Month: April 2020

The bartender is so attentive to the tilt
of the whiskey bottle pouring out its earth.
The librarian’s shorthand records
a copper cup next to the five tap beer spout,
the bill footed by the waiter in an apron and bowtie
after the table skips out.

From “The Congress” by John Gosslee

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All day trimming branches and leaves, the homeowner
sweeping the summer into a green heap;
all evening minding the flames,
inhaling the incense of smouldering laurel and pine.

From “October” by Simon Armitage

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All they want is to be told –
like my father told his cats
with his rough hand,
the light touch of his crooked fingers on their fur –
that they are not alone,
that they are important

From “The Irish Airman Parachutes to Earth” by Martina Evans

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The birds on the water resemble sleepwalkers now
and our words clatter like stones
on a shore slipping from sunlight into shadow.

From “Yeats’s Swans” by Campbell McGrath

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Dreoilín, dreoilín, rí na n-éan,
is mór and cuid, is beag tú féin,
éirí suas, a bhean an tí,
is tabhair dom pingin,
chun é a chur ina luí.

From “Being a Poet” by Colette Nic Aodha

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By ferry on a soft foil sea,
we crossed water
together and laughed

From “Epithalamium” by Eva Isherwood-Wallace

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MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

From “Easter 1916” by W.B. Yeats

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Yet always in the pantry of preserves
jam-jars of jewel light keeping innermost
lemons, littlenecks, beetroot, quince

From “Deep-Sworn” by Alice Lyons

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If you can’t count your onions, what can you count
my grandfather used to say. He said a lot of things.
Among the other miners he was legendary:
when no more than the thought of the pink crumple
of his infant daughter’s body came to mind
a glow would swell in the pit, the men
would mayhem bauxite by the light
his tenderness emitted.

From “The Curfew” by Stephen Sexton

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Because cabbage-white butterflies in the buttercups and
sea salted caramels never failed to gladden me.

From “Why I Stayed” by Traci Brimhall

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