Séance

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.

Resurrection

by Joe Naughton -

(In memory of Tom Keaveney, Dunmore, Co. Galway)

Grandfather waked on the kitchen table

bobs and bits of lifeless brass scattered,

dusty entrails your hands once cradled,

the sugar bowl full with heart, it barren now of beat and sound

Patience intertwines your gentle fingers,

their gifted touch peels back time,

unearths the toll from your telling of it

Grandfather brothers stand, keening by the wall,

leathered anvils drumming rods

willing that from the timeless his two hands will up and walk,

Lazarus like, grandfather stirs, stretching ends and odds,

belly rumbles, Escapement sputters, gasps through geartrain, spring and spindle

pendulum weighed, it wags again to becomes your chime

not the time to be silent for its time again for time to talk

and talk it does for there’s time to tell, the brothers chiming in

as you slow waltz him to the corner, between the dresser and the sink

breathless you listen intently to grandfathers resurrected pulse

the Tuam Herald ’s front page folded, correcting his Pisa like affliction,

Easter Sunday morning within St Nicholas, hope has risen, uplifted by holy sound

warmth still rising from the sepulchre of gun-barrel veins welded by your hand

would grandfather’s heart still beat if weighed once more,

sound the echo of your heartbeat and tick to the trickle of our sand.

---

Joe Naughton hails from Corrandulla, Co. Galway. He has been writing poetry since 2016. His material derives mainly from memoir and topical issues. For the past five years, he has attended the Over the Edge online series and poet Kevin Higgins's workshop classes.

Joe has had poems published in the Vox Galvia section of the Galway Advertiser and in Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis.

He is a regular reader on Lime Square Poets and Off the Page open mic platforms and is a member of Mountbellew Underground Writers Group and Write On, Galway.

A Fiddler's Dream

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."