin the blame on the woman.
From the first bite something inside him failed. Everything became scrambled and recast as words.
Banished, unable to share in the timeless moment of the animals, he was desperate for certainties.
What am I? he called to the vast dumb sphynx of the Universe. I… I… I… came back the echo
and when he tried to look into the face of God all he could see was his own reflection magnified to infinity.
God is great he gasped in awe of his own monstrous image.
God is great he proclaimed solemnly over the woman’s broken body as her last breath flickered out among the scattered stones and halfbricks.
God is great! he screamed as he rammed down the accelerator like a snake under his heel
and cut a mile-long swathe through the bones of the living.
The Coffin Tree (Anthony Watts)
Said the tree in the dream, “We’re brothers, you and I, and though I’ve studied stillness all my life, while you found nowhere home enough to sink your poor forked wandering root, your fate and mine. are linked. The chances are your waking self will never find this wood and wander here, (though all your life you’ve sought such places out – found comfort in the speechlessness of trees).”
Said the tree in the dream, “But it will soon be done, this lifelong dialogue with the restless air. What kept our heads together was the hope someday an angel-bird would come and make of us a platform for its song.
But now our lives converge upon a moment when (you and I both felled) the curtains close around us and I bear you gently into the fire.”
Lachrymae (Anthony Watts)
I've seen you on the embankment seat, gloved fists Thrust into sockets, absorbing the salt flux. Yield to that burning tide, it’s only the sea, Mother of Sorrows, come at last to claim Her own that was cast up upon the shore.
And you, I’ve seen you crying in the dark – Seen how the stiff upper lip begins To tremble, the whole brave face collapse and melt Like a latex mask recycling through the hands. Don't be ashamed, it was your ‘finest hour’.
And you, humped there in the shadow of the pillar, Who crept through the weekday entrance of the church To share your unbelief with the unbelieved-in, Where the tall stories loom in coloured flecks Of light – Whose lips have never learned to praise, Now let the eyelids tell their rosary Of tears. They are the only prayers God understands.
Biographical Note: Caroline Johnstone Caroline is originally from Northern Ireland, now living in Ayrshire. She writes stories through her poems, mainly on philosophical, political and life experience themes and has been published in the UK, Ireland and the U.S. She is a member of Women Aloud NI and is on the Poets Advisory Group for the Scottish Poetry Library.
Afterwards (Caroline Johnstone) She Zipped her lips With fine stitches; The silent needle scarred. She buried it In the pocket Stayed
deep of her handbag, in her gilded cage
With a Her plumage Masking
silent bird’s rage; a masterpiece her shame.
Remembrance (Caroline Johnstone) The gassed and dying choke the carts That dot the wastelands, ashed in part, Sound punctured with the bleeding hearts Of officers at home. The stench of trenches, oozing mud With splintered metal, bone and blood Of great wars meant to stem the flood, Brothers in arms, they die.
Tea and Sympathy (Caroline Johnstone) He left her fearful, lonely. Tea and sympathy No sweetener to Her furious grief. Ghosts brushed past her; Wrapped grey fog Around her heart; Buried it in thorns. She wakened,wrote her pain In journals, powerful poems; First aid to a broken heart, First chapter of her new life.
The Unfinished Poem (Caroline Johnstone) The house his mind once called its home Has gaping roofs, and paint-cracked eaves, Of forget-me-not blues
The frosted brittle skeletons of history and wit served now As a porridge of forgetfulness, faint echoes haunt Sweet gentle kisses of remembrance
Dementia’s wraiths roam shadowed emptied rooms, Herald long laments for lonely roads where memories float In space yet give no hope, no sense of place.
As Alice keeps on falling down the rabbit-holes of grief The curtains close on last acts interrupted. Observers weep at unfinished poems.
Biographical Note: John Doyle . John Doyle from County Kildare has recently returned to writing poetry after a considerable absence. He was educated at N.U.I. Maynooth, and is influenced by a diverse range of writers, many of whom do not adhere to canonical peccadilloes.
Eze Graveyard, Cote D'Azur, France : Three Songs (John Doyle) L'Enfant Daniel Brogna 1952 - 1953 I can tell their visits have decreased, each stone around your grave kissed by weed, each drop of rain adds a swollen Franc to your threadbare pockets. Stillness and silence, it's rate of exchange barked and clumped in the futures of stooping wall. Ici Repose Mon Regrette Cher Tamagno Berto The worker bends his bones, an inscribed plaque upon you shows me how - he cuts and digs, cutting, digging deeper, for I feel he wants this earth to hold you, as though your shapes may be stone now, it is soil that holds and radiates your warmth. And a rose blooms without border, he and she - its petals. The Bridge of the Devil I think of Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, dicking around the south of France, 1971; I've found a corner where solace hides - depending on the shape of sun and how the clouds choose to interpret - though algebra, perhaps a more guttural Gaulish science - soothing stone, coin-toned silver, that crisp cough of trowel poked between rock and mortar, and Curtis and Moore, hundreds of feet above, riding with the devil in the heavens in 1971
Sherlockstown, County Kildare (John Doyle) The drunken trees tightrope the swarm of stout and well-fed cloud, poles in fields around us, creosote dribbled; the electricity of bees gathering, the snip of surgeon prunes the soft thickness of adolescence, the clutching music snaps - conductor cleans baton, shirt-sleeves shortened
Knockbue Railway Station, County Cork, September 12th, 1962 (John Doyle) (1) Even if the photograph was technicolor this hardly matters sleepers are malnourished ribs ballast suckling skin, from drained-ragged earth. (2) The misery of fauna pokes sepia’s futures through like unmarried great-great uncles who get their weekly thrills cutting younger uncles’ kids - out of cinema queues; (3) Jittery Raleigh spokes crackle stone on this future country road, mountain frowning out of lens, Gregory Peck coughing, checking watch
Squalls (John Doyle) Squalls squabble Sardinian words sanded on the tangs of newly-tasted tongues Scirri, mannu - oceans roar these terms with fearsome affection The Greater Scaup, The Eurasian Wigeon, its floating dialects; Squalls rising - un-ended
Some Things Ray Davies May Consider Adding to the Village Green Preservation Society Master-List (John Doyle) Football commentators who sound like they're talking down a telephone line in a stadium with a running track, gas horns and Sport Billy and Iveco advertising hoardings The Phillips Test Card Bratislava side street cobblestone cafes in vanilla streetlamps Walking home slightly-drunk on English ale in the fresh chill of snow, orange light, the clean flump and crumple of feet underneath The sound of morse code and the commentator going bat shit crazy as Marco Tardelli scores...
All Those Cars (John Doyle) The little scratch of twig on coughing folds of fog, the hallowed hounds of headlights hunting
Combine Harvesters near the Keadeen Hotel, County Kildare, August 1978 (John Doyle) Horse brass chings it's Sunday; barley's wheat-cured folds of firm golden giddy-haired girls in the maelstroms, in the meadows, between; an entourage of combine harvesters prowl the manly muscle of eloped terrain near the necks of shapes the elderly barley's signatures calm and caress, making us, remembering... we, the gold of sun, and Gods yet to be worshiped, sacrificed
Biographical Note: Jensen Byrne Jensen Byrne is a queer poet, writer and human rights professional currently based in Dublin.
Epilogue (Jensen Byrne) I dream of finding my Dad's dead body. Even though I fall asleep to his thread upon the stair, in my mind's eye, I see his corpse. It has not yet bloated, but his eyes half open belie the deathly pallor that is slowly leaching the red and purple from his bloodpressured cheeks. He could almost be drifting, thinking, his jaw slack as he indulged in some fantasy of escape. But in my dream his soul, his essence, has departed and he is left an empty gaping husk devoid of thought. His mouth is open. The words just won't come out. Like a sentence half finished. Startled and stopped mid-sentence, he is permanently suspended between death and the potential that was his life. Death is like a mockery. Making light of how he would sleep, how he would speak. Of how he would breath if he could draw breath. If his own heart beat and dreams had not ceased. But these are the dreams I have. Short glimpses, remembered barely. Glimpses of me standing by his bed, where he had gone to rest and had never arisen. Hours of rest on my part, diminished and reduced to these bare remembrances. I dream of finding my Dad's dead body. Despite the possibility of dreams and the adventures and narrative that surely filled the hours and space between and around this damning death-image, this is the image, the icon, that dominates. That fills the darkness behind my eyelids. I wake with a start. My eyes opening in the dreary sunlight that filters through the net curtain shrouding my window frame. My heart is heavy and I feel my mattress beneath me like a sucking weight. My limbs feel heavy with more than sleep as I climb from my bed. I leave my room, my eyes half-shut and fighting sleep. I need to check on my father. What dreams may come. I wake from this nightmare and fear that it has come true. I walk down the short hallway and open his bedroom door and see his bulk beneath his chequered blanket. I observe the slow rhythmic rise and fall of the cloth. He sleeps still. Only my dreams had been disturbed. My heart settles, easing from a tightness I am all too familiar with. I turn around and return to my bedroom and the still warmth of my sheets. I could stay awake, or I could make the attempt to return to sleep. In the hopes of better dreams, or a darker oblivion, that would help me waste away a few more of the hours that fill a day with dreadful possibility.
Biographical Note: Conor O’Sullivan
Conor O’Sullivan’s short fiction has appeared in the Lakeview Journal, the Bitchin’ Kitsch, Storgy, Dual Coast Magazine, the Opiate and was published as a chapbook by TSS Publishing. His work has also been accepted to the Furious Gazelle. He lives in London where he works as a sports journalist. His articles have been published by the Irish Independent, RTE and the Daily Express.
Seapoint (Conor O’Sullivan)
Doyle and Walsh cycled from Westland Row to Blackrock. The clouds parted near Sandymount with the sun gleaming onto the terraced black rooftops. They leaned back on their saddles as the bikes rolled down Idrone Terrace until the baths came into view. There was moisture in the air from morning showers and their shirts felt damp and heavy on their backs. That Easter Sunday 1916, Walsh suggested looking for bikes outside the station and riding along the coast. He and Walsh slept in tenements along the River Liffey most nights, finding any space of hardwood floor that they could fall on to dream for a few hours. “We should see Dublin today as it is,” he said, leading him from Gardiner Row towards College Green. A group of three girls in flower dresses and all with tight, wet hair walked up from the baths. They smiled but didn’t their shift regards to the boys, crossing the road and opening a gate into one of the houses looking over the bay. Walsh dismounted his bike and led him down the steps over the railway tracks. “They’ll be fine here,” Walsh said. “Sure, there won’t be much we can do from the pier if someone has a notion to steal them,” Doyle said. “We’re hardly in any position to be looking down on thieves,” Walsh replied, stacking the bikes against the blue iron railings. Doyle ran his right hand on the wall beside the slabbed path and smelt the seaweed washing in with the tide while Walsh kept his hands tucked into his pockets. Both boys were tall and broad but Walsh had a fuller face. Doyle’s eyes were brown and had a glint that people noticed
when he caught their glance. Walsh had short, brown hair and liked to run his hands along the tips. Doyle’s hair was longer and fairer, falling over his ears despite pushing it back by instinct at this stage. The path cut off into the sea. They had to climb up and walk along a short wall to reach the pier. A train bound for Kingstown passed by where Doyle caught eyes with a young woman who sat by the window wearing a blue fedora and white blouse. Doyle saw her lips part into a smile as they held gazes for a moment before she disappeared and the train rumbled on down the coast. “They’ve no idea what’s coming…,” Walsh said. “…heading back to their tall houses.” Doyle jogged to keep up with him on the wall with grass and daisies lining the edge of each slab. They hopped back down onto a narrow path beside the water. It curved along the exterior of a garden that was attached to a manor standing beyond oak trees on the crest of a hill. A sea breeze brushed against their faces. The bay was still like a window pane. They sat down at the end of the pier where their legs dangled off the concrete and the heels of their shoes reflected in the water. “Are you ready for the morning?” Walsh asked, removing two cigarettes and a box of matches from his shirt pocket. “I’ll have to be,” Doyle said, watching a gull soar between the clouds. Walsh lit his cigarette and took deep drags then turned his face away from him. “Sure, think of the laugh we’ll have,” he said, handing Doyle the half-smoked cigarette. “All the boys running around town taking back our city.” “I kept the news from my brother in the last letter,” Doyle said and dabbed the ash against the stone between their two hands.
“We’re doing it for them, all the boys who had no choice but to fight for the Crown,” Walsh said, removing his shirt and trousers. “Are you going for a swim?” Doyle asked. “Of course, this could be the last chance for a while.” Walsh dove off the pier, his shadow visible beneath the foamy surface before he rose for air. Doyle smoked and watched his friend swim as Walsh laughed and buried his head below a few more times before clambering back out. “You’re a fool, it’s fresh once you get in,” he said, wiping his chest with his shirt. He put his trousers back on and picked up the other cigarette that was nestled between two pebbles. “Will there be enough guns?” Doyle asked. “Of course,” he replied and inspected the burning paper each time before placing it back in his mouth. “They’ve a whole rake of them stored.” “We should’ve fleeced the grocer in Blackrock,” Doyle responded before taking the cigarette off Walsh. He squeezed three drags out of it before the embers blew against his fingers. “I’d love a stout too,” Walsh said and stood over Doyle while buttoning his shirt. “But the last thing we need is to be getting arrested. I couldn’t live with myself if a thirst caused me to miss tomorrow.” A puffy cloud rested on the top of Howth Hill with houses scattered on the mossy incline. Doyle watched a boat slipping out of the bay and wondered how long it would take to reach Liverpool. He had never been further than Wicklow to work as a farm labourer for two summers. The sea was warm and he swam at night on the coved beaches.
“We should head back soon,” Walsh said. “I want to find a decent spot tonight.” “I’ll stay for a while,” he said. “Are you sure? The bike could be gone.” “It’s a nice walk and the roads will be quiet,” he said and looked up to Walsh with a smile. “Well, if I don’t see you tonight, we’ll meet by Grand Canal in the morning.” “Just behind the mill,” he said. “I know.” Walsh walked back along the wall beside the tracks and removed his bike from the railings. Doyle laid flat on his back and kept his eyes closed listening to a passing train. He sat on that pier until the sun fell behind the horizon and the sky turned violet. Afterwards, the sea and life he led was left behind as he walked through Dublin’s flickering streets.
Biographical Note: Neil Ellman
.
Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,200 poems, many of them ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. His latest chapbook, Mind Over Matta (Flutter Press, 2015), consists of poems based on the abstract-surrealistic art of Chile's Roberto Matta Echaurren.
Puppet Theatre (Neil Ellman) (after the painting by Paul Klee)
Welcome to the show where we perform a theatre of your absurdities a daily mimicry of you who think you live by will alone without the guidance of a hand or strings. We are wood you of flesh and blood but you are the puppets and we command the stage; our voice is yours our expressions replicate your erratic, mechanistic moods. We are your shadows behind a half-lit screen and yet more real than you. Welcome to the show where you can see yourselves reflecting what you truly are.
Dance of the Earth and Stars (Neil Ellman) (after the painting by Richard Pousette-Dart)
What dance do they do the earth and start their arms around each other’s waiste? What passes between their lips their fingertips as they twist and turn in unison? What is their secret desires as they move in parallel orbs to the primal music of the night? What does the earth perceive but the majesty of the universe as they revolve around the floor? What do stars perceive but a cold and distant partner with neither humanity nor grace?
Moon Animal (Neil Ellman) (after the painting by William Baziotes)
Some will see in the craters of the moon the face of a disapproving hawk with the scowl of a mother on her nest threatened by the dark For some, its maria, vast and deep, contain a multitude of fish and a huge gray whale coming to the surface for a gasp of air. On its treeless mountains there are bighorn sheep and grizzly bears elk, moose and wolverines struggling for survival in a hostile land. On the darker side where the air is thinner than on an aging star and dust a creature of another kind— there are no butterflies.
Color Explosion (Neil Ellman) (after the painting by Robert Delaunay)
It happens, everything does when color explodes: reds become blues become reds again, full throttle at the speed of green circling endlessly a yellow sun in a magenta sky spewing nebulous shades of orange, of gray, of brown everywhere and in this forever universe where the color of a thing is never the same and has no shape or name.
Combate (Neil Ellman) (after the painting by Gunther Gerzso) It’s in our DNA a need to do what we were meant for the holy fight the just crusade against the speakers of a foreign tongue and bearers of a different flag when nothing else matters but to survive and urinate on the land that has been ours since the beginning of time and worship the one true god.
Biographical Note: Jonathan Hamilton Jonathan was born and raised in Belfast. He currently resides as an unemployed poet in Sheffield, England with his partner Nicole and his cat Solly.
Stew (Jonathan Hamilton)
It has snowed again, in March almost April and Nicole is in want of something piping hot and homey when she’s back from work. I’m making stew, the tang of chopped onion and salt water bubbling transmits a tune, wet on my lips, the taste of garlic and beef saturate my fingers. Potatoes peeled roughly plop like pebbles in the pot, the heat from the stove paints my face. I’ve been stood by it all day. The memory of knives and forks hammering a marching tune on the glass table, finger-marked and smudged under place mats, comes to mind. It has crept upon me from childhood when Ma would make stew. We’d wait for Da to get home from work, restless at the table and impatiently we’d say our mock pious prayers, heads bowed and hands clasped, cutlery between our palms “Heavenly Father, thank you for the food we’re about to receive, but could you please hurry it up? We’re famished.”
Pot-washing (Jonathan Hamilton) Most days, after cooking, I find myself at our kitchen sink, peering through the window overlooking the back lawn, at the far end, past the descending patio area, across our patch of planted milk bottles and cardboard boxes past the broken dining table, left by the last resident, in a hurry to depart this household and beyond the dilapidated shed, the door hanging off, inside it is full of paint-pots and plastic bags, there is a tree. I am yet to see it adorned in its finery, we have lived here only in winter. But, often when I wash pots hands deep in dishwater, I wonder what it will look like come summer, when it is in full bloom. Today we are on the verge of spring, little birds arch back and forth from the broken fence to un-mowed lawn, they twitch tweet and torment the cat. Today, like most days he sits with me, pot-washing, his tail jerking and legs kicking the double-glazed and smudged glass. His voice hoarse from bickering in elongated longing meows, I can only assume that he is apologizing for the lack of horticultural expertise; telling them that come summer and a little warmth, we’ll ensure that the garden is tidied up, the grass trimmed and the veg patch weeded for milk-bottles and cardboard boxes. I assume he tells them that the tree, barren and disrobed, will bloom for the first time in our eyes and once more they will call it home.
Samson follows Goliath; A Panoramic (Jonathan Hamilton)
She, just resting her eyes, leans her head on my shoulder and falls asleep. I try prodding a gentle elbow to the ribs but she snores turns over and dreams of the ikat padding tattered behind her... Leaving me weary but unsleeping don’t want to miss our destination as Samson follows Goliath climbing through fogged window the sun rising at their backs behemoths of the skylineI’ve captured their likeness with every little trip, she’s seen them before, scrolling through thumbed holiday snaps and said time and time again, “wud like t’s’em me sen,” but come tomorrow it’ll be back to thumbed photographs again.
Obligatory Leprechaun Patterned Novelty Pants (Jonathan Hamilton)
We’d arrived before nine in the morning, none of the shops open yet, both of us over from England and Nicole bunged up with a cold, typical that she waits until she’s on holiday before she gets sick. Growin tired of tracing streets in search of hot air and a warm drink, we decided to dander round St George’s market, the last surviving example of its kind in Belfast and if nothing else, an escape from the gloom of a Baltic Friday morning. The bleary eyed mitten-fingered vendors floggin tattered books, wee trinkets and ornaments picked up off the shelves, of some oul doll recently passed, a welcome tonic to Nicole’s hacking cough. An easy way to kill time before our train to Dublin. Anyway, I like to inspect the vegetables picked at dawn with the earth still clingin to em. Eye up the latest catch, although the smell makes Nicole gip, not a fan of fish. And listen, enlightened as ageing hipsters and Grammar school punks discuss Vinyl and bemoan current musical trends. Not forgetting the chance, to stockpile, the obligatory Leprechaun patterned novelty pants, I have three pairs now, a sucker for, “Irish tat,” as she puts it. But being an Irishman living in England I’m practically a tourist on this trip and so I take my cultural nostalgia, anyway I can get it, even if that means, it’s less authentic and verging on kitsch.
Tell the Ponies, You Like Strawberries (Jonathan Hamilton)
Ma would take me and Ruth to the park. We’d traipse behind her, giddy legged. Footballs and picnic baskets under arms, raincoats round waists, just in case. Each time, we’d stop feed the ponies and tell’em, “we like strawberries” (our tradition). Other times, we’d watch the ducks and curse the fact we’d ate all the tatty bread for breakfast, meaning none for them. And when we’d swelter and moan that it was roastin, Ma would relent and buy us a Poke with a flake in it. The park, ten minutes from home and across a busy road, was always a grand day out, great craic, a chance to stretch our legs, too used to being cooped up in the front garden with no were to run. On the way home, we’d stare down cars, hand in hand in hand, we would wait for the waves to part break, and walk at speed from one tri-coloured curbstone to another. One time, I wore a toy peeler’s helmut, proud as punch and keen to get to the scene of a crime. I walked out. Bold as brass, playin like I was Detective Inspector Moses and parted the sea of traffic, Ma’s voice like a siren in my ear, as she chased after me, panting and dragging Ruth along like a sack of spuds behind her. “Never in her life … so selfish and stupid … to walk on without her … she’d asked for me to wait, while she tied Ruth’s shoelaces.” I can remember looking up at her, face red with relief more than anger. Too ashamed to say anything and worried she’d tell Da, he was always the anger coupled to her disappointment. The rest of the walk home, spent dodging sly looks shot back at me from Ruth. Smug, that she was for now, Ma’s favourite.
Biographical Note: Richard W. Halperin Richard W. Halperin's poetry collections are published by Lapwing and by Salmon
Christ in the Snow (Richard W Halperin)
There is madness afoot on this planet. It is in the news. It is in homes. Often it is called politics, Sometimes it is called love, before the police come. It is in my own head. It is incomprehensible And apparently unstoppable. It settles over entire countries, One acknowledges it and writes, Or paints, or acts, or composes. One values kindness above all, Even as the ovens open. One cannot scream at a seed in the ground For not sprouting fast enough. I am glad of snow, Even though I do not understand it. It is some form of rain. It is quite beautiful, actually.
Like lace.
Dancing on the Moon (Richard W Halperin)
I am half-dazed with heat Fatigued with heat The world is ending in heat And for this I cannot blame entirely My fellow creatures because also responsible Are the sun the oceans the tiniest insect
Who could have intervened prior to stop Our tinkering – I speak of the greedy Of the already dead and putrid who walk around Without knowing that And of those who had never quite noticed Although toads and most birds had noticed long ago and fled.
I can scarcely set these words down on paper The heat so oppressive for so many days and nights and days. For all I know the moon is also responsible The moon could have intervened prior But there is dancing on the moon And people on the moon in addition to the dancing
Because dancing is separate from people. I can see them I can recognise some of them As parents and so forth their side now clearly the real side Our side the dream side the bubble the thin maquettes Through which we stagger and fall As the dinosaurs staggered and fell a
And I ask myself did the dinosaurs write ‘Ozymandias’ And did Shelley only copy it out And did they see in the house of mirrors Turgenev walking And love him as an obscure symbol of hope for the as-yet unborn, And did they see their bones on platforms in great marble halls Near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania?
A Pocket of Light in the Window (Richard W Halperin)
A pocket of light in the window Cannot light the whole house. Yet it lights the whole house.
I feel as if I were under an enchantment. Enchantment is one explanation When things cannot be fitted together Yet are together.
But I am not under an enchantment.
A dog looks out the window. Is the dog looking for me? Is the dog I? Is the house I? In a house nothing is fitted together, But there it all is anyway.
Love is supposed to be bigger than anything. I have known love. I have received it. I have given it. But it is not bigger than this house. I don’t give a rap about the house. I have known love.
The Innocent and the Beautiful (Richard W Halperin)
Great poets come and great poets go And what they saw Goes mainly unattended.
Their poems describe, perfectly, The future: The same sad story Repeated in fresh victims. If one lives to be very old – Neither Yeats nor Eliot did – One is hollowed out. Even the entrails become dry And recalcitrant.
This is how gardens work. Die so that life May rise from it.
The invisible, Which Ray Bradbury said He lived by, Outlasts everything.
Everybody has A brief birthday party.
I cut a piece of cake For certain poets.
To Leon (Richard W Halperin)
A patch of orange floats on a patch of silver Which floats on a patch of speckled brown. A dragonfly is in the middle. What does it mean? Like music, it means nothing. It is. Mozart means nothing, a dragonfly Means nothing, I mean nothing. We are. We – and by we I mean the part we almost can’t see – Float on fields of colour which float on fields of colour. Of this, we – and now by we I mean I – Take little account.
The patch of orange is a collage Done years ago by a good friend. Is it she, the collage? The collage is something she created Which is alive, and this morning in my living room, More alive than I.
Why is the brown speckled And why did she put a dragonfly in the middle? Why not? Certain things – Chinese poetry, the thin Callas Aïda, The watching of Joe Di Maggio running like an antelope – Destabilise.
Something is going on at which the soul stirs. A hotel employee wearing a badge that said ‘Leon’ Told me that unfortunately my room was not yet ready. I told him that I had come to New York from France Because my wife had just died and I needed To spend time with her mother, And was there some place I could just lie down? He told me to leave my valise and come back in an hour.
When I did, he had left for the day, And his replacement gave me the key to my room. When I entered, I saw on a table A votive candle, a book of matches, and a note: ‘This might help with your tough time. Leon.’
Thank you, Leon.
In 1928 (Richard W Halperin)
In 1928 my parents were alive but I was not. I was invisible. They did not know each other. Each was young and full of hope. When I arrived that was already not the case. 1928 is a world I cannot picture. Nothing can make it real for me. Some were very old, then dead. Some were being born. Heads of states now in history books Or become statues or pictures on stamps Were real, ate toast. Did – some of them – terrible things to people Who were also alive. In short, a world, Rolling out of the ball of yarn no one can see.
In 1928 my mother was, I think, pretty and lively. My father was, I think, full of jokes. There they were. There they are. This very night in my chair I could tell them what was going to happen to them. I have the key to the lock of 1928 I could whisper to them one or two things In the middle of the day they were having And they would hear it.
But I shall not. Gratuitous devastating pain. There they are, so lovely. ‘That will never happen to me,’ Each thinks.
I do whisper something: ‘You are right, my dear. That will never happen to you. That can never happen to you. No, never. Never.’
I am glad to do it. Where’s the harm?
A New Ulster poetry review Pat Farrington’s two poetry collections by Lapwing Publications are Imperatives and Lifespun their poetry explores the narrative and interactive qualities of nature at large and on the smaller scale, Each poem has the effect of magnifying glass, enlarging and granting access to the world from insects, to other wild life. In Imperatives we explore the intrusion of humanity in the natural habitats of other life on this planet. In Another World for example the author describes their intrusion as “My glassy oval smashes through the surface, Slapping into view a sunlit realm” the poem begins with an act of violence and ends with one “its shadow like a discarded skin. Everything vanishes in a cloudy maelstrom. Witnessing, I flinch.” Each of the poems takes us on a journey in some ways reminiscent of ancient Greek travelogue’s The second book of poems deals more with familial life and issues dealt with on a daily basis. Alien Shore is an amazing metaphor for carrying a child in the womb the descriptions such as “One room universe” compared to climatic “abrupt departure has left you stranded on an alien shore”. Many of the poems deal with the joys of parenthood and the innocent wonder of childhood Juggling deals with the helplessness a parent feels when a child is sick, fretting on every moment. Both of these books are available from the Lapwing store.
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May 2018’s MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:
We cannot get over just how hot it is Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone. Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.
We continue to provide a platform for poets and artists around the world we want to offer our thanks to the following for their financial support Richard Halperin, John Grady, P.W. Bridgman, Bridie Breen, John Byrne, Arthur Broomfield, Silva Merjanin, Orla McAlinden, Michael Whelan, Sharon Donnell, Damien Smyth, Arthur Harrier, Maire Morrissey Cummins, Alistair Graham, Strider Marcus Jones Our anthologies https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_present_voices_for_peace https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_poetry_anthology_-april https://issuu.com/amosgreig/docs/anu_women_s_anthology_2017