Kieran Beville: Summer Then

With hurleys tied to the bars of our bikes

we sped to Foley's Field to play poc fada

until the cogs of hunger turned us

homeward for midday dinner.

In the afternoon we slapped handball

against a sunlit gable-end on Quarry Road,

our palms, red and sore.

In the evening we went skinny-dipping

in the high tide at The Point

beyond the Metal Bridge.

Day after day we spun the chain of time

while the spokes of the sun shone.

Kieran Beville is an Irish author, poet and journalist. He is author of Write Now – A Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers Centre, 2019). Beville has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and five collections of poetry (Revival Press). 

Mark J. Mitchell: Mourner #51

(From the Tomb of the Count of Burgundy)

His book, wrapped in cloth, drags

down his right hand, holds it

still as the rock it is.

A cowl shadows his face—

though that was carved—shaped just

to hide in this white shade.

His left hand clutches cloth,

precise disarray falls

from his feet to his face—

Cool stone folds, white with tears

shed beneath a real corpse

constantly. His shoulders

can’t vibrate. This grief can’t

breathe. His sorrow’s frozen.

This mourning is eternal.

Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel, A Book of Lost Songs is due out in Spring of 2025.He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco where he points out pretty things.

Patrick Deeley: Wicker Man

Old lank nexus of brooms, old

purple-black loft of leafage,

old rib-cage with thickened gams 

and stiff-stretched arms,

old frightener at the garden’s end,

you become a wicker man

in my imaginings. And although

you contain no sacrifice,

no penned cattle, pigs or goats,

no trussed-up hens or geese,

no captive human being in panic

or forlorn beseechment –

with only insects and songbirds

flitting among your twigs,

nurtured, maybe even charmed –

still there is the haughty

towering buoyancy you possess,

the grim, glowering look

you throw that hooks me deepest

at sunset or by moonlight,

when the smudge-mark

of sadness feeds off your outline,

and I see nature funning

with itself and with us, in one place

a firestorm ravishing

the forest, in another a torrent

breaking its sides laughing,

the world no less a grief than a joy,

and, in your wicker dance,

the light tangling with the dark.

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea.  Keepsake, his tenth collection of poems, appeared from Dedalus Press in 2024. www.patrickdeeley.net

Alyssa Curcio: A Death in the Family

When our family rabbit died, it was the doldrums of January, 

All grey and biting and spitting down snow. 

A cold year for Virginia. 

The ground was still frozen, too hard to dig him a grave deep enough

To keep the rain from turning him up again. 

So we tucked him away in a shoebox, decorated with hearts and stickers, 

And folded our thoughts of him delicately away 

In the industrial freezer we kept in the garage

While we waited for spring to thaw the red clay. 

Eventually, the sun broke through and the daffodils sprouted, 

And a shovel could finally cut through the baby grass. 

The red clay loosened, unfolding itself to make way for

Shoots and blooms. 

Out came the box. 

Out of some morbid fascination, I opened it and peeked inside. 

Trick lay there on his side, 

His tufted spots sparkling slightly with frost. 

You may not know this, but because of the shape of bunnies’ spines, 

They have to flop over on their side before they can rearrange their 

Little bones into a laying position. 

That’s how he looked—mid-flop, ready to snuggle up 

Once his frame was flush with the ground. 

But instead, he was cast in perfect stillness. 

Suspended somewhere between life and death.

No longer with us, but corporeally tethered to us still. 

I can’t put you in the freezer and delay your departure that way. 

You wouldn’t fit, for starters. You don’t fit anywhere now. 

Not at the empty kitchen chair you used to haunt, 

Not rattling at the other end of an unstable phone line. 

Not by the window folding the yellowing pages of your Bible

Again and again and again. 

I find myself in some liminal space, defying July’s fiery sun 

With the permafrost that holds me here, 

Sunken into the tundra of your laughter 

And your smile lines

And your puttering around a holiday kitchen. 

I’m left banging my fists on the cold, hard ground, 

Wondering how to hold on to you

Now that you no longer exist.

Alyssa Curcio is a reproductive justice activist and lawyer. Her scholarship has been published in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum. A Virginia native, Alyssa currently lives in New York City. 

Tristan Moss: Poetry seekth

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

     - from Milton’s Paradise Lost 

 

metres meet

across this field

the plough has shared its sheen

with the smooth-cut planes    

on these dark clods of clay

community & form

take the bucket away 

and soon the sand 

falls apart

sandstone takes 

thousands of years 

to form and then

is prone to erode

whereas glass 

is made in no time 

at all

a subtle line

often there’s a thin line 

between poems being so subtle 

that most don’t notice their subtleties, 

and there being little to notice at all 

and most noticing 

and saying nothing

markings on a polished pebble

signs of having fallen

at speed

through our atmosphere 

and/or

small fossilised columns 

of coral 

running through 

it and down its sides

Tristan Moss has had many poems published in online and paper journals. Most recently he has had poems published in Litter Magazine. Last year, he published a pamphlet called 'Ligaments' with The Red Ceilings Press.