*

A shower of small black stones

The daily toll

To keep the ghouls at bay

That nestled

Deathly still

Behind those rotting boards

Watching

As you passed

From dark and silent eyes

Sending you flying

On a windy day

With a wayward howl from that gaping maw

Even the

Hulking black birds

Quietened as they clawed its broken thatch

Forty years on

A once-cheery usurper stands in its place

Paying doleful tribute to its forbear’s fate

*

Biography

Anne Casey is a writer, poet and lyricist with over 25 years’ experience in print and electronic publishing, creative writing, media communications and business development. Her poems have been published online and in print. Her first poetry collection will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2017.

*

Armed to the teeth

with half the years that I have now,

he sat on our goals.

Eating jelly babies.

The sugared flour

ruining his camouflage.

Dark hands proffering gelatine,

I took what he offered.

Rising, he kicked the ball back in,

rejoined his squad,

and the game continued.

From behind a twitchers curtain,

a loving call to which I ran

straight into the slap.

The child’s learning.

Do not take sweets from the enemy.

*

Biography

Born in 1972, Hugh was brought up between rural Wicklow and troubled Belfast. He is one of nine brothers, thirty six cousins and is a father of two. He has a deep love of both words and numbers, but as with his children, can never decide which he loves best.

*

A snippet of the fairytale from Snow White’s perspective

*

Mother, the moon approaches,

and the sky is still and full of snow,

a late snow falling deep into spring

and the woods, and the dark words of a woman,

who sits with her tears and talks to the mirror.

Mother, the wind is thin and full of crying,

and the woods are deep with pleading fingers.

A spinning wheel clatters

deeper in footsteps of frozen moonlight.

My stitches stretch in front of me, patchwork,

like the fields used to be; full of poppies,

red as the blood on my finger where the needle slipped,

once too often and blinded all around it.

I used to cry for you under the old horse chestnut,

where you might walk into my dreaming.

You would sit and lay your white hands

on empty garden seats, silent swing moving,

rose petals at your feet and on your grave

where the emptiness was louder

when everyone walked away,

and left me there to wait

for the sky to fall and fill like swollen eyes.

I placed my finger on the snow and ran it red,

thawing and melting all around it, life red,

and dust coloured.

Daughter, it is spring;

the mill- wheels turn and water spills

and falls.  Light falls low.

Your fingers, glisten heavy on the patchwork,

The raven’s beak dripped smoke,

fire and light from a corner of the sky.

I saw shadows ahead and lifted my face,

wanting to feel the cold once more.

Run deeper, with your ghosts, and find

your place within those woods

you never enter.  This house is dark now,

and the glass holds its shadow over you.

Daughter you must run fast and search hard for daylight

in your frozen world, away from her silence.

She’ll have your heart, one way or another.

*

Biography

Lucie Kavanagh lives in Co Mayo in the west of Ireland with an array of pets and plants. She works as a social care worker, though she is currently on sick leave and learning to find her writing voice which has been silent for a while.

*

I was born the mother

you were born the child.

While I was exceedingly sensible,

you were passionately wild.

Wild child,

wild child, a source of white heat

with the life bursting out of you

like it was trying to compete.

I didn’t stand a chance. I stayed.

You played in the             darkest corner of the night

beneath a diminishing moon,

your lipstick neon pink,

like an ice-cream parlour in June.

I told you it was too bright,

you defied me

by adding another layer.

I wished you had taken it off

but it seemed you didn’t care, when

I sat in your chair with no homework done.

How could I analyze a poem,

when I constantly stared at the clock

and asked, ‘When is my child coming home?’

You stayed.           I prayed that I could someday

understand this tortuous role reversal,

but I still made you tea, put you to bed

and washed your underwear in Persil.

You died.

I cried because a mother should never have

to bury a child.

*

Biography

*

May 28^th

When I looked into your room

that day, I didn’t know

you were on the edge of death.

Your breath went

and came again, you slept deeply

like the child that you were,

the covers covered you.

I woke to changes in the air,

how it moved, where it settled.

In the vivid blue of a May morning

we went from even to odd

a new number

countenanced in your absence,

a new mother

a new father

a new brother

a new sister.

Familiar shapes re-formed

in the breach you created.

For days I circled the minutes taken

from your ribs, the muffled sigh

of your insides emptying out.

A red coat lay limp on the chair, I felt

the airborne currents of your longing,

your hair was on the hairbrush still.

This is the way life thinks about death.

How weightless is the last breath.

*

Her room

is lit with the small details of a life; odd socks,

a shoe half hidden beneath the bed,

the soft flowered quilt, uncrumpled now.

Crayons, paper planes, pink faded ted.

Day after day, I lie where she lay, her pillow-smell

flashes images; a face bled white,

fingers and silver beads twined tight, nails

of half-moon blue, hair curled in auburn light.

Across the window curtains drift, summer leaves

sashay in the breeze. I am ten. I see the glow

of corn-blue eyes, hear the echo of life’s

intention, its swift ungiving.

*

Biography

Eithne Lannon is a native of Dublin and teaches in Kilbarrack. She has had work published in Bare Hands, Issue 23, 2016, Skylight 47, Issue 6, 2016: A New Ulster, Issue 42, March 2016, the anthology ‘And Agamemnon Dead’, 2015, A New Ulster, Issue 28, January 2015 and forthcoming, Headstuff, Strange Bedfellows series, 2016. She had two poems shortlisted for the Galway Hospital Arts Competition in 2016.

She does regular open mics, has co-hosted the Gladstone Readings in 2015 and 2016, read at Skerries Soundwaves Festival, September, 2015 and Skerries Donkey Shots Festival, 2015 & 2016. She is currently Artist in Residence in Loughshinny Boathouse, Co. Dublin.