Carousel

by Matt Mooney -

I'm on the Carousel that is Dublin City,

around the Spire to Middle Abbey St.,

sitting at a table outside the Oval pub,

spotting the red hop-on hop-off buses

gone by the GPO and its history told

of the tricolour that's flown from here

to make us sovereign and forever free,

on then to what’s left of Nelson’s Pillar.

The Luas warns us that it's going to go,

serving Jervis St. and Connolly Station:

flowing through the arteries of the city

and the throbbing centre of the capital.

A corner stall calls fruit and veg for all

in the real accents of the rare old times,

worthy of the women in Moore Street,

as colourful as what they've got to sell.

Christy Moore is 'standing by the ocean'

in his love sick song about Nancy Spain

in soft emotive tones deepening the day;

the floral fringe spills down on top of me

from hanging baskets for brightening up.

Counting chimney pots across the street -

there's rows of them on red brick shops

whose fronts could feature on a film set.

To a scenario with a strange denouement.

Enter, a gangly lad complete with a bottle

who has a remarkable grin from ear to ear

moving with the gait of a man inebriated,

having argy-bargy with some lady friend

saying, 'you can spend the rest of the day

looking for me now!’ and he followed her.

The homeless are not aboard the carousel

in Dublin's milieu of waist-coated waiters.

Neither were they in Brussels last night -

in the restaurants meant only for the rich.

Just a thought as I muse outside the Oval.

---

A native of South Galway, Matt Mooney has lived and worked in Listowel since 1966. His collections of poems are: Droving (2003), Falling Apples (2010), Earth to Earth (2015), The Singing Woods (2017), Steering by the Stars (2021), Éalú (2021).

Winner of The Pádraig Liath Ó Conchubhair Award, 2019.

Deputy Editor of The Galway Review and its Poetry Reviewer. His poems have been published in a number of literary publications including The Blue Nib, Feasta, Vox Galvia and in anthologies at home and abroad. His poems have appeared translated in spanish-language literary magazines. He continues to feature in many live and virtual poetry reading events.

Down Apiece

by Jeff Kaliss -

She lies down,

downhill from the clapboard house, and the barn,

far from her bed,

and she rises to rest

down left on Wyeth’s canvas.

There she stretches

along all our memories

where she may stay,

if only she can,

long past the sea-cooled day’s dusk

outside the town of Thomaston,

and long after,

after she’s gone to ground

in the town cemetery,

and the artist has been lain

beneath a worded stone,

way down along the rolling hills

of Pennsylvania.

For now, with us,

she feels with the brief, short life

of a Maine meadow,

in all its amber multitude,

her eyes, away from ours,

watching the waves of simple splendour,

no place for longing there.

It’s we who want her wanting.

---

Jeff Kaliss is a longtime music journalist and author, brought up in Bar Harbor on the Atlantic Coast of the State of Maine. After the publication of his I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone ( 2008, 2009), he completed an MFA degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, in his adopted hometown, where he and his wife Louise Whitlock raised two children. Jeff’s poetry has been published in college journals and in general reader periodicals, and he’s a frequent reader at Lime Square Poets and at numerous open mics online and in person, where he has been regularly featured.

Remission

by Ger Duffy -

You and I no longer look one another in the eye,

our children have stopped asking why.

The mongrel rests her muzzle on my lap

a mower judders to a stop, a jet pens

a line across blue sky. Rush of bird

wings as light enters leaves, tremble

of branches, an ambulance blares by,

then stillness.

Somewhere, someone is taking their last breath,

Somewhere someone is entering the fire,

smoke rising, bones crumbling to ash.

When the time comes we will lie down

before the wolf like lambs, while woodbine

and dog roses release their scent, heavenward.

Remission was published in Drawn to the Light Press and was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

---

Ger Duffy lives in Co Waterford. Her poems have been published in Slow Dancer Press, The Women’s Press, Viking Press, Drawn to the Light Press, Vox Galvia, In the Midst Anthology, The Waxed Lemon, Cathal Bui Selected Entries Anthology (2021), Southword, Local Wonders Anthology (Dedalus, 2021). She was awarded 2nd prize for the Oliver Goldsmith International Poetry Competition, 2021. Ger was also the recipient of a Mentoring Award in Poetry from The Munster Literature Centre in 2021. She was a featured reader for Cultivating Voices in 2020. She has been a Featured Reader for and been published by the US-based Poetry X Hunger Website, 2021.