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by Margarita Bonifaz I am by the side fence holding my long dark braids where else? trying to keep myself safe my job back then, still is in the center of the field there   you   are you have gone wild with rage Your red hair is flying your words full of literary curses Your genius went unrecognized except I always saw it So did Mrs. Sharkey she was just so permanently mad at you for being more engaging than her damn lessons You push the bully girl hard She tumbles She reaches for you tears your green sweater the only new thing you own I do not know how we found each other or why we became fast friends braiding each other's hair yours, gold tinged red mine, dark brown we recognized wordless things in the other I am trying to remember how you told me your secrets all the trouble we got in all the boys all the recesses spent inside punishment for our glee I do not know how the hell I lost you in this wounded world But I think of you too often How you gave me tenderness and courage what you saw in me how you protected me from the bully girl and sometimes from myself I met you again recently at Lime Square Poets you were reading one of your poems Yes, brilliant I thought You have not lost your rage your red hair or your word filled talent Margarita Bonifaz published her first poem, Fairy Toast, at age 7 in the literary journal The Phoenix.  During her 32-year teaching career she wrote mostly in the margins. Two of her stories were published in Peregrine Journal: Summer's Dance (1992) and Dr. Mercuvio and the Velvet Couch (1995). In recent years, she has taken her novel out of the drawer and has countless stories just sitting on her desktop. The only reason she is writing poems is so she has something to read on Thursdays at Lime Square Poets. She loves wild geese, Queen Anne's lace, astronomical twilight and believes in the medical value of sugar.

By Catherine Ronan Hermes carries my love to you on winged sandals of desire. In that myth of soaking rain, I steal a thunderbolt. Splashing between dream and reason, I am the beast. Minotaur of your mind walking with hand-spun thread of fate. As huntress, I shear your golden fleece of carnality. Helios cannot rise for three days before our friction draws fire. Pain of obsessive love demands we must drink exile. Eris carries discord as the terrible lizard of sleep. Black bile of memory spits anarchy. We are perfectly flawed humans for now. Tomorrow, we wake in the milky vault of galaxies, and begin again and again and again. Catherine Ronan holds a degree in Applied Psychology and French. Writing poetry since childhood, she returned to UCC to study Creative Writing in 2019. Since then she has joined multiple poetry collectives, performs on open mics, is a member of Debarra’s Spoken Word Team and created her first poetry film ‘Policing Mary’. Her work has been chosen for Poetry in the Park and Heritage Projects. She won the Winter Solstice Poetry Competition, was long listed for Cúirt and highly commended in the Munster Literature Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Published both nationally and internationally, her debut poetry collection ‘ Elemental Skin ‘ was published by Revival and has been nominated by them for the Piggott, Forward and Heaney Poetry Prize.

By Mary McColley And waves combed out the old hair of the sea The froth the blue the mangy strands Above, the puffins, above, the wind tried to pull my hair from my head and marry me to the sea The grass leaned so soft against my skull, I watched slant-eyed birds shelved in their nests, beaks backwards, necks pale, paired, and drowning above the sea-roar, I watched brown wind blow on the clifftops & so much grey dissolved to sky, I watched with limestone in my pocket, put cold hands to my face and couldn’t say anything First published in 2022 by Wingless Dreamer, Sea or Seashore. MARY McCOLLEY is a writer and poet originally from Maine. She has wandered and worked for a number of years in France, Thailand, and Palestine. Her pastimes include killing lobsters and selling street art.

By Colm Scully There are seventeen people at Nan’s funeral rosary with nobody in the front row. The last time she had a crowd like this was three years ago at her hundredth birthday. Kay and Mary smiling in the picture as the cake was cut, Nan passing slices around the room. If only her brother could have been there. Fifteen years her junior, she had cared for him until his final turn. Manoeuvring him around the makeshift bedroom out front. When he had come home that day from England he was like a stranger to her, recounting stories of his great life across the water. The house in Green Lawn had been so quiet for years before that. Good neighbours and friends, and the bus into town. When the last of her cousins’ children from Bantry finished college she thought for a while about taking in lodgers. Manus had qualified as a doctor before that his sister had not finished Art in the Crawford. She had done a painting of Lough Hyne and hung it in the hall. Her cousin Ashling, a very quiet girl, was the first to arrive one September. That was barely twelve months after Dominic died. His worn out body laid out in the Cancer ward. They had cuddled close when the doctor gave him the bad news. Work had been a struggle for him for a while before that and she found it frustrating, not knowing why he had changed. Pottering around the place, while she was doing housework. They had been so happy. Holidays in that little chalet in Tragumna, long walks through Lisard House into Skibb’, and making love in the creaky little bed, hoping the neighbours hadn’t arrived yet. She had met him on a coach tour out of Long Island. A Grey Hound bus down to Washington DC. As they passed through Baltimore he had yelled out from the back “Yah, my home town.” She knew instinctively what he meant. When Mrs Murdock died, she somehow had felt marked out by the world. She knew she was too old to have children, and love was just a fading dream. The son had cheated her out of the House in Vermont that Mary Murdock had promised her. Some deal had gone on between him and the lawyer. Three days before her boss was sent into the home she had slipped a wad of  money into Nan’s hand bag. Hundred Dollar Bills. They were like friends really, friends where Nan did the driving. All around Rockaway, and up to New England for the Summer. That was her third job after she emigrated --House keeper for a Mature lady- Must have References--. The Toll booth job on Brooklyn bridge had been so boring she had decided to go into domestic service. In spite of the stern advice of her father back in Ireland. “You’ll end up as a penniless spinster.” He almost crushed her hand as he bade her goodbye on Cobh Pier. He wanted to hug and kiss her but he didn’t know how. He knew he would never see her again. On the train up to Cork with him the same tune kept on going through her head. --The Andrew Sisters— He had confiscated the record from her when she was working in Shop Street. She wondered where it had ended up. She loved working in Callanans. Mrs C would send her out on endless errands, the trade was so quiet. “Pop down to Cooney’s and get me change of a half a crown, and tell them War has broken out in Europe”. As she entered the grocers she saw the two Murphy girls sitting by the window sharing an ice cream. Nan smiled at Kay and tossed her curly hair “Down from Cork for the summer, my little loves?” Colm Scully from Douglas, Cork is a  Poet, Poetryfilm maker and Chemical Engineer. He has been published in many journals including, Cyphers, Abridged, Crannog, Skylight 47 and Philosophy Now. His first collection, What News, Centurions? was published by New Binary Press. He has won the Cúirt New Writing Prize and been selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions. He has been making Poetry Films for about 8 years and likes to collaborate. His films have been shown at festivals in Europe, Asia and America. He won Best Animation at MicroMania Film Fest, Buffalo in 2021 and Best Smart Phone Production at Rabbits Heart Poetry Film Fest in 2019. His  collaboration with Mags Creedon was runner up in The Ekphrastic Poetry Film Comp. at Lyra Poetry Festival Bristol 2022.

by Catherine Graham It’s a mystery, maybe just a mystery to me why a poet would want to lose their local accent, ditch dialect words learned at their grandmother’s knee. Maybe it’s nothing more than the aroma of snobbery. Whatever the reason and however well meant, it’s a mystery, maybe just a mystery to me. I’ve a fancy it’s more an English thing, you see. Would Shakespeare in his ‘winter of discontent’ ditch dialect words learned at their grandmother’s knee? I’ll never do it, go all la-di-da, trust me! Or maybe we all do at times, to some extent. It’s a mystery, maybe just a mystery to me why there are poets, you may or may not agree, so keen to get published are quite content to ditch dialect words learned at their grandmother’s knee. I’ll not write poems just to please the bourgeoisie, wilderness-grey words that crumble like clay or cement. It’s a mystery, maybe just a mystery to me. Ditch dialect words learned at my grandmother’s knee? Catherine Graham grew up in Newcastle on Tyne in NorthEast England where she still lives. Her poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA and Ireland including The Stony Thursday Book as well poems published online. Her awards include the Northern Voices Poetry Award, The Northumberland Writers Award and The Jo Cox Poetry Prize. Catherine has read her poetry on BBC Radio 4 as well as on local BBC radio. She is the author of three poetry collections. Her pamphlet Like A Fish Out Of Batter is published by Indigo Dreams Publishing and is inspired by the work of artist L. S. Lowry. Catherine writes, “I was drawn to Lowry’s work because the people in his paintings could be my own proud working-class family.” Catherine has read at numerous poetry festivals and events including the The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Durham Literature Festival, Northern Stage, The Liverpool International Poetry Festival and a number of Amnesty International Poetry Benefits. Catherine’s latest poems and recordings are available in the free-to-download online anthology  I Sing, Therefore I Am over at carerspoetry.org

by Kim Ports Parsons I heard a story once about a woman trapped in the past because she wouldn’t read the news of the day until she finished with the day before, and soon one day became two, then three, then a month, then a year, until she was living decades before. No one had the heart or nerve or strength to break the hours into their rightful slots for her, to name the day’s events and spoil the plot for her. The clock, for her, had slowed, spun backward, and shifted gears, clicked at the speed of her will. She sat ensconced among stacks of the yellowing world. Kim Ports Parsons grew up near Baltimore, earned degrees, and worked in education for thirty years. Now she lives near Shenandoah National Park, writes, gardens, walks, and volunteers for Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry. Her poems appear in many publications, including Skylight 47, LIVE ENCOUNTERS, and Vox Populi and have been nominated for a Pushcart. Her first collection, The Mayapple Forest (Terrapin Books 2022), was a finalist for the North American Book Award, sponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia.

by Cormac Culkeen Inquiring knocks still him like a mouse in open grass beneath a hawk’s shadow shifting on thermals, where cold lamp light gathers night damp rooms, growing dust into his daily path. Curtains latch lying windows, folds of drawing fabric swing watching aged moments pass into never, floormap layers of newspaper, accretions marking past’s mould, where brief conceit did immerse worlds. Slowly, another knock moves him through his curt, ancient trail, his listening chair, his mumbling radio, where infinity becomes a stifle of small gestures glimpsed unseen, a stained mug, a kettle’s hiss. Rheumy squints through glasses bring him a sleeved arm, some tuneless whistling stills his pulse movement muted to breath seeing quieter figures shrink, rain strums upon fading steps. Shadows melt in the panes shuffle from its rivet gaze. Recognising a stasis, spokes of sunlight drop through curtain depths, seeds of light’s silence angling for pause, touch his hands. Cormac Culkeen is a writer of poetry, fiction, short stories and nonfiction. He lives in Galway, Ireland, and has completed an MA in Writing at the University of Galway, after completing a BA in Creative Writing. His poetry has been published in Skylight 47, The Wild Word, Causeway, Apricot Press, Bindweed, Ropes Literary Journal and The Honest Ulsterman. His debut poetry collection, The Boy with the Radio, was recently published by Beir Bua Press in 2022.

by David McLoghlin Usually the youngest among the ones who still have hyphens for death days —maybe, finally a woman, or a name heavy with vowels—I’m represented by a single poem. So don’t think me ungrateful. Even though I wrote it myself, there’s a curt strangeness, rereading my bio, that leaves out my life: “work published in Shindig, Black Rhino and Coterie. Has lived in Rome and Antwerp. Now teaching Special Needs in Trim.” I know the crabby elder statesman anthologist has given me the nod to stand for this generation. I know speech after long silence; it is right and just, to be here. And after all the definite red brick edifice becoming the canon in the previous pages, there’s a tentativeness about my single poem: but something growing, nonetheless. Even though it might just be breath on the window. David McLoghlin is a poet and writer of creative nonfiction. His books are Waiting For Saint Brendan and Other Poems and Santiago Sketches. CRASH CENTRE will be published by Salmon in May 2024. He teaches creative writing with Writers in Schools, and is a mentor with the National Mentoring Scheme.

by Kieran Fionn Murphy You’d laugh and shake your head if I told you that, in Cork, two doves kissed good morning on a sunny wire over Dean Street, but they did, as a workman’s gloved hands pulled up sheets on a building on South Main Street, and a surge of cars jostled snouts beside the courthouse steps. An Airbus roared across the Western Road, turned right above the Mardyke, and made for a cloud grazing Sunday’s Well, and then, improbable, I heard him warble, a blackbird call. I stopped, spotted him up on Daly, Derham, Donnelly – Orpheus of the eaves, orange beak scissoring the steely, dusty, concrete, shadowed scrim of locked existence, defying jackhammers and taxis, singing beauty, love, and loss. I paused, applauded, laughing, then flew home to you. We never once looked back. Kieran Fionn Murphy grew up in NY and now lives in Dingle with his family, where he co-founded Murphys Ice Cream. He is currently pursuing an MA in creative writing at UCC and hasn’t yet mended the folly of his ways.

By Daniel Galvin - He’s neat and slim, a handshake like an empty glove. I am a good patient, grinning through the shock when his utensils pick too deep. I can even be our nurse. I let the suction tube he clips around my lip wither my tongue to Langue de Chat before I fish it out. An x-ray glows above his shoulder, my skull a cave, each tooth a stalactite cramped amongst its neighbours, crooked and lobotomised, bits taken out. The image renders blobs of amalgam, dolloped where enamel has been gnawed away, in sugar white while black chars mark the rot that eats and eats and eats toward the final tender darkness of the nerve. Daniel Galvin is from Co.Cork. His writing has been published in The Moth, Acumen, Honest Ulsterman, A New Ulster, The West Texas Literary Review, Cork Words Anthology, Rock and Sling and Ofi Press Mexico. He came first place in the Spoken Word Platform at Cuirt International Literary Festival 2017 and was shortlisted for the Red Line Poetry Competition, 2018.

by Lillian Nećakov - I dreamt of Charles Olson standing by the clothesline gargantuan, reciting the atlas, syllables fat with blood, cascading from his mouth sheets flapping in the broken down geography; a call to peace I dreamt of books and manuscripts scattered at the feet of my dying father in a house where all doors were unhinged and no bible was ever welcome even for its vowels which we could have used for kindling as winter descended I dreamt of every poet whose heart was bigger than mine in the quietest of times whose language crashed against the shores of undeserving cities like a call to arms before the flood, I dreamt I dreamt of my favourite walking shoes left to the whimsy of strangers, a small token of burdens left behind and punishments to come on the occasion of a crippled spring, too slow for the world I dreamt of Marconi and Reginald Fessenden, their voices echoing across the Atlantic softening into the laughter of young girls; 1906 while the inerrancy of Tommy Burns’ KO sent shivers down the necks of Hanover boys I dreamt I was lying in a field with Frank O’Hara, each blade of grass a ghost of someone we had let go, while in the distance a telephone rang and rang and the sun closed in around us like a cathedral. Lillian Nećakov is the author of six books of poetry, numerous chapbooks, broadsides and leaflets. Her latest book il virus was published in April 2021 by Anvil Press (A Feed Dog Book). In 2016, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room was shortlisted for bpNichol chapbook award. During the 1980s, Lillian ran a micro press called “The Surrealist Poets Gardening Association” and sold her books on Toronto’s Yonge Street. She ran the Boneshaker Reading series from 2010-2020. Her new book, duck eats yeast, quacks, explodes; man loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin is forthcoming in 2023 from Guernica Editions. She lives in Toronto and just might be working on a new book.

By Julian Matthews - She read a poem I wrote on laundry And said she liked it She said I'm prolific Perhaps if she met me in person, she would know I smell and reek of dirty doggerel and mucky metaphors I am missing meter and cadence like socks missing their pair— found under the washing machine a month later with some bits of underwear I stink of rhymes prostituted and drenched in cheap perfume To please daddies, sugary or otherwise I am a walking pile of a week's unwashed verbiage Waiting for a line break To be hung out to dry And here's me making my last stanza To separate the wordy whites from the coloured clichés and soppy delicates So soak it in Before I dye... Julian Matthews is a former journalist expressing himself in the pandemic through poetry, short stories and essays. He is published in The American Journal of Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, among others. He is based in Malaysia. http://linktr.ee/julianmatthews