Bernadette Gallagher: Beyond

After Narkissos-Beyond by John Philip Murray, 2015

In memoriam J.J.M.

I.

He has reached the world below

breaks through as a gull dives for fish

the stream is calm above, mirror image

reflects the sky, water laps

at the forest roots

the world is upside down.

A magician throws a bolt of linen dyed to blue

a loose thread unravels

Narkissos hangs upside down, half above

half below, frozen in time.

A stage is set, curtain raised

all darkness beyond.

II.

Paint does not quell

the sound of breaking water

or silence the cry of a mother

and wife.

A December day you breached the cold

on or about the first.

Ripples close over

as brown paper covers a book —

the yellow eyed dace kept you company

even though your eyes were closed.

Unlike Narkissos, they pulled you out

sodden and too heavy to hold.

[Originally published in Agenda, 2023]

Bernadette Gallagher is a poet from Ireland. The Risen Tree (Revival Press, 2024) is her first poetry collection. Her work has been published in Cyphers, Crannóg, Agenda, The Stinging Fly, The North, The Tablet, Stony Thursday, The Frogmore Papers and Southword. bernadettegallagher.blogspot.ie

John Grey: Coming Storm

I’m outside and a storm is coming.

I watch clouds darken as they accumulate.

On edge, I’m waiting for the first snap of lightning.

Voices from the house call me inside.

When I don’t move, they say I’m crazy.

But I’m in the mood to feel something huge,

all-encompassing and dangerous.

People haven’t done that for me in years.

They’re too busy either making accommodations

or asking for my indulgence.

They’ve lost the art of being all there is.

I feel a raindrop on my hair, another on my shoulder.

Dusk’s ceiling is low and grey

and its faucet is dripping.

The electricity is building up.

The heavens have no way of handling it.

Too much will lead to the most violent of cracks.

But it merely rains.

Clouds move on without much drama.

I’m drenched not exhilarated.

Unhappy in my own skin,

when I expected to be one with the universe.

So I shuffle off inside. Faces stare at me.

Words are unnecessary but they speak them anyhow.

“Not smart enough to come in out of the rain,”

they figure,

But I was never smart.

Just too alive.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

Bill Richardson: Double Asteroid Redirection Test

They shot a tiny spaceship at an asteroid

going about its business seven million miles away.

They sure knocked that rock off its trajectory

though it was never coming near.

And since you orbited out of my life,

I’ve wondered about the nudge that made you leave.

On my journey to the bottle bank,

I see among the greens and browns

the one we downed before you went away,

its label chewed by hungry snails.

I pause, then free my hand, 

and hear a thousand slivers screeching in the dark.

Like metal on planetary rock, glass on glass

changes the shape of things.

Bill Richardson is emeritus professor in Spanish at the University of Galway, Ireland. His poems have been published in numerous poetry magazines, including 14 Magazine, The Stony Thursday Book, Orbis, The High Window, Skylight 47,Gyroscope Review, Flights and Crannóg. Poems of his have been finalists in three poetry competitions.

Jimmy O'Connell: Prams on a Village Green

‘My friends think I’m crazy’, she said through

tightly stifled tears. ‘But I see mothers and babies

sitting on the park bench and wheeling their prams,

and I talk to them, they’re so real; but when I turn around

they disappear. I’m scared there’s something wrong with me’.

This village was where a Mother and Baby Home

was once located. I assure her I do not believe

she is going crazy. These mothers have returned to

reveal what suffering they went through and what

the village refused to see. ‘But when will I stop

seeing them?’ Her hands scrunched into fists.

‘When we no longer need to be seen’, they replied.

Jimmy O’Connell was born in Dublin. He has been writing and performing his work in various venues for many years. His poetry has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry for a New Ulster, The Wexford Bohemian, Voices from the Land and Skylight47 among others. 

Elaine Sorrentino: Metamorphosis

I never loved that dirty water

but adored its potential.

Cluttered with cigarette butts,

beer cans, industrial waste,

it was capable of so much more

than being Boston’s major embarrassment,

but how do you remove the flavouring

once you’ve dumped it in the Ramen?

With wetlands as a filtration system

we reclaimed the neglected resource

transformed the former disgrace

into a polished ecological gem

a year-round wonder of wildlife,

destination for families to recreate.

My children are too young to recall

tea-coloured waters too polluted to house

mergansers, golden eyes, or eiders;

they only know the excitement of cheering

teams of athletes from all over the world

as they race at the Head of the Charles Regatta.

Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such as Minerva Rising, Sheila Na-Gig, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Ekphrastic Review, Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Cool Beans Lit, and Haikuniverse. A lover of ekphrastic poetry, she is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, Massachusetts. www.elainesorrentinopoet.com/

jms xuange: Threadlight

There’s a spider living

at the base of my

           spine.

Threads criss-

cross the

house of my

bones.

          Its nest

             dangles

from my coccyx.

In the morning

on the road in the dark

it swells behind me like

an undiscovered moon.

 

                  I can’t see

into the light or

outrun it.

jms xuange writes poems of quiet perception and inward motion. Their work has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Midway Journal, and Rogue Agent. They explore how light, memory, and silence shape what remains after language.

The Sunday Review: ‘Belfast Twilight’ by Liam Carson

Belfast Twilight: haiku, senryu and micro-poems

Salmon Poetry, 2025,ISBN 9781915022967

Throughout this, Carson's first collection, we get the distinct impression of the poet as an engaged but silent observer, rarely interacting with his subjects, content to pause, note down his impressions, and move on. Indeed, Carson cuts himself as a lone figure: whether walking down an “empty path” in the woods, noting a “kid’s bandstand | all empty now”, or on a Good Friday, remarking on “a man with no saviour | alone on the pier” (a pithy contrast of date and circumstance). Rather than depressing the reader with loneliness, it is pleasing to imagine Carson on his travels, either on a train journey or walking down a rainy street, taking in everything around him, translating the seemingly mundane into sharp poetic assertions, reminiscent of Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things.

Throughout these sojourns, there is a longing for the past, or at least, chances to honour the memory of bygone times and objects. “piles of letters on the floor | empty shop”; “closed record shop | filling with dust”; the “empty dresser” with its old fashioned “hooks for teacups” in a “deserted lighthouse”; or a “broken cigarette machine | from bygone days”. All these memories serve not only as a testament to the past, but also as a subtle comment on life in Ireland itself, how one can travel to some small towns or rural, remote parts, and be transported back thirty or more years, progress being somewhat of an alien concept in some areas.

Although the poems largely focus on nature and environments, people also arise in these reflections. The woman who “falls asleep ​| on her lover’s shoulder” on the night train (taken from a painting by Jack B Yeats) could also be the drunk woman who “combs her lover’s hair” in the sequence ‘Summer Rain’. In that same sequence, the ending note of “still missing mother | after twenty years” harks back to the earlier poem in the collection ‘Mother In Winter” with its closing lines:

old wardrobe

after all these years

the smell of mother.

There is little of the speaker in Carson’s poems: often, the sights and facts are presented without commentary, Carson applying the effective economy that should be found in haiku. Because of this, it is all the more striking when the direct ‘I’ or personal testimonies do enter. In the sequence ‘Belfast’, told largely through the voice of the much younger Carson, we get explicit memories of the living through the Troubles:

going to school

a soldier’s rifle

aimed at my back

…

republican march

i know I will never be

one of the masked men

In ‘Belfast Night’, the ‘I’ moves to ‘boy’, almost as it the shift to the third person is a means to protect oneself against the deeply sinister nocturnal movements of the conflict. This move does not however lessen the impact, and Carson demonstrates very clearly how such trauma never leaves you, armed men transformed into “a monster” or “a bogeyman” in the boy’s eyes.

The rare use of the ‘I’ is also precisely applied in its single use in ‘Faithful Departed’, with its meditations on brother Ciaran’s funeral:

autumn

wearing my brother’s shoes

i carry his coffin

Carson creates an impression of connection and inseparability her, and double downs on this by noting his own reflection “in the bus window | my father”. Elsewhere, the opening lines of ‘Island Haiku (Inis Mór) could serve as a small counterpoint to brother Ciaran’s poem, ‘Exchange’:

setting sun

in the horse’s brown eye

so soft his nose

Paula Meehan describes Carson as “a watchful observer in constant motion”, and it is certainly a joy to read these poems and to travel alongside the poet, taking in his concise and provoking views of the world and its various enterprises. Belfast Twilight is a powerhouse of a first collection, leaving the reader hungry for more of the same, but satisfied that such testament to the haiku and senryu form exists in the Irish lexicon.

Dudley Stone: Letter

Dear ----------:

I promised you a letter

and here it is

beginning as always

with an apology

sorry, so sorry

for not writing sooner

though you have been much on my mind,

my pen near at hand,

stationery, and stamps

that declare “Forever” (as I often do myself)

so I don’t have to chase

postage up its long inflationary ladder

Sorry, so sorry

something caught my attention,

rude birds hijacking the food

I leave for strays who won’t adopt me

and who I have been staring at out the window,

which is a poet’s real job, after all,

imagining you patiently somewhere

and waiting (forever) for me to return

to the substance, the pith, the gist

of this letter that I promised

so sorry

to write you

If I haven’t apologized enough,

let me do so again now,

sorry, so sorry.

About myself I can only say

that I am fine

in my chair of a morning

staring out at trees and clouds,

fine pulling on another sweater

and scarf and burrowing deep into my hoodie

like a turtle or some crustacean

that lugs its own shell on its back,

but really, no, I am fine

despite you gone (forever),

despite how when I return to this letter

it has grown taller, like it has something substantial

to say beyond the obvious, which is that with each day

the odds increase that this letter may be the last 

and I would tell you the news here

but there is none

except for the birds and the cats

the trees and the clouds

(and me watching them all),

except to say that I am fine

and in case you’ve forgotten

I’m sorry, so sorry

I promised (forever) I would write to you

and now I have.

Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Written Tales, and The Headlight Review. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY.

Valerie Frost: After Miss

here lies what once was—

splintered glass of near truths resting

beneath the powder-blue hush

of we don’t need to talk about it.

we used to orbit

like hesitant planets, nudging

gravity just shy of consequence—

but you steered sharp

into the sun, unblinking.

there’s a violence to distance

when it used to mean safety.

now: silence isn’t sacred,

it’s a strategy.

i’ve learned the sound

of someone unmaking me

in curated company

while pretending

they never tripped on my name

like a whispered mistake.

your cruelty wears thin now—

subtle, tight-stitched.

you roll your eyes like shutters

sealing off history,

as if the story

wasn’t folded

inside old cards

tucked in our drawers.

meanwhile, I keep

the fragile bloom

of what I meant intact—

not in a vase, but

under my ribs,

where not even frost

dares root again.

what I gave

was not a performance.

what I lost

was not a phase.

what remains

is the full ache of restraint—

elegant still

even in rupture.

Valerie Frost lives in Central Kentucky with her three joyful kiddos. Her poems have appeared in Eastern Iowa Review, ONE ART, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

Kenneth Owens: Ice

The move to winter always jolts

despite it being marked on the calendar,

this annual trauma, jouncing in

so soon after September.

I shop for hoodies, sweater,

read articles on hot water bottles,

phone my mother and bemoan my age –

was I ever cold as a child? Doubtful.

Windows remain closed; dust breeds.

Mornings are a closed coffin.

Kenneth Owens is an occasional writer and reviewer with full-time imposter syndrome, residing in Northern Ireland.