Two Poems by Matt Dennison

I Want the Wings of an Old Dried-Up Angel Draped Over Me

 

or the milkman

whistling his tune

 

inside a saddlebag

of foreign coins—

 

that kind of banjo.

 

 

The Preventing House

 

With father as vertical

/horizontal the mother

 

children are crucified

upon the parent cross. 

Three Poems by Sheila Murphy

Portrait with Boys

Hot griddle in the middle of oak table

bacon, bacon grease with salt to drizzle

across buckwheat pancakes, plus eggs fried

in said bacon heat. The grandfather barks

"hark!" his only punctuation to cool 

the jittery commotion among the boys

at the table. He's been awake so long 

choring across fields and feeding horses 

cows sheep etcetera daylight comes 

long after his day begins. He mostly speaks

of the fiddle to his daughter's violin 

played on command. His legendary players

calling their own at dances. He stares hard

at grandboys with a blend of venom and lust. 

Contemplative Contempt

 

Oxymoronic place kick sticks in the gut

and mind, mind you. Don't prevaricate.

Just sing what stings from informal playthings

milked for all possible power then

cardboard-ed out of another’s projected 

thoughts that ought to be debrided in good time,

parked beside the perennial park 

we taunt ourselves to think will not become extinct.

It's now no never-mind though rarely

thought through. You know your way around wounds 

and their offspring cluttered with karma

just like mother used to fake with aplomb

the square root of bomb apart from shelter 

in this sweltering spring mislabeled fling.

Tradition

 

Unless you looked down through that window. Unless

you raked up acorns having given up on 

their popping in the fire. And memorized

the bass drum from campus lashed with brass.

Vetted friends based on claps of blunder

from the percussion. The felt vibration from 

a mile beyond the band. Not about a music.

Cheering in the stands as commercial hands

clapping bare-chested fans smashed into

late afternoon. Tailgating in place of thought.

Saying Gonna miss you guys. Never safe

from recollection. Of the thinning trees

unleashing piles of crisp leaves to sweep 

away into a pile of fire. 

Sheila Murphy

Two Poems by Diarmuid ó Maolalaí

The colour of fog

 

getting some beer in

this evening. some white

wine. and fish smells of piss

quite deliciously in thin

plastic sachets. it’s cod fillets.

soft, and the colour of fog-

covered mirrors and skin,

after a yawn and a shower.

they nestle down, curl

like a cat between beer

bottles into the shopping

bag; drape over potatoes,

the steak and a half-pan

of bread. outside the sunlight

is red as a lipstick-mark,

a tongue on the plate-glass

facade of the supermarket

which holds dusk at bay

in a kicked dust

of fogginess, thrown

out by cars – their exhaust

fumes – in passage

and idling lorries.

 

The poem

 

the line is the line. the poem

the poem. I am a young man – early-

mid-thirties and striving artistically

as much as an elderly terrier

dog will still worry at pigeons.

I walk croppy's acre, the graves

of dead patriots – watch

young brazilians play volleyball

next to the stones. there are sections

of life which exist but the line

is the line and is static:

the poetry comes and it burns in these movements

and then is forgotten. I sit and I write

other lines unrelated to anything

felt in a moment: your bra and your trousers;

how they press into hips and leave prints.