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by Mona Lynch - The girls stood around the hospital bed, “We bought you a plant in a pot.” Discharged, I took it to the fertile soil. Gifted it a mulch of fallen leaves, Covered it in its warm blanket and waited. Slowly, my Magnolia Stellate responded to the warm-hearted sun, the loving moon. Pulled upwards by the sky, it began to sprout star shaped flowers, delicate petal-like tepals, they came even before its leaves. A dwarf, a treasure with a low profile. A haven for finches and sparrows. A friend of the glitzy Cherry. Its stars lead us out of Winter into Spring. Mona Lynch graduated from UCC with an MA in Creative Writing in 2018. She is a poet, a short story writer and memoirist. Her work has been published in the Irish Examiner, The Echo, The Holly bough, and the Quarryman. While working with Travellers in Cork prison, she produced a book of stories and poetry which is in use in their literacy classes. She has been awarded a Munster Literature Centre Mentoring Fellowship.

A Café in Mullingar by Jimmy O'Connell - Howard Jones’ ‘No one is to blame’ pipes through a café in Mullingar in the beat and thrust of electronified syncopation. Am I the only one here stopping for coffee and a blueberry muffin, reflecting on Rembrandt’s painting of a sun-deprived, grey-jaundiced Jesus nailed to a pitch-singed cross of cheap carpentered wood? Where within the frame of shrouded silence he realises his own abandonment, his fear-paralysed eyes and gnarled screaming mouth tasting the anguish of hope lost; this same cry unheard in the agonised etching in an earlier self-portrait wherein we too become the Dutchman who has surely painted the symbol of man as artist forsaken between speech and dumbness, between a God absent and the brittle belief in a rolled-back stone and an empty tomb. His Christ hangs bereft at our casual forgetfulness, our walled-out emptiness now brimmed with desires unfulfilled, and spent treasure wasting. Is he with us now watching out for Summer Sales and supermarket trolleys, this café filling with shoppers and wandered-souls, heedless of piped music in relentless loop? Jimmy O’Connell was born in Dublin. He is a graduate of UCD. Jimmy has been writing and performing his work for many years in the Irish Writers Centre, Sunflower Sessions and other venues. His poetry has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Stepaway Magazine, Flare 7 & 10, and Poetry for a New Ulster among others. A collection of his poetry Although it is Night was published by Wordonthestreet in 2013. He has recently published his first novel, Batter the Heart. He is at present working on a play based on the life of Margaret Cusack, The Nun of Kenmare.

by Mandy Beattie - My eyelashes flutter and flatline crescent-moons on crests of cheeks behind iris-lids is sky inside a pearl-mussel a swirling ocean swell pitching me deeper, deeper, deeper until I am skinless-skein and silver umbilicus-ectoplasm from The Cup Bearer I track Ptolemy to waltz past stones of sleep to swoop and soar I am a Sky-Traveller in a Starship The Plough’s my jib and I fly elbow to elbow with fluttering wings I trail mountain folds, isobars, snow caps and seeds, air-swim over oceans and niblets of sand I am a wind-horse weaving among clusters of gypsophila with star-petals in my hair I shadow the Big Dipper to the North Star as I cartwheel around The Northern Cross a giant harp strums my skinless-skein and silver umbilicus-ectoplasm and I forward roll to Andromeda to foxtrot with El Morya and Merlin on a magic carpet through the maw of the Milky Way until fingers of light edge around bare bones and Saturn’s curtain rings and Orion's Belt is the launch-pad through the veil of thin-air when the long and short hand siphons me back into bones my heart the drum beat of a Shaman and alchemy as my bones uncurl and unfurl from its question mark — When will it be, ‘As Above, So Below?’ Published in The Haar, 2021 Mandy Beattie’s poetry is a tapestry of stories & imagery rooted in people and place, often with an element of other-worldliness. Her poems have been published in: Wordpeace, Poets Republic, Dreich, Wee Dreich, The Haar, Purple Hermit, Wordgathering, The Clearance Collection, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Marble Poetry Broadsheet, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Book Week Scotland and The People’s Poem of Scotland.

by Maeve McKenna - I am trying to bend a mind. Can I imagine the moon as a suffocating balloon, ready to inhale, siphoning lungs from the earth — which is a cardboard box of discarded toys, metal and plastic? Or stars the eyes of a wolf-pack in the dark world forest, glaring behind spindly trees — which are needles in a pin cushion. Just that. Or rivers as paths guzzling swamped ground, drowning the carcasses of roads that lead home — which is a state of familiarity only. Or bodies as a surface to sketch new ways, tracing escape routes through veins — which are tracks of blood — which are cooled boiled water dredging metal and plastic from a cardboard box, while starry eyes take aim with spindly pins and puncture flesh, and the river path devours familiarity, and sketches are cuts on a skin map bleeding cooled, boiled, water. Maeve McKenna is a poet living in Sligo, Ireland. Her poetry has been placed in several international poetry competitions, published in Mslexia, Orbis, Sand Magazine, Fly on the Wall, Channel Magazine among others, and widely online. Maeve was a finalist in the Jacar Press Eavan Boland Mentorship Award 2020, third in the Canterbury Poet of The Year in 2021 and a Pushcart nominee, 2022. Her debut pamphlet will be published in February, 2022, by Fly On The Wall Press.

by Greg Crowley - What news, you ask, from this rim of Empire? There is none. We hum and drum through the day. At night we sleep. The weather remains bright, if damp. We have saved the hay and barley. Mould is an issue in the public baths. I received mail from Karl yesterday. It was smug. I will not respond. I am taking notes on the local tongue: jen deffer (be quick!); err un bweente (now!); slaante (have an ale). You might let it slip to the Chancellor – commitment to the post etc. Thank you for the Glock. It has fine balance. Gratitude from Vita for the Steyr. Gratitude in abundance from Helen for the oryx – though she would not say it. We are enduring the age of disdain: all adults are fools, all others less so. “I am becoming a goth,” she announced at breakfast. Vita gagged on her muesli. I looked up from my tablet, smiled, and said, “Visi? Ostro?” Her glare was petrific. Contagion in the east is concerning. Should we cancel all flights? Restrict commerce? Strengthen the garrisons on the Marches? And what of the Orange Throne of the West? Can it survive the cost of its hairstyles? Perhaps its citizens will remove it. I cannot but ponder such matters though they are now beyond my competence. There is rumour the Deisi may raid Dolaucathi. I have advised Gerald. I am reading Seneca and Musil. I will end with a local novelty. Six herons are witnessed on the seashore, imperturbably alert on the rocks. The priests declare them messengers from God, the druids guardians of the underworld (storms had revealed an unknown sea cave), while the scientists, dissecting two, announce that they are nothing but birds. The priests are building a row of crosses, the druids surrounding the henge with pyres, the scientists are shivering in dread. The urban cohort maintains a calm eye. Remember me to my colleagues and friends at Broekzele and Argentoratum. I should not ask – tell none – but is there word or hint of my rehabilitation? First published in Irish Literary Supplement in 2021

by Sinéad McClure - My great grandfather left Victoria at seven years of age, the outback faded to orange on the horizon. The wave-gradient shifted from turquoise to navy blue; the wildness of Australia never lost its hue. My aunt left for Victoria aboard her fifties passage to a new world, hugs faded from the platform—out of reach—marooned in her heart. My mother named distance a street of goodbyes. They were always leaving, always waving into empty spaces. When news came of my aunt's death the gulf grew even larger for there was no good way to travel there. My sister left London, a swaddled toddler held in the arms of the Irish Sea. We are children of the returned and we know to be devoid of homeland is to be forever lost; it's in the ripping out, the detachment. It's in the map of vacant eyes and darkened hearts. It’s in the name of our fada and the raven tumbling in from cirrus clouds, and it is westwards and it is never coming home. Sinéad McClure is a writer, radio producer and illustrator. Her work has been published in anthologies, print and online journals, including; Crossways Literary Magazine, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Live Encounters, Poethead, Drawn to the Light Press, The Cormorant, Dodging the Rain, A New Ulster, StepAway Magazine, Sonder Magazine, Tiny Spoon, Vox Galvia, The Poetry Bus, Ink Sweat &Tears and the Ekphrastic Review. In 2021, Sinéad won the O Bhéal Five Words International Poetry Prize, first prize in The Wingless Dreamer Spring Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the MONO "Sanity" Prize. Sinéad is influenced by nature, place and how the passage of time manifests in her work.

by Callum McGuire - morning melts, thawed by leaves alight with mortality. colourful cadavers crunched underfoot, their brittle bones bear consensus on the beauty of death. gatecrashers to demise’s debutante, behind Autumn doors we find respite from a thousand hammering fists. our slow swoon wards off the urgency to live. October recalls all we are not, a conspiracy of ghosts decry your fate in childhood’s refrain: “what are you supposed to be?” that empty, eye-holed sheet propped by a stubborn unpresence, I see no convincing evidence for my existence. persistent still, I try to commune with the other side. they aren’t in right now but if I leave a message, they might get back to me. I know where all the bodies are buried having pressed the fresh earth down myself. tonight, I awaken them I need the company. Cal is an adventurer in the land of post-college life. Their interests include anthropology, playing music and screaming into an apathetic void. They have been published in UCC's Quarryman, The Same Page Anthology, Revisiting Inspiration, and many other journals that are just too secret to talk about.

by Darren Caffrey - Now Dr. X wasn't anything to me Just a professional With a desk and certificates And a print by Marc Chagall Primary blues and reds A kind of pastoral folklore And he asks you Why are you here And you want to answer But he's asking you questions And you don't even know What his name is yet So you try to make him look away By looking away yourself But it doesn't work Because he looks down And you notice the writing pad All of the writing is illegible And he scribbles it out But looks back up to see you Thinking about animals And you know he has you Exactly where he wants you And he was right But you were right to lie When he asked about the voices No you said to him I only hear farm animals now Darren has written critically about public art exhibitions for a number of years, most recently in Circa and the Visual Artists supplement. His creative writing was included in Utopia, the spring issue of Emerge (2021). Thanks to the support of Words Ireland he is working with an acclaimed author and current writing.ie short story winner with the aim of developing his own project in creative non fiction. As an artist he received his MA through MAVIS /IADT in 2013 and has exhibited digital and moving image work within an installation context, exploring live art and performance settings in an ad hoc handmade aesthetic built around masculinity, labour and technology. These days he regularly attends Lime Square Poets, a poet's reading night where he says "...a range of voices both local and international give added flavour to my ear."

by Cáit O'Neill McCullagh - We were fourteen when the Gorman boy drowned feet first & sunk to the tip of his crown in sorghum that was the way he’d shouldered out his birth too a footling breech set adrift now in a burying log & so slight that he had even slipped through seed you said to me ‘that box would be near empty … were it not for his mother’s tears’ in the weeping heat & loud silence of the chapel my eyes remained dry-trained to the back of you your hair restrained to the tamed lick of a cow & your nape naked on the penitence of that pew I had suffered decades of rosaries to be so close later while the cousins keened, we slipped behind a stone me fourteen & you lifting the chaff of the day from my lips it was me who fell then letting my anchor loose letting my breath be taken like I was drowning in sorghum First published in Issue 4 of Drawn to the Light Cáit is an ethnologist and curator who writes at home in the Scottish Highlands. She has published in academic journals and books, and writes for online and print journalism, including Bella Caledonia. She started writing poems in December 2020. Since then her work has appeared in journals including Northwords Now, The Banyan Review, Drawn To The Light, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis. Her poems have been exhibited including as part of Scotland’s Book Week 2021, and she has been invited as a featured reader for Lime Square Poets, Word on the Street, and the Federation of Writers of Scotland. A joint winner of the Boyne Writers Festival Poetry Day Ireland 2021 competition, Cáit is now co-coordinating The Wee Gaitherin Festival 2022. She continues to write, read, and share poems in a world that will always need poetry. For more about Cáit, including links to some of her poems see https://www.highlandlit.com/cait-oneill-mccullagh . She can be found tweeting at @kittyjmac

by Kim Ports Parsons - Hoarfrost blooms at my temples, hooks around my ears. A cold wind’s knocking. My body’s forgetting the steamy hydraulics of those nights, the lick of eyeliner, the shimmy and the sweat, the torrent from the amps, the sassy flip of curls on my shoulders, how a hungry mouth surfaced near mine, how I could slide into a drowning kiss. This December night, I’m warming myself at the fire you’ve built. I’m watching embers glow like remembered sighs. Husband of mine, let’s turn a slow shuffle about the flickering room. Let’s mingle our old pajamas and worn out scuffs. Let’s stoke the laughter at ourselves, but tenderly. Let my fingers linger for a while in the silky sparks of your silver-threaded hair. After thirty years as a teacher and librarian, Kim Ports Parsons now lives next door to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia with her husband Doug, hound dog Sadie, and cat Miss Daisy Cooper. She tends garden, hikes, and listens for poems. Her work has appeared in many journals, such as Cider Press Review and The Blue Nib. She volunteers for Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry.

By Janet Harper - I tumbled headlong into a hole and in the perfect spiral of a dream watched whorls and eddies in a stream of sand and gold and failing to take hold fell further than I ever thought I could. Janet Harper lives and writes in London. She is the current rep for Southwark Stanza and Poet in Residence with an organic orchard in Kent. Her work has been published in print and online publications including Dream Catcher, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Morning Star.