Live Encounters Poetry & Writing March 2023

Ceiling lights.

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

©Mark Ulyseas

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Live Encounters is a not-for-profit free online magazine that was founded in 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. It showcases some of the best writing from around the world. Poets, writers, academics, civil & human/animal rights activists, academics, environmentalists, social workers, photographers and more have contributed their time and knowledge for the benefit of the readers of:

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Contributors

Brian Kirk – Guest editorial

Terry McDonagh

Alicia Vigeur-Espert

Amy Barry

Anna Yin

Anton Floyd

Arthur Broomfield

Bob Shakeshaft

David Morgan

Eddie Caruso

Eugen Bacon

Greta Sykes

John Philip Drury

Jordan Smith

Kate Ennals

Lynn Strongin

Maria McDonell

Ray Whitaker

Richard W Halperin

Tony Hozeny

March 2023

Brian Kirk

Brian Kirk has published a poetry collection After The Fall (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and a short fiction chapbook It’s Not Me, It’s You (Southword Editions, 2019). His poem “Birthday” won Irish Book Awards Poem of the Year, 2018. He was awarded a Professional Development Grant from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2020 and an Agility Award in 2021 and completed the Novel Writing Course with the Faber Academy in 2021. He was a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022 with his novel Riverrun.

Brian Kirk Some Words About Resilience

These last few years have been hard. The world changed so much, so quickly, for so many people. We, the ones who’ve come through it, should consider ourselves lucky. We’ve shown resilience.

Two years ago most of us had no idea what that word actually meant. Now, it’s a basic requirement, a life skill we all need to acquire.

For writers, resilience has always been a necessity. When we started out on this path with hope and excitement, we didn’t think too much about the future, or what failure or rejection might look like up close, not to mention what it might do to one’s spirit. Now, years later, if we are committed, we continue to create new work because that’s what we have to do, in spite of years of rejection punctuated by occasional moments of success.

© Brian Kirk

In our determination to find the light of day, I’m reminded of Sylvia Plath’s poem Mushrooms, although her mushrooms can be a metaphor for many things.

Mushrooms

Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly

Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding,

Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water, On crumbs of shadow, Bland-mannered, asking Little or nothing. So many of us!

So many of us!

We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot’s in the door.

In recent years I’ve known success and failure in writing terms. It’s part of the landscape of being a writer or a poet. While the journey can seem arduous at times, even futile occasionally, there are uplifting moments as you travel. There are always some poems or books or ideas that you read or stumble across as you work, that seem to chime with what you’re trying to say, that tell you that you are not on your own. And then there are the people – family, friends, fellow writers who can share the burden that you carry.

The most difficult aspect of the pandemic, apart from the serious risks to health, was undoubtedly the loss of occasions for actual social interaction. The virtual writing communities that sprang up as a result were of huge benefit, but I must confess that I’m glad to be able to meet in the real world again and to sit in the same room and listen to other writers read from their work.

This year I’ve taken on facilitation of some regular writing workshops – poetry and short stories – and it’s been a great experience. There is certainly truth in the assertion that the teacher learns as much as the student from these exchanges. I am also a member of a poetry group, the Hibernian Writers, and we have recommenced meeting in person for our workshops lately. These face-to-face immersions in language and craft really help to sustain the solitary writer.

I do remember some workshops in the very distant past where I felt less than valued, and my poem The Workshop, recently published in The Stony Thursday Book, No. 18 Winter 2022, edited by Annemarie Ní Churreáin, is a fictional account of one such experience. I hope my fellow Hibernian Poets are not offended by the poem, which pokes fun at myself as much as anyone else.

The Workshop

I put my trauma on a page, brought it to the old school hall and showed it to the group. Reassured by their insouciance –I could tell they’d heard it all before –in awe of jaded urbane slouch, wry raised eyebrow, cool remark. When my turn came to speak I kept it brief; I praised where I felt praise was earned, stayed silent on the parts I thought were weak. That’s just my nature, always trying to appease. But other minds can be unlike my own. They took my words and stacked them in a pile that showed them small, or isolated them so they looked puny on the page. One said: the poem turns here, it quickens on this word that cannot take the strain. Another said: this phrase is death, it pulls me from the poem, undoes what little good was done up to that stage. I thought about my hurt while others spoke. I wondered why I’d brought it here where no one knows my life beyond an abstruse story on a sheet of paper. Why did I come here? To make it better or more real? I left before the others could invite me for a drink. I worked on it some more when I got home. It only made things worse.

Writers Cottage, Cill Rialaig Writers Retreat in Co. Kerry.

Photograph by Brian Kirk.

And speaking of the solitary writer, I was lucky enough to be offered a week-long retreat at the wonderful Cill Rialaig Writers Retreat in Co. Kerry in February this year, which was sponsored by Listowel Writers’ Week (see photo of my writer’s cottage). There, in almost perfect solitude, in a stark and beautiful landscape, I was afforded rare time and space to get some serious thinking and writing done. These periods of solitary work interspersed with the supportive company of family, friends and fellow writers are what sustain me as a writer. We think of resilience as something that comes from within us, but the reality is that it is fostered in the supportive relationships we are lucky enough to enjoy.

https://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Brian-Kirk/

© Brian Kirk

Terry McDonagh

Terry McDonagh, Irish poet and dramatist, reads and facilitates in Europe, USA, Asia and Australia. He’s taught creative writing at Hamburg University and was Drama Director at Hamburg International School. Published eleven poetry collections, letters, drama, prose and poetry for young people. He’s been an acting voice and narrator on RTE radio drama for children on many occasions. In March 2022, he was poet in residence and Grand Marshal as part of the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations in Brussels – his poem, The Earls Didn’t Return, was commissioned as part of the residency, and launched at The Irish College in Leuven. He returns to Brussels in March 2023. His work has been translated into German and Indonesian. His poem, ‘UCG by Degrees’ is included in the Galway Poetry Trail on Galway University campus. He works closely with Poetry Ireland and has been actively involved in Writers in Schools programme for many years. In 2020, Two Notes for Home – a two-part radio documentary, compiled and presented by Werner Lewon, on The Life and Work of Terry McDonagh, The Modern Bard of Cill Aodáin. His latest poetry collection, ‘Two Notes for Home’ – published by Arlen House – September 2022. He returned to live in County Mayo in 2019. http://.terry-mcdonagh.com/

Conversation over Coffee

Why are we sitting here discussing dystopia and things we know little about

when we could be chanting football hymns or toasting a boy and girl walking out of a lavender wood

just as a church bell calls to prayer, or with finger on chin, we could be dreaming of fireflies

and a gaggle of geese taking charge of crossroads. A figure in black and police turn up too

and when the fireflies have had enough of blue and cackle, they buzz off to light up fields before sunrise.

In sinister undertones, you rattle on about a relative who borrowed a hearse to transport a ladder

with a strip of red lingerie hooked to the end poking out. Flat out he was. Foot to the floor. Full tilt

with exhaust fumes pluming to the skyline and all for a wilting wife and roof-tiles in tatters. It was urgent.

continued overleaf...

Conversation over Coffee ...contd

But if his spouse took a bad turn and mayhem broke out on rooftops, he’d be lost

having to fight a periodic fit of peeve while settling for pizza and Stella as stopgaps.

Relationships can be tricky if literature is to be trusted. You say the song the fat lady sings

is this side of the far horizon. What if her song is nothing more than moody moments in endless coffee breaks?

The same again, please with some of that nice spice but above all else, let’s stay put for a while with coffee, cakes and conversation.

In Days Like Those

The more I daydream, the more I’m back in days when time was infinite, when I was that explorer –a sometimes Tarzan –in dense African jungle or in Asian monsoons morass fighting unshaped creatures never before seen by man,

The earth was round and I was a halo in an unimaginable oneness. and again there was me in my polished football boots dreaming like a lost word on the greatest day of the year with a Jaffa orange at half-time. I was a special item – the referee was to blame when we lost – and often behind the stand, small clusters of tattlers nestled in the shadows telling tales of scraps and stolen kisses.

continued overleaf...

In Days Like Those ...contd

We were as ungainly as a raw species in those days when good days were good when a cautious cat watched over a dead rabbit in morning mist and a red-faced teacher listened to lists of lies as long and short as the length of a piece of string.

Months came and went. We nestled into summer. September made way for October – there were endless human things on offer at a distance and big books with hard and soft covers telling of morals, planets and magic.

There were odds and ends, pens and horseshoes on shed doors. People knew about flat batteries and cars that only started with a push and, yes, there was always rain to keep us wet and, of course, the Atlantic and the swell of imaginary oceans that went in and out like clockwork like music if you listened, like unfulfilled adventure, that included pirates with eye-patches, scurvy and sunken treasure,

and riding high above fishes there were swimmers in many shades of sunburn and tans without blemish for centre-page-addicts.

Most parents just paddled or dipped in and out in factor something sunscreen, with one eye on the dog they’d nibble a biscuit or a grape or two, longing for teatime while kids shovelled sand into magic buckets to built big castles with turrets and moats under a canopy of approaching stars. Harmony was a kind of happiness.

Briars and blackberries sprouted and skirted walls, clover and shamrock carpeted the landscape and from almost any hilltop smoke could be seen twirling and spiralling somewhere in my imagination.

Before I get carried away, I’m going to stop without a proper end for joy, happiness and sadness have no beginning and no end. At least, I don’t think so.

Alicia Viguer-Espert

Alicia Viguer-Espert, born and raised in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain, lives in Los Angeles. She learned English as an adult, began writing in English in 2017 and that same year won The San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Book Contest. She has been a featured poet at numerous venues within the greater LA. Her work has been published in Colorado Boulevard, Lummox Anthologies, Altadena Poetry Review, ZZyZx Intersections, Panoplyzine, Rhyvers, River Paw Press, Agape Review, Soul-Lit, Dryland, Amethyst Review, Odyseey.pm, Solum Journal, and Spectrum Publications, among others. Her chapbooks To Hold a Hummingbird, Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea and 4 in 1, focus on nature, identity, language, home, and soul. In addition to national and international publications, she is included in “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” by Spectrum. Alicia is a three times Pushcart nominee.

She Lifts Her Burka

I wonder how tough this young Kabul woman has it. This woman who shows me her lovely fifteen years old face, polished nails bright red, and the green eyes of a 1985 National Geographic cover. A youth already betrothed to a man three times her age, a friend of her father’s, luckily with only one wife, she whispers. Leaning on the noise of a building’s façade to hide her dismay, or protect herself from viewers, she pushes her chaperone’s hands as they try to pull the burka back. At home family prepares Halwa and praises God for the engagement. Nervous, asks about life in Europe, if I am allowed to dance until sunrise, how often women die in childbirth, whether I am married, and if my husband beats me. With the last question her smile disappears. I survey the snowy ridges circling us like rapacious birds starving for prey in that frigid December morning. He’s a good man, maybe he’ll let me go back to school, she says frowning.

I think about her often, her beauty, youth, pray fate will treat her with enough benevolence to raise healthy, educated children. She wouldn’t have had a chance, untrained as she was, but her daughters did before the Taliban. Now icy clouds of misery engulf the city, women sit around clanky kerosene stoves without kerosene, debate the dangers of defying the jailers to have a life of their own, or else.

a bright light fades fast under the burka

The Phone Call

I

The music, a crying guitar much like an infected violin chews leaves blown by winter, hearts pounded by absences never expected to palpitate clean like a new whistle still in its wrapping at the store

II

The phone rings to that song we used to dance to by the sea. The ghost of your voice from abroad shakes me out of my incantations, resurrects embers from long dead ashes. I know the clear skin of yesteryears, strong thighs, and certain softness surrounding those forest green eyes form residues of memories now stiff with coldness and distance.

III

I search for a photograph as we speak to match the face to the vulnerable voice of a Peter Pan who never grew to his potential. You’re famous now, and a different voice implores forgiveness through air waves since cables too are gone, and nothing ties us together anymore.

Lunacy

If the moon follows you tonight extract from your pocket the gift you’ve been holding for years buried in the orange lined drawer. The cypress’ shadow, sharp and dark, never stops asking questions to hawks usually flying in pairs which cannot be seen now because clouds wrapped around bougainvillea obscure the sky. It’s always this way, a little beauty distract us from seeing the One beauty. Check your pockets, see if it’s still there between torn lining and pennies that remember your joyful cries at age 2, “luna, luna,” as she claimed you as her own luminous arms stretched sweeping you from outside the wide-open window. Time, like a tricycle rolls down the hill of life, faster as the slope intensifies, moss adheres to the wall of your brain which apparently has shrunk exactly like a rayon dress you washed ignoring the label’s warning, dry cleaning only. The cypress’ queries have not been answered, priorities have changed favoring the peculiar silence of a winter home, curtains half-drawn. It’s the taste of the moon what you crave the milky essence filling you up with hope that your life hasn’t been in vain, that residues of star dust you donated will foster constellations, that the attraction of love will triumph over the repulsion of hate, that the peace you earned has been scattered, and generations will enjoy it as they gaze at the moon, your mother.

Amy A. Barry

Amy A. Barry writes poetry and short stories. She is published widely in journals, magazines and press and featured in Breaking Ground Ireland. Her poems have been translated into many languages including Italian, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Spanish. Amy has been awarded literature bursaries from the Arts Council and Words Ireland. A travel lover, she previously worked in the media, hotel and oil/gas industry. She regularly organises poetry & music events in her hometown, Athlone. She has performed her work in Ireland and internationally. Amy is a professional member of The Irish Writers Centre and an honorary member of the Neruda Association, Italy. She is the founder of Global Writers. Chosen for the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series 2022.

Tsunami

I journeyed in the dark, wet cold air roped my body. My ears burned. My blood rushed to the anguished cries of slow death. I felt trapped and almost dead myself.

All around me, faces wore garish masks, like characters in a tragic opera, desperate to rekindle hope.

Saturation diving

When you live in Australia, it’s at least an eleven-hour flight to board another. You never sleep, as you’re always cramped into cattle class.

(diving companies would strap you to the wing to save a dollar if they could). A local agent will meet you; he usually has no idea what’s going on. You meet the other divers, drink yourself to a stupor, because it’ll be your last night on shore.

Once you’re on the vessel, you’re working on shift. Twelve to twelve, after a few days, the diving starts, six to nine of us herded into a saturation chamber, about six meters long and about two meters in diameter. You breathe differently here. Huffing the helium, you talk like Donald Duck, and so you’ll live for 28 days.

Two divers are put into a bell, shaped like an egg, connected to the chamber, dropped over the side of the boat, attached to a wire. Just above the sea-bed, you jump out of the bell, still attached. For six hours lifting heavy things in bad visibility, requires incredible focus, where any mistake you make could lead to agonizing death.

Back to the chamber to eat and sleep.

On the 29th day, you’re decompressed, the gas in the chamber let out slowly over three slow days, till your body is at the same pressure as the outside world.

Then, the journey starts all over again.

Anna Yin

Anna Yin was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 1999. She was Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2015-17) and Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets (2013-16). She has authored five poetry collections and one collection of translations: Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions 2021). Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from USA and grants from Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Her poems/translations have appeared at Queen’s Quarterly, ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, Literary Review of Canada etc. She read on Parliament Hill, at Austin International Poetry Festival, Edmonton Poetry Festival and universities in China, Canada and USA etc. She has designed and taught Poetry Alive educational programs since 2011 along with her daily IT job. In 2020, she started her own small press: surewaypress.com for her translating, editing and publishing services.

Unmasked

After face covers become popular, party hats also become necessary. Different colors, dissimilar styles, red or blue, white or black, high or low, left or right, on then off, off then on, as long as you speak— out of your own choice, fervent hands force them upon you.

Across WeChat, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook, arguments and disputes like mad viruses take over locally and globally, day and night: Chinese medicines vs. western treatment, whistle blowers and open-firing critics, number games and diplomas sparring, this world turns ridiculously ugly and rowdy.

You retreat to the quiet corner of your frugal literary Frigate, removing all covers and hats. Turning on a light, you trace a Page of prancing Poetry. Taking that traverse, no mask smothering, no hat confining, you find a world of greenness— spring is lonely there yet clean and authentic.

Note: words in italics are from There is no Frigate like a Book by Emily Dickinson

© Anna Yin

Pearl Earrings

The news arrives with your teardrop pearl earrings. Shocked, I clutch them, and stumble out to the trail behind my house.

The fallen leaves under my feet crackle and crunch. Birds, rabbits, and squirrels retreat into bushes— refuge from winter’s piercing cold.

Late stage, the hospital stated then sent you off to wane.

The sky darkens, my shadow deepens.

Mom weeps, pleading with me not to exaggerate Poetry’s healing outcome; but I cannot help penning poems with the moon waxing and waning.

How could we let go of our long catalogue: sunlight, flowers, beaches, birds, dew, rain and moons—snow moon—pink moon—harvest moon, teardrop pearl earrings?

Sister, after the winter, what can we leave behind? What can and what will leave us?

© Anna Yin

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

Anton Floyd. Photograph credit: Aodhán Rilke Floyd.

Anton Floyd was born in Egypt, a Levantine mix of Irish, Maltese, English and French Lebanese. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Cork. He has worked in education in the eastern Mediterranean and in Cork City. He now lives in West Cork where he gardens organically. Poems widely published in Ireland and internationally. A member of Irish Haiku Society, he is several times winner of International Haiku Competitions. A selection of haiku is included in Between the Leaves, an anthology of new haiku writing from Ireland edited by Anatoly Kudryavitsky (Arlen House, 2016). His first poetry collection, Falling into Place (2018) was published by Revival Press. He edited Remembrance Suite (Glór, 2018), a chapbook of sonnets by Shirin Sabri and an international anthology of poems, Point by Point ( Glór, 2018). He received the 2019 Literary Prize awarded by the Dazzling Spark Arts Foundation (Scotland)). A new collection, Depositions (Doire Press) was published in 2022. A new collection, On the Edge of Invisibility is forthcoming. A collection of haiku Singed to Blue is in preparation.

Consider How At Some Random Hour

after Rainer Maria Rilke

1

Consider how to encode a single poem. Think of the facets of peopled citiesroads, alleyways, avenues and streets, the nuanced lives behind window blanks, the footfall echoes the lonely make, the interrupted cries at night rebounding over the houses and past impartial clocks. They ripple unheard among the stars. Observe the sounds and the silences in the flights of birds, in the minutiae when nature performs all her dramasthe dangers and the promises of thingsthen bows to the sun and the moon.

Return again in your mind to those unchartered streets where memory like a fading silver print would name the populating ghosts of so many chance encountersthe ones that couldn’t last and didn’t; to that ever-present childhood so full of inexplicable mysteries. Think back to your parents to those serial hurts etched over time into their well meaning faceshow the gifts and joys they imagined were discarded like neglected toysall those mismatched, eager expectations.

Consider How At Some Random Hour

3

Remember how in childhood when griefs came out of some blue nowhere and heralded strange and difficult transformationswhen change, like the seas’ moving waters sometimes calm like when a dawn meditation fills the restraint of a quiet room, or is sometimes wild and unpredictable yet always so vital it resists definition. You might consider it enough to draw the protean talent of memoryall the dangers and promises of thingsinto a poem’s constellating thought but it is not and cannot be enough.

4

And after all that consider in the sounds and in the silences all the prompts and the impromptu choices, all those chances, all those revisions. Think back to those moments (none ever the same) in the night-soaked-dark when lovelight colours flared like stars in love’s dilated eyes. Recall the quickening pangs and magnified cries of labour and how new mothers closed their wide eyes to rest after the outrageous miracles of birth.

5

Add to these the time spent beside the dying how that last onset became a ritual of the self absenting itself from things: from familiar neighbourhood noises; from someone calling; from the rapid fire of a motor bike throbbing into the distance; from the lemon tree outside the window its branches, its shiny green leaves, its cluster of yellow suns and under them the chickens scratching in the dust; when with everything assigned, everything was surrendered to another cold, ineluctable ending.

Yet even with this hoard of memory it is not enough, for time will have a say in these things, will decide willy-nilly what matters and what may not. For the time being, memories like fleeting sensations will haunt your blood, will surface unidentified in your thoughts, in a look, a gesture as something natural and uniquely you, until out of the blue-black silence at some random hour it happensthe first word of a poem arrives. It draws a pioneering line around the stars. It begets and names a new constellation.

Dr Arthur Broomfield

The Life of a Salesman

I don’t want to drag you through a description of the interior of the lobby of the Kilcoole hotel, fascinating though that grand tour could be. Fascinating in the way my mechanic describes the process involved in changing the tyre on my Opel Astra. I could tell you about the door, if that’s what you really want, I picked a seat facing it. I waited there, with none of Joab’s patience, glad though to be in refuge from the November fog. I sat still. The spring that was causing minor torment to my left buttock might rip an incision in my Dunnes Stores chinos, bought for the occasion. The stains on the cover of the bucket seat – 1970’s vintage – disguised what may have been a floral pattern, a tasteless precursor to the Laura Ashley style, aimed at the nouveau-waged market of that time, when holiday-makers hauled borrowed caravans behind their Morris Minors to Salthill or Tramore for a week in the rain.

The location wasn’t of my choosing. Grassy Muldoon, a wheeler-dealer friend - we shared a common aspiration in getting rich quick from the quick sale - had set up a meeting for me with one of his contacts.

‘He’s some contact, Jonno, got stuff no one can get, at knock down prices too. He’ll put you back on your feet in no time.’

Time dragged. I wished I hadn’t rushed this morning. My boots could have done with polish. The tie with the SAS logo, who dares wins, might not impress a serious business associate.

‘Don’t wear that cap, you’ll look like a chauffeur for Keegans’ hearse,’ Margo, my live-in girlfriend, said, looking up from History of the World Wars that she’d salvaged from propping the door the hen coop.

‘Stay at your books love,’ I said.

‘Try reading one yourself, you won’t be gassed for it’.

Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet, short story writer and Beckett scholar from Laois, Ireland. His works and interviews have been published in Ireland, The United Kingdom, Serbia, India and the USA. He is current poet laurate for Mountmellick.

Clouds hung over the yard as I stormed out of the cottage. I jumped into my unreliable Astra, parked on the hill that descended to my escape route, the boreen that led to the M7 motorway, hitting one of our two hens in the hurry.

My corn was at me. Fuck this I thought. I relocated to the edge of the seat. The tan boot on my left foot, a remnant of a previous life, in sales to vets and farmers, was proving resilient. My phone rang.

‘Mr Jonathan?’

I grunted.

It is Franz. We have the appointment?

Yes. I’ve been waiting far too long. Where are you?

‘I am delaying. Has your lord mayor died?

‘He hasn’t been born.’

‘I’m caught in the funeral procession; can you please wait?

‘I’ll wait. This better be good.’

“I’ll be wearing the black leather trench coat. I walk with the limp foot.”

I put my boot back on, put my ten-blade penknife in my pocket. Too much bother paring my corn. Time dragged so slowly I wondered would it run out. He must be walking, I thought, carrying that stiff leg. Next thing my fucking piles ‘ill start. Coffee might be an idea, though the slop they call coffee here can be guaranteed to induce nausea.

‘Black coffee please,’ I hailed in the direction of two aspiring waitress leaning against the pillar that probably supported the whole hotel. They ignored my summons and continued to chatter, arms folded, heads nodding, oohing and aahing ‘did he’ and ‘he wouldn’t be my type’ responses to what I assumed to be mutual revelations of their love lives.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, louder this time.

‘Patience, patience, can’t you see we’re busy. I’ll be with you in one minute.’ Five or so later ‘he wouldn’t be my type’ marched to my table and assaulted it with a mug of temperate zone liquid, the identity of which was beyond my field of expertise.

I had been trying, between breaks in the clatter of crockery, to earwig on the sales pitch pouring out of the three-pieced chancer to his captives at the table to my left. Two of them, in their late forties, had the drawn faces of women with alcoholic husbands. The third, in his sixties, had the bull head and short back and sides of a retired garda. What looked like the shirt he wore on his last day in uniform was beginning to fray at the collar and cuffs.

‘I represent Seenagog a multi-national company that manufactures glasses. We’re based in Belgium,’ Chancer was saying.

He fed them numbers and projections and ambitions for the Irish market, ‘where you will be key players’.

’It’s the ideal product for the recession.’

They were lapping up his pat like bears at a beehive.

‘It’s an anti-scratch breakthrough,’ he announced. ‘The prototype was created by the Germans in Auschwitz.’

Auschwitz! Memories raced back, flooded my brain with smells and smarting eyes and stinging wounds on my elbows and knees; my mother, as she tried to sooth me with creams that only added to the pain. Even now, forty or so years later, I couldn’t understand what had got into my father’s head.

A good half hour later a figure that fitted Franz’s description of himself struggle through the door. He entered in stages, first a cane of the type carried by the blind, then the body, right shoulder first, body. left arm extended backwards, finally a black leather briefcase.

‘This is the excitement product; it will help the needful and make your money.’ Franz shaped each word like a stone mason with a chisel. He slowly opened the briefcase, carefully removed a shallow, rectangular tray, and without a word laid it on the table before me.

‘What the… what do I do with these?’

Arranged in two rows sat six pairs of false teeth, the top set on the top row. Some had the odd gap between teeth, others had aged to a smokers yellow/ brown.

Franz looked at me as if he were trying to read the small print on a medicine bottle.

‘My father, who worked in the security services in the war, salvaged thousands of them.’

‘War,’ I said. ‘Don’t mention soldiers to me. I know all about them, my grandfather was one. If it was porn or prostitutes, they might buy… but these …not a hope.’

‘No! No! Mr Jonathan! It is for the widow, the old one in the nursing home. The peoples with the pension. It is what they want in the recession. How do you say it, a nicke market?’

It seemed good business, the way Franz put it to me. I’d buy a thousand sets of teeth for a thousand euro and flog them for a tenner each. He went on a bit about politics and his background, but I didn’t want to know. All I know is when I wanted the dole there wasn’t a politician to help me. Politics won’t butter your bread.

‘You’ll need the big number,’ he said, ‘there’ll be the different shapes and sizes of the mouths. The woman’s and the man’s, the undershot, the overshot. There will be many fittings.’

Franz assured me the product was genuine. Dentists and doctors could trace each set, not just to its previous location but to its previous owner whose name, nationality, and religion, had all been stamped on each set. Some sets, he said, were of very expensive material, handmade by the finest craftsmen.

‘Some of these sets belonged to very wealthy persons,’ he said.

‘What’s this B for,’ I said.

‘The B signifies for the Belsen, where my father gathered many sets.’

‘As long as none of them are called Auschwitz, I had a bad experience with that name’. Franz hadn’t smiled since we met but now his teeth seemed to clench, his eyes squinted. He looked me over like someone waiting for a trapped rat to emerge from a shoebox.

‘No, my father applied for promotion to the Auschwitz but was eliminated. It is no longer the popular name.’

Well, I hadn’t been responsible for his father’s disappointment. Thinking I’d better not upset him, I said.

‘It’s OK now, it was a long time ago. Some kids are too sensitive, I suppose I was one of them, especially my skin. I couldn’t take the sting of that bloody soap.’

‘Soap!’ he said, ‘soap! What soap?’

‘God awful stuff my grandfather brought back from Germany. My dad took some of it. Nearly burnt my face off, got under my nails and up my nose. I’ll never forget the word Auschwitz, branded into it. Still makes my skin crawl.’

We agreed to meet again, me to hand over the money, he the teeth, and shook hands. I hurried to my Astra, keen to tell Margo the news. A rising moon was emerging through the clouds. The Dublin to Cork train hooted as it approached Ballyriddal station, nearby. A succession of cars, four or five maybe, swept into the car park at high speed. Wait till they taste the coffee, I was thinking.

‘Wait till you hear my news!’

Margo was standing in front of the tele, holding her favourite mug, the one adorned with the slogan, All history is bunk, that I gave her for her thirty fifth birthday.

‘Ssshh, will you. I’m listening to the news.’

‘Oh, what’s up? More gas discovered in the Irish Sea?’

Margo aimed the remote at the tele.

‘Strange, I was reading all about the camps this morning.’

‘The tinkers’ camps? ‘

‘No, you asshole, the Nazi camps, will you shut up and listen.’

She raised the volume.

‘Now for more on that breaking news from John Moorecroft, our Ireland correspondent. What’s the latest John?’

It’s about time they mentioned Ireland. I was thinking about all the money I pay for Sky sports, even in the weather forecast we’re ‘the west’ or the ‘southwest’.

‘…he’s a serious war criminal, according to German sources. He’s being detained in Ballyriddal police station. We expect members of the special unit responsible for hunting down ex-Nazis to arrive in town tonight. Meanwhile the hotel is closed to the public till the forensic team has finished its investigation.’

© Arthur Broomfield

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

Bob Shakeshaft

Bob Shakeshaft has been a regular reader on the Dublin open mic scene since 2004. Poems appeared in Riposte Broadsheet 2004/20015/ also Census Anthology 2009/2010. Agamemnon Dead 2014. New Ulster 2016/2017. NY. Lit. Magazine 2016. Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 2016/2021. Bob is a member of the Ardgillan Creative Writers. Bob’s debut collection Auld Rope published by Revival Press June 2021. Presently Bob is working on his second Manuscript: Winged minutes.

These Ekphrastic poems were written following my numerous visits to view artwork by Jack Butler Yeats at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.

Grief

Pouring splashing abhorrence of war let there be no more apocalyptic rider rising aloft an angry mob amid aggressive gestures a beaten old man bloody-blood seep-soaking pouring hands trembling a mother arm-covers her son protectively protecting a smallness of hope that violence wont dwell in his life

No flowers today

Slumbering shoulders knees in veneration his token of respect a torn-bunch of grass strewed a fresh grave bearing simple cross of throwaway branch criss-crossed-tight embellishing impoverished he adorns his love now as he trails into a distance of sorrows

Old walls

solitary silhouette old shadow greying walls reflecting life that was before now inevitable weighty time patiently waiting since the beginning to end the day a walking cane helps frame scaffold his pondering now revisiting this abandoned abode once sang-song in warm soul-breath unaware of tempo in silent allegory an unsteady gait tremor-tells

David Morgan

David Morgan is the author of The Good Old Cause – Communist Intellectuals and the English Radical Tradition and co-author of Writers of the Left in An Age of Extremes, both published in London by the Socialist History Society, of which he is the secretary. David is a journalist and editor who is interested in exploring the connections between literature and history. David has contributed to two collections of poems from the London Voices Poetry Group.

The Economy of Leaves

A shopping bag brim full to bursting

Of fresh cut leaves from some distant trees

Palm-like, richly veined, elongated

Sinuously green resplendent

Elegantly shaped as if fashioned in some studio

Nature’s beguiling artistry

Carried along to the florists

Traded to adorn the dinner table

Spread out, fluffed up, presented

For the perfect party or business lunch

Displayed but left unnoticed

Wilting before the soiree

So peremptorily dumped

Into the recycle bin

Destiny composted

Back to the land where found

An organic cycle complete

Unwasted beauty reborn

As sinews of another form

©David Morgan

Silent Friends

They grow assuredly unabashed

Slowly unfolding all their secrets

While you watch them

Patience is their only requirement

They display proudly their petals

Like birds in full plumage

For your eyes to please

They intoxicate your rooms

With the sweetest of scents

More delicate than a classy concoction

That any glass bottles contain

They stand still quivering quietly

Our best of silent friends

They don’t stare you out or shout you down

They ask of you nothing in return at all

Only a little water sparingly poured

Infrequent delicate pruning

Your care and attention

Engender rich rewards

True selfless love is a flower

Concert Pieces

Like Hammer horror heroines

Graced in flowing silky robes

Flowing locks of hair cascading down

Pallid complexion, dark eyes shadowed

Blood red lips, gleaming teeth

As if primed to bite

Ingrid Pitt, Susan Denberg

Jennifer Daniel, Barbara Shelley

Andree, sister of the more famous George

Long forgotten all

Dressed up in their translucent finery

Glamour fit for the ball

Spirits of a more innocent age

Concert goers, music lovers

Arms of alabaster and shoulders too

All unsalaciously exposed to view

Each and every one untattooed

Clasping only their pretty going-out bags

Smart phones as yet uninvented

Undisturbed by incessant chatter

They listen attentively and learn

Entranced as the music plays

Once the lights dim and the curtain rises

Nothing else seems to matter

Denizens of an innocent age

Now gone forever

As if…If Only Or How War Will End

I had a dream that one dark evening

Some benign spirits decided to intervene

They inveigled themselves into the artillery yards

Of all the world’s combatants

To surreptitiously replace every bullet and bomb

With the most exquisite delicate fresh flowers

And all the soldiers failed to notice

So off to war they marched

Only to cascade their enemy

With the harmless blooms

Wreathing the battlefield

In roses and diverse posies

And the people gathered up all the flowers

Smelled the sweet scent and smiled gently

Embracing each other tightly

As if…if only

Scoons for Tea

Weekend shop assistants with angelic faces

Beware their enchanting smiles

Behind the bakery counter

Out to impress with your choice of shopping

A rich array of sumptuous, scrumptious, inevitably overpriced, cakes and pastries

loaves in ingenious shapes and shades

Brown, off white and speckled

From crusty to soft as cushions

You queue among the affluent families

Rolex bejewelled and exotically scented

For the last remaining cream puff tart

A farmhouse loaf, chocolate croissant

Lemon slice, iced bun

Scone with silent e invariably pronounced ‘scoon’

The honey and spelt has all long gone

By half past three

Make do with a granary then for tea

So, invite no-one round

Consume at home all by yourself

True pleasure gained in isolation

Inconspicuous consumption

Indulgence free from accusation

Un-eyed upon, unspied upon

A new year begins

Though I am not new Feeling older than before My life’s almost through New fears arise

There’s an awful lot to do

There’s a hole in my shoe Where the sun shines through So much walking still to do But we will stride on We will pull through Facing the future anew Bold, confident and true

Cold Sugar

Opening up my fridge door

One evening to reach for the milk

I encountered a remarkable sight

One incongruously baffling

Impossible to conceive how it had happened

How I had made it happen

Only I could have done it

No supernatural handiwork

Nothing untoward

No airy spirit playing tricks

But still unfathomable

An occurrence quite bizarre

A bag of brown sugar

Placed inside the fridge

As if it belonged there

Alongside the tub of butter

Pack of yoghurts, blue topped litre of milk

Orange juice, block of cheese

All resting in their natural habitat

But a bag of sugar?

It made me shudder

Cold brown sugar

Waiting to be stirred into my tea

But why are you in the fridge?

That’s never happened before

And I cannot for the life of me

Ever remember putting it there

Edward Caruso

Edward Caruso has been published in A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, n-Scribe, Right Now, StylusLit, TEXT, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. His second collection of poems, Blue Milonga, was published by Hybrid Publishers in 2019.

Olive press

The faded paintings of a nondescript street Labourers drive across gravel

Clouds drift in from the sea I take my easel to my balcony

Crows, funeral notices on doors half-finished sketches of hillsides & wildflowers

To amble past elms & backstreets covered with marble slabs & paved stones

Lemon trees, black grapes, collapsed ruins An olive grove, its press sounds

Skies, ignited A restaurant, smells of garlic in the open

Nearby houses, walls rotted to the brickwork Crushed olives, their perfume

© Edward Caruso

The DOLCE STIL arias

This world is full of chance encounters 1

Dimmed lights, your hand taken by another’s.

Neither is sure when that grip, tightened, will end. But the hand taken, which also sought to clasp, could not hold on.

A drum heaves, its skin taut. 2

She says the colour of your eyes, shirt and bracelet matches your notebook and attaché case.

You draw the allusion to a darkening sky enveloping the city. Yet the sun won’t remain hidden, shines through rain.

As she disembarks from a crowded bus, your gaze meets hers as if you both know. Each goodbye draws you on; forked paths, threads about to snap.

3

You’ve no love of fascism, but favour Mussolini over Hitler and Stalin for not having death camps and gulags,

copping your new love’s tongue lashing against all three to leave the music behind, rousing late the next morning, the company of white walls.

You’re god knows where with little idea who.

4 Exude temptation

Hope your name is sighed

Baraccano. By the dance floor you’re infatuated with the woman who wins all the arguments.

Fathers 1

My father would sit next to me after I’d return from walks he no longer kept up with, as if my arrival ended long absences.

Ships and planes, crossings taken and spoken of as years lived, my father younger than I am now in this land we never journeyed together, recollected in our every peregrination.

I bridge estrangement as we grow more alike. We follow one another, bridges and tracks, shadows resistant to nightfall and our undying kinship. Something brotherly marks what his loss evokes: the unknown Turin years, his escape from la Cittadella and Germans, refuge in Parma at my grandfather’s and future shoe shop at via Nino Bixio (now a shiatsu practice).

All my returns –searching out fragile texts, past lives extended.

Fathers never leave. Mine would talk to his, forty years after he’d passed on. I search photos, homes we’d lived and streets we’d walk before Alzheimer’s distanced him.

Lives lived remotely in the same house, keys to front doors cut with no time left. Photos and cities I search, places he never saw I visit.

Beyond language

Despite arthritic hands the husband places a lemon sapling into a muddied wheelbarrow; his wife, short of breath, is still affected by the heart attack that left her housebound.

We leaf through an album of a post-war Adriatic town: stucco walls, muddied streets and smile of a nephew scarred by TB who died young.

I’m gifted a slice of homemade cake and radicchio; the promise of the sapling when I return, my neighbours’ hospitality fading as their door shuts behind me.

The next day the husband is found sitting upright, frozen. When I visit, his wife won’t let go my arm. We sit where her husband was found, her sobs overcoming mine.

© Edward Caruso

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

Eugen Bacon

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of several novels and fiction collections. She’s a 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist, and was announced in the honor list of the 2022 Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Her short story release Danged Black Thing made the 2021 Otherwise Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. Recent books: Mage of Fools (novel), Chasing Whispers (short stories) and An Earnest Blackness (essays). Eugen has two novels, a novella and two anthologies (ed) out in 2023, together with the US release of Danged Black Thing. Visit her website at eugenbacon.com and Twitter feed at @EugenBacon

A pause between pages

the world is a curled bookmark asleep between stillness n storms a million landscapes of sad songs saddled with white sun and earth tremors cultured responses, leftover sentiments shifting to breaking point as the sky catches fire licks soft edges of pain until you dance

Call it like you will

winning or losing will you use it? sharp as a tack?

great yarning tears you thru life’s tornado

© Eugen Bacon

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

Dr Greta Sykes

Poet, writer and artist Greta Sykes has published her work in many anthologies. She is a member of London Voices Poetry Group and also produces art work for them. Her new volume of poetry called ‘The Shipping News and Other Poems’ came out in August 2016. The German translation of her book ‘Under charred skies’ has now been published in Germany under the title ‘Unter verbranntem Himmel’ by Eulenspiegel Verlag. She is the chair of the Socialist History Society and has organised joint poetry events for them at the Poetry Café. She is a trained child psychologist and has taught at the Institute of Education, London University, where she is now an associate researcher. Her particular focus is now on women’s emancipation and antiquity. https://www.gretasykes.com/

The Oboe player

Tall with a sweet and shy face, Blonde grey stubble on his chin, He stands, helpless, almost forlorn Because of his passion for music, He looks for a hold in the tram, Wraps his arm with a caress Around

A singular moment

‘There are decades when nothing happens, There are days when centuries unravel and explode, And there are singular moments In which eternity erupts like lightening, Torching time frames and perceptions, Such a singular moment It could be ours. It could grow

Like a seed in our hearts And minds, Clearing the fog of confusion

Letting us imagine our future, Our life on earth In peace and harmony. It is possible, Imaginative inhabiting Is living the future

Healed In our minds In mimesis.

I step to the window

At shepherd’s dawn Sensing the rose-coloured rise of light Rather than seeing it I step to the window

To make sure the street in which I live Is still there outside my abode And my abode is attached To the earth.

I check the sky for thunder, rain Or a storm and find Orion With his shiny belt Holding watch just Above me.

I feel happiness.

John Philip Drury

John Philip Drury is the author of five books of poetry: The Disappearing Town and Burning the Aspern Papers (both from Miami University Press), The Refugee Camp (Turning Point Books), Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press), and The Teller’s Cage, which will be published by Able Muse Press in Fall 2023. He has also written Creating Poetry and The Poetry Dictionary, both from Writer’s Digest Books. His awards include an Ingram Merrill Foundation fellowship, two Ohio Arts Council grants, and the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review for “Burning the Aspern Papers.” He was born in Cambridge, Maryland, and grew up in Bethesda, raised by his mother and a former opera singer she called her cousin but secretly considered her wife. After dropping out of college and losing his draft deferment during the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the Army to learn German and served undercover in the West German Refugee Camp near Nuremberg. He used benefits from the GI Bill to earn degrees from Stony Brook University, the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. After teaching at the University of Cincinnati for 37 years, he is now an emeritus professor and lives with his wife, fellow poet LaWanda Walters, in a hundred-year-old house on the edge of a wooded ravine.

Library in a Dresser Drawer

My mother had a dirty mind. I knew it from the paperback stash she hid where it was hard to find.

Lust was the muse for whom I pined, so I slid out the drawer of trash my mother had. A dirty mind

is what we shared, but she had lined the antique wood with dust and ash protecting what was hard to find:

Jail Bait’s the novel I reclined with on her bed. Guilt whipped its lash, my mother detecting my dirty mind.

But just as ducks mistake the blind, her customers at the bank would have blushed at what she hid. Instead, they’d find

a lady, proper and refined, a teller with a drawer of cash: my mom, who had a dirty mind she hid to make it hard to find.

Arguing about Computers

“It all comes down to one and zero, Mom,” I said at breakfast, trying to explain the mystery of computers. “I’m too old for that,” she said, “that shit.” I tried to get her interested in buying one herself, thinking the binary system might excite her since she had always liked to work with numbers. “It’s like Morse code,” I said, “the dots and dashes.”

My yes was answered by my mother’s “No, I hate computers. When the bank got theirs, I couldn’t be a teller anymore. I had to quit. Computers took my job.” The miracle she craved, something to help her keep on breathing, wasn’t digital. Stupidly, trying her patience, I persisted: “It’s like a light switch, Mom, on-off, on-off.”

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas.

© John Philip

Jordan Smith

Jordan Smith is the author of eight full-length books of poems, most recently Little Black Train, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Prize, Clare’s Empire, a fantasia on the life and work of John Clare from The Hydroelectric Press, and The Light in the Film from the University of Tampa Press. He has also worked on several collaborations with artist, Walter Hatke, including What Came Home and Hat & Key. The recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, he lives with his wife, Malie, in upstate New York, where he plays fiddle and is the Edward Everett Hale Jr., Professor of English at Union College.

Answer Song

When I heard you sing, I knew you expected nothing from me, Since a song is nothing

But the dead air on the AM radio

Between ads for the speedway, STP, and Valvoline.

Since a song is nothing, I knew you expected an answer song,

I rolled the window down, and stuck one arm out, Sunburned to the shoulder.

An unlit cigarette in my mouth, I waved

To a girl walking along the fairground fence

In the rearview mirror.

And I punched one button after another on the radio. In those days, between towns and in the long valleys, All you could pull in was static, Or maybe the country station from Canandaigua.

Then I heard a few bars of steel guitar

From a jukebox through a propped-open diner door At a four-way stop,

A song that had nothing to do with you, Which was the song I wanted, Since a song is nothing, Even an answer song, In the dead air on the radio, And nobody listening at all.

Craft Essay Disguised as an Undistinguished Film Noir

If any of this was the mystery you once thought it was, You’d turn what was left of your attention Elsewhere.

Unwilling protagonist of an undistinguished film noir, Devotee of ellipses, of lines half-remembered, Broken arpeggios, One word standing between you and another.

The stubbed-out cigarette, the parcel wrapped in old newspaper Unopened on an end table, You have forgotten them, and the name you used

Was never more than a slick of oil after the rain in the parking lot, Iridescent, inscrutable. If any of this was a solution, you would already know.

Two Stills

for David St. John

Even as it began, the dream was all denouement, That sort of memory, that sort of absence. Stills from the films online the day after the screening.

Two women, each on a window’s far side, Each with a palm pressed to the glass, As if toward and to ward Were a single word,

A longing that was almost aversion, almost self-regard.

The moiré when one screen is placed over another. The window screen, the screen you are watching. The fierce distortion you might recognize,

If it weren’t your own,

If you were lucky enough to recognize it at all.

Kate Ennals

Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Live Encounters, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, Crossways, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, The Ogham Stone, plus many more). Her first collection of poetry At The Edge (Lapwing) was published in 2015. Her second collection, Threads (Lapwing), was published in April 2018. Her third collection, Elsewhere (Vole Imprint), in November 21. Her fourth, Practically A Wake, will be published next year (Salmon Poetry). She has lived in Ireland for nearly 30 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Kate also runs At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office. Her blog can be found at https://kateennals.com/. She is currently on the board of PEN na h’Eireann/PEN Ireland and Cavan Volunteer Centre.

Call Me Old Fashioned

discombobulated

© Kate Ennals

I want to talk harmony respect, hope, glory truth, leadership human dignity work, responsibility

Tick Tock… Tic Toc

These days I am

cheugy, boke, gaslit morto, out of the loop ghosted

Small Hazard

Shiny, bright, it’s a perfect fit cocked, brimming with fire a curled finger, poised on a trigger

eye on the barrel, he takes aim, arm straight. A bullet streaks the branch of a tree, kills a squirrel.

Father and son whoop with joy the boy puffs up in filial pride doing something with his dad

He starts to assemble his armies behind the couch, under his bed beneath the kitchen table

lined up to defend himself against his parents

marauding Mexicans

moustachioed Venezuelans

native Indians, Muslims, democrats, liberals

Chinese, black Americans

at school, soon after when he gets the wrong answer he shoots his teacher.

Drumlin in a Bottle

You ask for our world in a bottle.

I struggle to poke it through the neck to keep it in shape. It’s already wet with soft rain, so crumbles, easily breaks. But, I’m fortunate, its egg shape remains. I peer through the glass. It looks ridiculous alone, like a sprouting bump on a head So, I thread a basket of hills. It’s difficult.

Finally, I tip in a grey sludge of lake, bubbles and froth to symbolise climate change. Drumlins are glacial, full of clay, silt and gravel. They don’t easily burn but entice the cool of damp, mild of mildew illustrate the longevity of time being exploited and undermined by the greed and avarice of mankind.

Lynn Strongin. Photograph credit: Catherine Dunphy.

Lynn Strongin is a Pulitzer Prize nominee in poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment Creative Writing Grant, nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes, Lynn Born in NYC at the end of the dirty thirties, she grew up in an artistic Jewish home in New York during the war. Earliest studies were in musical composition as a child and at The Manhattan School of Music. Took a BA at Hunter college, MA at Stanford University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Lived in Berkeley during the vibrant sixties where she worked for Denise Levertov and took part in many peace demonstrations. Poems in forty anthologies, fifty journals; Poetry, New York Quarterly. Forthcoming work in Poetry Flash and Otoliths. Canada is her second home. The late Hugh Fox said Strongin is the “most exciting poet writing today.’ Danielle Ofri wrote to her, “you tear the veil off that mysterious disease polio.” Strongin’s work has been translated into French and Italian. Her forthcoming book is THE SWEETNESS OF EDNA. She recently received a ten-thousand dollar George Woodcock Grant for Writers from The National Endowment for the Arts. This grant has greatly facilitated her work at the present time.

Hodie

This will be a compassion day: Forgiveness

For being born in the slot when the war began & when the virus was not yet under control

It ran up & down my spine Took my legs

At last gave me voice which I let out, sky the color of camel: not liturgy, more amnesty. The color of my coat. Take care when you fill the glass of water to the brim. Take care when you hug your lover: let God in.

This day I will rattle pots & pans I will forgive the moon in the sky, real, not just in a child’s story-book. I will do what rituals I must without resentment but with forgiveness

I knew I was on a roller coaster...

a toy drive

Shaped itself like a boy’s toy in my mind.

A rain-dweller, I too am crossing a floating bridge. A small companionship, my cat.

My city is wrapped around me: a box of water for mute exhaustion a backpack

To fill with dream buildings

Ponds and pull-offs in Central Park: wide-eyed in Greenwich translation of shower into sun. Resilience bodes happiness.

The lake glazed over

So a duck cracks it

Leaving scarred map: the green pupils of my eyes dilated

My roller coaster shot the curve.

The toy drive left one giraffe, the globe circling in his mirroring eye; you did not marry me because you loved me then, but for all time.

Who can tell

...me that my prayer is glass, merely—that fragile like a ballerina who shatters

This day, hodie, hodie. Celebrate. Clap hands. Blow the bugle.

That the world’s wars won’t come to an end, That that object in a man’s hand is a sword, not a feather. I do overdose on pills for pain.

And who can tell me that my ponies who prance across the prairie are running from flame we have won thru to forgiveness.

Having hit the sweet spot, igniting compassion, who dare tell me this day or any other that this is the sweet hereafter come. . .

Maria McDonnell

My name is Maria McDonnell and I am fifty- four years old, born and still residing in Finglas Dublin. From an early age I loved writing poetry, however, there were not many chances for me to fulfill my dreams and if I am honest I was too wild and carefree to advance into further education. I travelled for a few years and returned home to have my daughter. After putting her through college, I found myself at a loose end and wanted to explore into further education. 2018, I did a level 5 course and I was informed by an amazing teacher about the Trinity Access Programme. In 2019 I was accepted onto this pathway and successfully completed my year. Now four years later I have nearly completed my third year of this degree in English studies at Trinity College Dublin and I am loving every minute. I am continuing with my poetry, which now has deeper meaning personally and I am finally beginning to be noticed among my peers. My dream is to one day have some of my poetry published within my own book so until then I will continue with my writing and live in hope.

Don’t worry Mamma

Emmett Till

I’ll be fine Mamma, don’t you worry, have no fear

It’s only Mississippi, over seven hundred miles from here

I’m sure their lives are just the same, for folk like you and me

All your worries will be for nothing, just you wait and see

I’ll give the family your love, and I’ll be a good black boy

Uncle Moses will be glad to see me; it will give him so much joy.

I’ll help him pick some cotton and then play and have some fun

We’ll buy candy in the store, my friends and I under the sun

It couldn’t be so different there, it’s not too far away

And I promise before I sleep at night, I won’t forget to pray

I’ll be home before you know it and you can hold my face as you do

You’ll look into my eyes and say, “My son, I so love you”

Yes, I’ll miss you Mamma, but one day I’ll be a child no more So just allow me to now grow up, you’ve done your motherly chore

I’ll grow into a better world, a brighter one than you’ve seen

Where colour of skin don’t matter and the white folk aren’t so mean Things are getting better, those white men hold no grudge

The laws they are a changing, maybe I’ll become a judge

Who knows maybe I will marry and have children of my own

And you will be a grandma, yes maybe when I’ve grown

Can you imagine Mamma, a job, a house and wife?

The times they are now changing, chances of a better life

So off I’ll go tomorrow, I really cannot wait

Now don’t you shed no tears, when you see me to the gate.

Don’t worry Mamma ...contd

It was August 1955 the heat was stifling all around And me and cousin Wheeler were Mississippi bound Uncle Moses greeted us and took us to his heart

“Get some rest now boys” he said, tomorrow is an early start We slept like babies that hot night, tired from our long ride Cotton picking in the morning, with family by my side

Happy times in those fields, singing songs from our black roots

Lunchtime dips in the warm river, on the banks we’d leave our boots.

I’d sit sometimes and dream and wonder what lay ahead

Then back to eat my supper and early off to bed

I could feel a sense of fear, sometimes amongst the town

But only with us coloured folk, who were coloured black or brown.

I tried to take no heed, but we were looked at when we spoke

Looked at with disgust sometimes, but only by white folk

Sunday we had no work today, our hands were raw and sore

So uncle gave us money to get some candy from the store

The lady served me promptly, I said thank you kindly Miss I swear I do believe, she blew me a little kiss

When she went to close up shop, she looked so very sad

So I gave a friendly whistle, not meaning any bad

My friends looked on in horror, they said I did a bad thing

But I see no harm in whistles, what trouble could that bring?

They said it ‘isn’t the whistle, it’s who you whistled at I said “a pretty lady?” what’s the harm in that?

I thought no more about it and went back to Uncle’s house That night was oh so quiet, you wouldn’t hear a mouse

Then I saw those lights and heard, a motor drawing near I peered out through the window, the white men were now here

They banged upon the door, shouting “bring out that boy right now”

They said I did some wrong, but I didn’t know quite how

My Uncle tried to stop them, as they dragged me to their truck I was very scared now Mamma, and was running out of luck

The anger in their eyes and the names they called me too

I didn’t know what I had done, I hadn’t got a clue

I cried, I screamed, I asked what’s wrong, now fearing for my life

One man looked me in the eye and said “You whistled at my wife”.

But what’s the harm in that I cried, tears rolling down my face

“What’s the harm?” the man replied, you, boy must know your place

We drove away and I was scared, I’ll be punished and then let go

But they wouldn’t stop their beatings and the blood began to flow

I’m not a man, I am a boy and this wasn’t one on one

They seemed to enjoy it Mamma, as if they were having fun

They tortured me and lynched me hard, then a gun was shown to me

Surely they wouldn’t shoot me now and maybe set me free

But Mamma, I heard the shot, and a pain came in my head

Oh no I think they’ve killed me, oh Mamma I am dead

They threw me in the river and weighed me down to sink

My lifeless body was gone, oh what now must you think

Don’t worry Mamma ...contd

Three days have now passed by, like the Lord again I’d rise They took my bloated body out, you couldn’t see my eyes I want to go home Mamma, perhaps I should have hid When you put me in my casket, please don’t close the lid Let people see my face, the pain I did receive

If not my dear poor Mamma, no one sure will believe.

Let our people shout out bravely, let their voices loudly sing, Show the world I’m only recognised, by wearing Papa’s ring. They did not have to kill me; a beating would have done But they carried on, oh Mamma, they killed your only son

I’ve whistled in Chicago where no one said a word

So I’ll whistle now with freedom, just like the young blackbird.

Oh Mamma, I see they caught them now, this has made me glad The law will tell the world now, that what they did was bad

I’m watching, looking down now, and praying with such hope

Will they be punished Mamma; will they hang them by the rope?

But this jury won’t seek justice, they won’t defend my right And why I say this Mamma, cause the jury are all white!

That woman knows she’s wrong and told so many lies

Would she have stopped the beating if she had heard my cries?

She sits at home all tired and worn waiting for her man

Then looks upon her mirror, while cooling by the fan

She looks a mess, then thinks, her man just did his duty

But she now must look worthwhile and show him all her beauty

Red lipstick she puts on, the same colour as my blood Does she feel guilty now? If not she really should

Wiping down her dress and tidying her hair with a comb God, but all I did was whistle and wanted to go home

I said that I was sorry, I didn’t want no slack My only crime dear Mamma, my skin was coloured black

So finally I see injustice, they got away with it

Sold their stories for some dollars, which doesn’t seem quite fit

Now newspapers and the TV, show the tale I had to tell The world seems to be awake now and witness the Southern hell

I hear of a Doctor King, he’s furious with this crime

I hope they don’t kill him too one day, but we will see in time.

One day I hope there’s justice for folk like you and me When white and black together, live without tyranny

Until that day, I hope, someone will fight my case

Where folk can whistle anywhere, not depending on your race

So until we meet again Mamma, I’ll say goodbye for now

I hope you find some peace, within this crazy world somehow.

Ray Whitaker

Ray Whitaker has been writing both prose and poetry since he was seventeen. What Ray is writing now is very different from what he wrote those so many years ago. All writers and poets are writing out of “the Self” however there are directions that the self speaks into, that change. Now Ray’s writing is to put foremost in his work, just who he is writing for. He intends on writing for the everyday man and woman. He firmly believes that poems need to reach into the everyday person’s pictures in their minds and engage with those. This is where he aims to make a difference in his creative writing. He’s fulfilled when he sees that his work is provoking thought in his readers.

No cowgirls, no cowboys

The camp emptied some, from yesterday in these Colorado mountains my neighbors are new today, refilled some, like waves at the seashore their men there partied for a while beers were depleted, conversation boisterous

the men disappeared into their camper leaving the women to set up the cooking area tents, chairs, tables, cots, maybe even mattresses too I see one of the women blowing into a deflated pad.

No one rode in on a horse, no slung, holstered rifle for easy access or lariat hanging off the saddle

no one was in long skirts

there was no cook-fire to keep going in the hearth no stable with the medicine hat horses in it.

It is 2022, seems unsure where the modern ways are or even If there has been a sort of equality discussed around the kitchen table maybe that was just chased into the yard away.

You may realize that this is not what you dreamed of with your beautiful spouse with your fine pedigree

you could be asking yourself where is my easy life where is the prosperity I once thought was coming

you may find out that what you wanted is so ‘way over there and one day is the same as the next, and the next.

© Ray Whitaker

Not like this

All those dreams you have, and have had… once so present in the moment to moment gathered in front of the life you wanted to live the force multiplier of daily existence with those that loved you and the ones you loved. Do those dreams really continue perhaps stored on the back lobes in your mind awaiting to receive brainwaves electrical activity synapses to spring into action.

Those dreams, those possibilities are climbing up belay ropes somes now, more down than up with tensioners swivels to control a fall, ropes not as thick as your little finger lowering the weight of dreams into even so, so strong, holding your body weight easily as the riverbed of reality looms closer.

You are going into the real, real gorge where dreams mesh every way with the day you walk in the rock walls of the gorge are wet with spray with the waterfall plunging two hundred feet thru a rainbow into a cool, pool below where an Imperial eagle sits on a nearby limb, watching.

No wide-winged condor awaits you there is no carrion here.

No wide-winged condor awaits you there is no carrion here.

All those dreams you had once so nearly present now gathered behind in the life you once had changed, simply by the events occurred in the passage of time in movement sublime.

All those dreams you still have… are present in the moment to moment gathered in front of the full green life you want to live your fantasia multiplicand of daily existence breathing in a life fully in the living where the wine flows so freely.

The hike is long, off in the distance there is only dim light in the dusk pointing to the provinces in the west.

A southerner in colorado

I’m looked at sorta funny when I say y’all as I look at the red rocks while thinking of the blue ridge.

My home is here now but home was there then the mountains are high here unique with their rocky crags not even thinking that height is the only fine measure when I think of the green hardwoods of the North Carolina mountains.

I’m looked at sorta funny when I say “All y’all” as I look at the red rocks while thinking of the blue ridge the fun, in summer’s cold water at Slidin’ Rock those lush green woods of Pisgah Forest.

Drinking coffee in Switchback Roasters here, these full of character, and the such western persons as there may be, cowboy hats on top of western boots I remember the southern ways of a warmer nature the cutoff jeans atop flip flops it calls me by m’name.

The pretty women here are used to the great elevation walk with the handlebar mustached men I can see them all on horses headin’ towards a sunset. You can take me easily to another day where Ah can hear where such is said: “She’s a real peach this hot day, in that halter top.”

Yeah, Ah’m sorta looked at funny when I say things like “y’all c’mon back, ya hear?” as I climb the ever heightening road to Breckenridge over the eleven thousand foot, snow-covered Hoosier Pass while thinking of fall’s riot of red and yellow leaves in the piedmont’s rolling hills near Elm Street in old Greensboro.

Richard W. Halperin. Photo credit: Bertrand A.

Richard W’ Halperin’s poems are published by Salmon/Cliffs of Moher and by Lapwing/Belfast. Salmon has listed Selected & New Poems for Autumn 2023; it will draw upon poems from Mr. Halperin’s four Salmon and sixteen Lapwing collections, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. A new Lapwing, The Painted Word, will appear this Spring.

Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes – not Crabbe’s but Britten’s and Pears’ – is a sensitive unhappy man who brutally makes others unhappy. Having not one inch left in which to live his life he sails his little fishing boat out to sea to sink it and himself. Edmund Wilson who was at one of the opera’s first performances, the war barely over, wrote, ‘We are all in that boat’. A good artist knows when to stop. I am not a good artist but I stop.

© Richard W. Halperin

Silk Embroidery

The widowed schoolteacher Ellen in the opera Peter Grimes looks at the drenched jersey of a drowned brutalised workhouse boy, and remembers how she had embroidered on it, with silk threads, a little anchor, in hopes that a touch of unexpected beauty would help things turn out all right for him. The greatest artists, Benjamin Britten among them, do not veer for single second from how things will turn out. Henry James carefully sets The Turn of the Screw among tales told around a fireplace on Christmas Eve; something to think about.

Let Us Sleep Now

I have come to love Wilfred Owen’s poems and, at a late age, to love him. For him, the shadow of the valley of death was quite short. For me, long and growing longer. Do I see more than he did? Hardly.

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to honour the killed, is pushed forward by a Mass in Latin and by Wilfred Owen poems. The Mass has no Credo. How could it, without hypocrisy? Abraham’s sacrificing his son and half the seed of Europe one by one, is the Credo. The Benedictus is the Credo. Poetry is the tissue, waving brilliantly (Keats is also brilliant, and Auden and Arendt), soaking wet with beautiful things and with gruesome

avoidable things, drying in the sun, drying – if Wilfred Owen is correct – in the indifferent sun.

War Requiem

Recording, live at Coventry Cathedral (rebuilt; it had to be rebuilt) 30 May 1962. Harper, Pears, Fischer-Dieskau. The pity of war. Not my fault. But how can I not feel guilty? A testament,

written, played. Heard. Heard by whom? I have two records (I still call them records)

which are supreme: this one and the Klemperer Messiah. Even if they had never been

performed, even if they had stayed on Handel’s and Britten’s desks, Spinoza (so a friend tells me;

I never read Spinoza) would have said God read them, God heard them. I once wrote in a poem that God

blubbered at Golgotha, whatever Jesus is said to have done. Where is fault? I do not know.

Where is shame? I know where. In me. And it continues. As I write this: war. Shown nightly on television. Between sandwiches. What is the gravy made of, please? What is the gravy made of?

Canticles

for Colin Kaiser

Aldeburgh Parish Church after Sunday service. 1949. I hold a photo of it in my hand. The clock in the stone tower says 12:31.

The parishioners are just outside, the women are in simple frocks, the men are in suits. Everyone standing about, pleasantly talking. I feel as one does just before one weeps, but I do not weep. There they are, and I, all of us rocking gently in the medium one ruins if one calls it time.

Where was I in 1949?

Not in a schoolroom, although my body was there. I was elsewhere.

Maybe my classmates were also elsewhere.

School seems a dream now, does it not?

Where was I in 1949?

Not married. I was six years old. Or married. Some things are outside of time.

Tony Hozeny

Tony Hozeny is author of the novels Driving Wheel and My House Is Dark and numerous short stories. He has an MFA from Johns Hopkins and taught creative writing at four colleges. Over the past two years, he has placed several stories in literary magazines, two which have been anthologized. He plays mandolin in the Northern Comfort Band. He is married with three children and three grandchildren.

FALLING

Lyle awoke at 3 a.m. from a dream---a stray cat he’d chased outside had turned into a sobbing little girl. He reminded himself to take slow, even breaths. His wife Martha lay curled up on the far side of the mattress, the one spot where she could occasionally sleep through the night. April ice pounded the roof. Cold wind shot through the leaky windows. He’d hoped for spring and the end of heating bills. Exhausted but wide awake, he was dreading the long, cold trip downstairs to the bathroom.

By the time he’d walked five steps, his back was killing him. Heading downstairs, he held the railing tightly, taking no chances. Martha’s fall last spring had started the hip pain that never ended, even with Oxycodone.

The front door burst open. His grandson Zane hurried in. His hair was shaggy and dirty, his clothes disheveled. Lyle knew there was trouble at home. But he’d never imagined that Zane would break into his house. He’d never seen Zane’s eyes so black and wild. Lyle tried to cover his fear with a big grin.

“Zane! long time no see!”

Zane turned quickly away, eyes darting around the room.

“Zane, you’re always welcome, but it’s kind of late, and how did you---?”

“Dad’s key. Grandpa, I need money. I’ll pay you back. Just give me some money.”

“Well, I’m kind of short right now, I”---

“Come on, I’m in a hurry.” Lyle’s wallet was on the sideboard. Zane grabbed it.

“Ten bucks? That’s it?” Zane dumped out Martha’s purse. “No wallet? Where’s her wallet?”

Lyle couldn’t make his brain work. He couldn’t control the quaver in his voice. “Zane, Zane, what’s the trouble? You can tell me. Maybe I can help. But that’s no way to act. You can’t just”---

FALLING ...cont

“Shut up, Grandpa! I need money, I’m ---oh, man, that’s Grandma’s jewelry box.” He held it tight, his wild eyes still scanning the living room, the kitchen beyond.

Lyle took a deep breath and stepped slowly in front of his grandson. “Now, son, she had that box out because we’re going to have to sell some gold”----Zane dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a pill bottle from the counter. His eyes lit up.

“No, Zane, you can’t take those pills, they’re for Grandma’s back”----

Zane shoved Lyle down, hard, and his back slammed against the wall. Zane flung open the china cabinet door, rattled through the plates--- “Fuck! Fuck! Nothing here but a lot of worthless old shit”---and swept away a whole shelf. Lyle heard Martha calling to him. Zane dashed out with the things he’d stolen.

Lyle’s whole back seized into spasm, a rippling, stabbing pain. Tears stung his eyes when he tried to get up. He heard Martha shuffling toward the stairs.

“What happened, Lyle? What happened? Where are you?”

“Martha, don’t,” he called, but his voice was too weak to stop her. There was a loud thud, then her long, painful moan. He crawled toward the kitchen where he’d left the cell phone last night. The phone was dead. He’d forgotten to plug it into the charger.

HURT

My best friend Dale and I worked Saturday nights stuffing the various sections into the Sunday Milwaukee Journal. After we were done, we’d load them onto a delivery truck that arrived at midnight.

One cold March night, we had all the papers stuffed and bundled and ready by 10:30, so we pooled our cash---$2---and I dialed up the Italian Village and ordered a cheese pizza and two 7ups. We had the radio on. Ray Charles was singing “I can’t stop loving you.” Sam Cooke was next: “Having a party.”

“I’m going to flunk geometry, Rick, I just know it,” Dale said. “Sister Ralph hates me.”

“All the nuns hate us.” I tapped down my pack of Luckies, took one out, and lit up.

“I wish I had a girlfriend,” Dale said. “Then I’d want to study. With her. Hey, did I tell you I asked Rosie out? She looked right through me and walked away. Not a word.”

“Rosie digs rich and popular, like all the girls from our shithole St. John Vianney High School.” I pushed the cigarettes across the steel table. Dale lit up.

“But this is cool, right?” I said. “We’re out late, we can smoke, nobody to bug us. Like a little clubhouse, man.”

The door clicked open, and Bud came wandering in, listing a little to the left. Dale mouthed, “oh, shit.” Bud’s eyes were vague and bloodshot. Before I could move out of my chair, Bud did what he always did, grabbed me around the neck and shoulders and squeezed hard, blasting his beer-and-onions breath in my face.

“Come on, man, let me go.”

“Aw, you know me.” He slapped me hard on the back. “I’m just playing.” His eyes fell on the empty pizza box. “You didn’t leave none for old Bud? Hey? Hey?”

Hurt ...cont

Dale and I looked at each other. Bud was friends with my dad’s boss, so we had to put up with him.

“How about a smoke?” Dale said, sliding over the pack of Luckies.

Bud lit up and took a furious drag. “Well, I been down the bar tonight, who you think I seen? The mayor! Yeah, he knows me, he says, ‘Hi, Bud,’ I says, ‘Hi, Ivan, let me buy you a drink,’ and he says, ‘I don’t drink!’ Can you beat that? Hey? Hey?”

“You know, Bud, we got a truck coming any minute here, and we better get ready to load it.”

Bud grabbed Dale’s 7up and took a long swig.

“Jesus Christ, Bud!”

“Fuck you, you little shit! You got plenty! You”---Bud’s face turned sickly white, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he flopped on the floor, his head thrashing, his arms and legs shaking. He let out a wild, eerie moan. He foamed at the mouth.

“What the hell!” Dale yelled. “What the hell! I’m getting out of here!”

“No, man, don’t go! My dad told me about Bud, that he might have a seizure. We’ve got to find something to stick in his mouth, or he’ll choke on his tongue.”

The desk drawer was locked. Bud’s moans turned into a horrible gurgling noise.

“I found this in the bathroom,” Dale said, handing me a paint stir-stick. I knelt, trying to place it in Bud’s mouth. His big body moved so violently and unpredictably I couldn’t get close enough, but finally his mouth opened wide, and I stuck it in there. Bud’s teeth clamped down hard. His thrashing and shaking continued. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, his seizure stopped. Bud lay still, piss spreading all over the front of his pants.

“The poor sonofabitch,” Dale said. “Is he dead?”

My hands were shaking so badly I had a tough time lighting a cigarette. “I’m scared, man. I don’t know what to do.”

“Maybe we can get him an ambulance. I’ll call the cops. You stay with Bud.”

I heard Dale dialing the phone, then his strained voice. Bud’s face was still white. I hadn’t realized that Bud carried death with him every day. I pushed strands of Bud’s blonde hair away from his closed eyes.

Cover Artwork by Irish Artist Emma Barone