In Turbulent Times

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excerpt

‘And Dervla?’
‘Thriving.’ Danny escorted Caitlin into the yard and closed the iron gate behind them. ‘Motherhood suits her. And every day this week she’s had her friend from the cottage visiting.’
Caitlin stopped walking. ‘Her friend from the cottage?’
‘Connie. She and Dervla go way back. They were at school together in Lisnaglass.’
‘Didn’t Connie go home to Belfast with Robert?’
‘No. Robert’s coming back on Monday, so Connie decided to stay in the cottage. Have a short holiday. I would have thought you knew.’
‘Michael must have forgotten to mention it.’ Caitlin turned to the back door of the farmhouse, a frown on her forehead. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Danny. Regards to Dervla.’
‘Thanks, Caitlin. Yes, tomorrow bright and early. Good evening to you.’
Caitlin entered the scullery, placed the eggs on a shelf, and started to make tea for her and Michael. She paused occasionally to look up the hillside, but she could not see the cottage from the scullery window.
Michael came in an hour later, greeted Caitlin with a kiss, and washed and dried his hands at the sink. ‘We’ll finish the shearing tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s only a few left in the catching pen.’
‘I don’t know why you don’t hire a professional shearing team,’ Caitlin remarked. ‘There are enough of them around.’
‘I’ve been shearing sheep since I was seventeen,’ said Michael. ‘I can handle it myself. And Danny’s good with the shears too. If we had a bigger operation I might build a shearing shed.’
‘You’ll be glad the shearing’s all done, though, won’t you?’ said Caitlin.
Michael filled a tin mug with water from the tap and leaned his haunches against the sink. ‘Ay, that I will.’ Then he drank thirstily.
‘Danny was tired when I met him on his way home.’
‘He’s worked hard this week.’
‘You didn’t tell me Connie was staying in the cottage on her own since Robert left on Wednesday.’
‘Didn’t I? Didn’t you see her in the loaney? She’s been going down to visit Dervla every day.’
‘I must have missed her,’ said Caitlin. ‘Anyway, let’s eat.’
If Caitlin had had any suspicions about Michael and Connie Hanlon, remembering how Connie had come on to him in the square in Corrymore on Tuesday, she did not show them. She wondered how she would react…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Medusa

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Forest Sounds
Wind pierces the four walls of the shack
that resists annihilation in the gaping mouth
of the abyss ready to gulp it
and I place another log in the fire pit
and you lean on the carpet
anxiously waiting for the moment
of action that would commence with
hespera’s song repeating your moan
while the sounds of crackling come
around your fiery contours, caressing
and I let myself into your embrace
this, the only moment that exists
in the tired shack with the old
faded carpet and the mirror’s jealousy

https://draft2digital.com/book/3745982#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763769

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II

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Wealth
During the summer nights, when the day turns cool
you hear the air crystals chime while you
sleep
as if your flock of sheep passes, without bleating,
and grazes in the sky, yes, your flock, you who never had
a single lamb, so certain and calm and absolute
that, when you wake up in the morning, the simplest
work you do and the most unimportant discussion
you’re forced to endure take such seriousness and
meaning of your unknown, yet, realized wealth.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562968

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851M9LTV

Wheat Ears

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Routine
Often you said we needed
to change our habits
a new beginning to commence
a new purpose to seek
help to discover hope
and its elements
while all along
you remained resting
in lush recliner
and always you upheld
your beliefs while
tightly in hand
you held
the recliner’s lever

https://draft2digital.com/book/3748127#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

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Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Autumnal Exercise
Autumn is harsh to innocence and our adventure will
finally remain unexplained;
but when the moon rises we’re all guilty and a child
in the suburb collects the leaves as if they’re proof
of a killing or the fool smiles while he’s done with harvesting
and at night the dreamer is king; for this he has nothing
to do but to write on a window pane all day long, reading
passages of another era, since he knows that he might be
forgotten like a mother’s breast that now nurses the narrow
path
and, oh, strange windstorm, when they all have the same
thought of sheltering themselves and the crippled jumps
hastily between his crutches like a bird.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4051627

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Straits and Turns

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excerpt

…protocols and ways that all members adhered to, which was to slow
down and do things the way others have done them before since here
no one did things to impress the boss. Therefore, after Mike had finished
his cigarette, he decided to go to the can, although he didn’t feel
an urgent need, to give Luigi enough time to do his part of the job.
He sat on the toilet and suddenly the same image of his hero
came to his mind when he frantically searched his pocket, into which
lucky enough, he discovered the pencil he used to write down the
number of gallons that filled the occasional engine tank, to make sure
that later in the day, he didn’t enter the wrong number on the official
logs of the company. With the pencil surely in hand, he took a piece of
toilet paper and, folding it in two just so the pencil wouldn’t poke holes
in it, Mike started unfolding the image he had in his mind. He had
plenty of time, according to Luigi, who preferred things done slowly;
suddenly, the image changed, as if in a revelation, and became a new
one which he described as softly as he could so he wouldn’t pierce the
soft paper. Mike knew he had to rewrite it sometime later, yet he slowly
unfolded it on toilet paper, and when done, he folded it in two and
placed it in his pocket.
He went out only to realize that Luigi had finished his work
and was standing at the side of a bench, talking to another Italian,
Giovanni, an engineer, who was on the afternoon shift like them. One
could understand, that here in this big corporation for which Mike
worked, there were men of different backgrounds, Italians, Hellenes,
Chinese, and other nationalities, however, the Italians were just like
the Hellenes, Mike remembered that back in Athens we used to say,
una fatcha una ratsa, meaning that Hellenes and Italians were so much
alike, just like one race and they never talked about the war of 1940
when the Italians attacked Greece.
Luigi then informed Mike that it was time to go for their coffee,
so all three headed towards the small coffee room out in the yard. It was
a pleasant afternoon to the point of making Mike feel nostalgic. The
sun was passing the west horizon slowly, just like Luigi liked things
to be done, towards Stanley Park to the west of the city…

https://draft2digital.com/book/4250839#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763866

The Qliphoth

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excerpt

“When’s the next return connection, please? And where do I catch it?”
“What connection you talking about? You got ID?” The guard is surly, he
picks at a scab at the corner of his mouth, and then presses a red button above
his intercom.
This is all happening too quickly. Lucas can only speed into a convoluted
improvisation about a lost student railcard,. As the fabulation becomes
increasingly riddled with internal contradictions, Lucas can hear his voice rising
to a fractious squawk.
Now he’s a public spectacle. The guard has been joined by two colleagues,
and there’s also a random gathering of people from the concourse, a man carrying
a huge china dog, an elderly Asian in flared trousers, someone with a
combination-lock briefcase chained to his wrist.
They’re all staring. Their throats start moving in unison, out of his control,
they’re inhaling nasally, to produce a thick hawking laughter. Through their
din, Lucas can hear fragments of a security conference:
“. . . sure this is the geezer ID Division is after?”
“They want him to have special ID treatment, for crissakes . . .”
“They’re not really Operational yet. He might be some random nut who’s
wandered in from the rain.”
“If he is just a random, Transit will want some action, you bet.”
Lucas now knows what has to be done. Crude physical action can refute any
illusion, even a bad dreamscape. Material conditions determine consciousness.
That’s what Mummy said. So just hit out.
He punches the iron pillar nearest him, bruising his hands on the protruding
bolts. Nothing collapses. So this Terminal of Babylon is going to be a stubborn
bugger?
On a rush of adrenalin he pushes aside the guards and staggers into their
booth, tugging at the intercom, to tear out its reality by the roots. It comes away in
a clutch of wires. His ankle collapses and he falls back through the cubicle doorway,
but the momentum won’t stop, his fists swing into their grinning faces.
“I can’t wake . . .” he shouts between gasps. “I can’t wake up!” Now they are
rolling and tumbling in the rubble; he can smell one victim’s aftershave, and
blood trickles all over his hand, he’s broken a porcine nose, or a porcelain dog,
and lightbulbs are swinging—
More figures in peaked caps block the light—their gloves grip Lucas
around the neck and legs, bending him into balletic contortions, counter-
stretching every tendon in his body.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Cloe and Alexandra

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The poem virus
A poem has been swirling around me since yesterday.
It gives me a headache and vertigo.
I turn my head to the side.
At the edge of my vision
I discern it
thick stain
at the edge of my desk.
This is not personal—I say to it
I don’t want any more poems
nor steamships loaded with rice,
I am fed up with the oceanic voyages
on ships of high underwriter’s costs
a raft is all I want
in a plastic self-contained pool
in a yard full of rusted metal,
one restful body, a chair made of cloth
to rest
This I said to it.
And it took its revenge on me.
And it got filled by you and with you.
And it wrote itself.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562908

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FPRGYMQ

Small Change

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excerpt

The grin left his mouth and he began to look wary. I was the one who got straight A’s, the only one in this pack of D’s and C minuses.
“Ten bucks, Paulie. You can read, can’t you? Go look it up. A British blue cheese. And if you lose, you also gotta buy a pound of the shit, and eat it with a pair of chopsticks.”
That did him in. He waved me off.
“So what. You know cheese. But you don‘t know shit about tools. Thought yer ol’ man was a engineer.”
“Yeah, well, what you think you’re talkin about here is a Stilson, a Stilson Wrench. Adjustable, with teeth and a long handle. A plumber’s tool, fool. What you want one of those things for?”
He tried to look like a poker player holding a pocket pair.
“Get me one and I’ll show ya.”
I thought about that for a second. I knew where I could get one, but the sure bet had bit the dust and here was another chance to do business.
“Cost ya a buck an hour.”
“Don’t need an hour.”
“Buck an hour or any fraction there-fuckin-of. Final offer.”
Paulie laughed.
“Some altuh boy, wid a mout like dat …” but he dug into his pocket and came up with a coin that looked like it had been dipped in chocolate and dusted with tobacco bits. “Heah’s fifty cent. The rest when you delivuh.”
Paulie had achieved heroic status when he organized the now famous watermelon raid earlier in the summer. A boxcar had been left for several hours on the spur track behind number five park and Paulie had picked the padlock, releasing hundreds of tubby fruits into the city. Kids from as far away as Railroad Avenue were toting melons on their shoulders, or sitting in small groups, slicing them up with kitchen knives, their faces and hands drenched with sticky juice. It was a hard act to follow, but whatever plan he’d hatched for the Stilson, it was designed to maintain his legendary, outlaw image. And as supplier of the necessary technology, I would earn a small slice of his notoriety pie. But I needed help with this enterprise, and I knew who I could count on. Anthony Morga was the smallest but scrappiest member of our tribe at Holy Rosary School, and I could get him on board for a tithe of the buck I’d make from the rental. He was a wary kid, always kind of skittish about promissory contracts, and as we made our way down the unpaved alley that ran like a neglected country

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763157

Troglodytes

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V
A lonely oak stands gracefully
against the ravaging north wind
smiling at the shivering cloud
sun ray reflects in the river’s retina
while the sleepwalking troglodyte
colours the guillotines in bloody red;
stigmata emanating from
the insatiable abyss he dwells.
Yet here stands tall, like the oak.
The Overseer. With the horizon in his eyes
and with the wider view always guarding
and directing his day’s length.
The stigma’s breadth sighs like
the most silent river murmurs as
people parade in front of him like
contemporary zombies
covered in elaborate garments or
irrelevant undergarments
yet although well-fashioned
and trendily attired
they stand naked from the inside out.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186583