The Wishing Box
Is open and inside you will see
Butterflies, white feathers and
A bag of green stones, malachite.
There are loose squares of paper
And on each one are things you
Wrote while looking in the mirror
Like a quiet angel,
You inherit things.
These things will save your life,
Love, truth, being.
It will always be two,
It was never just one.
Stop feeling insufferable,
Impatience will destroy your life.
Write three wishes & put
Them in the triple box.
The last one simply says,
Loves wish.
Michelle O'Sullivan
|
The Showrooms Of Savile Row.
After mass The Blue Donnell eagerly
applied himself to the Fashion Competition
in The Sunday Press.
Meticulously he rated the models 1-10
for style and elegance and poise,
assessed their outfits
like a catwalk commentator.
We wondered at this preoccupation
until one Sunday afternoon
my father shouted over the flurry
of the abandoned dinner that Blue was listed
amongst the winners of a bespoke suit.
For weeks we looked for signs
of grandeur concealed
under his torn and putrid gaberdine.
He silenced all our talk the day
he swanked up to the front pew
in his exquisite hand-made suit,
tailored to compliment
every line of his worn body.
We took in the cashmere two piece,
the double-breasted jacket
with single vent,
agreed that The Blue left them all standing
but my father specified
the Bank Manager and the priest.
Blue, a reticent and awkward sort,
received the compliment like a gentleman
born to the showrooms of Savile Row.
Margaret Galvin
|
Autumn 1979.
We all think that we were there –
Perhaps we were - the evening
After, in the damp autumn air
The blood congealed and someone
Carefully sprinkled earth over it.
The churn
And rev of a reversing float,
The shine of her yellow raincoat,
Invisible to rear view, too small,
Dipped on the road and under –
The lorry’s crawl, and
The whole world rent
Asunder by a child’s cry and a
Jarring metal scream;
And all the mothers
In all the houses around
Heard the sound and
Blessed themselves and prayed;
For we all played
On Saturdays in the kerbed
And tarmac court.
Then we learned how worlds capsize,
Though not ours, yet – we were
Dead shadows her mother glimpsed,
Mirror images she stared at.
Our play
On cold autumn days rang out like the
Hammers across Calvary;
Our voices were the whoop and yell of soldiers
Dicing for clothes.
Eilis Foran
|
Still Breathing (For Darfur)
we exist against the selection of hunger
our gauntness a voice more vocal than the media
we live in a world that cursed the era of hitler
but now bows into the memories of his passion
we stand albeit bent resisting to fall to extinction
although the days of our lives seems to swing
into dark years and our life is a gasp of rotten air
we hold up the bland lives thrown at us
we float in the depth of shallow emotion
to keep our sanity soldered with brokenness
although insanity and death are the choices
left in the basket of our humanness
our minds fights to breathe amidst
the constellated anger of a craving people
we keep up against the dearth of everything
even though pain is scarce and vacuum is a resort
Jumoke Verissimo
|
Unforgiving
The dent in the pillow
Where your head lay,
Has gone.
A lonely brush
The last memory
Of your scented hair.
The mirror that held your reflection,
No longer shines
With your smile.
Your coat
Hangs empty
In the hallway.
An emptiness
Hangs over me
Like a damoclean sword.
Unforgiving loneliness.
Alan McKean
|
November.
Night has come, she sees his eyes-
He feels so black, she seems too white:
In crystal dreams he grows to life,
In back-street films, he shines a knife.
And she’s so sweet, too swell to kill,
But still he tries to break her will –
To hold her down – to keep her still.
He hears her fear how cold the blade,
He wipes her tear, he cuts her vein.
Oh smell the pain of her warm pulse!
And make the stain come like a blush!
“It’s time to die or live by me.”
He lets her lie so breathlessly:
She’s fainting slow, in fainting light.
And darkly now with closing eyes,
A smile asleep upon his lips,
He bends to her as if to kiss,
As if to wish her in a whisper,
As if to hold her
Tenderly.
Bláithín Allain
|
