by Eamonn Wall

     A Horse misus’d upon the Road
     Calls to Heaven for human blood,
                                     William Blake 

One morning, a Saturday as I suppose,
Crash, clink, clatter, roll an unholy oaths
Awoke Barrack St. At hilltop a blinkered
Dray, solid and silent as a hillock, stood
Stock still.  Later, when her tears had dried
To memory, grandmother, in deep blue
Dress arrayed, declared that those bottles —
Beers and minerals contained in glass
And crate — had rolled from the drayman’s
Cart the load incorrectly secured: culprit
Stout Steve Kelly, grey coat, red face
Tweed hat.  Cruel, grandmother said, her
Voice firmer now, to have whipped
That simple beast about its face and flank
The unholy racket drew us children into
The road, our parents in light pursuit.  Later
When the team from the beer distributor’s
— Lett’s or Donohoe’s I don’t recall — were
Done with sweeping up, we returned home.
Grandmother’s tears ran hard the hollowed
Gaps of her tight cupped face.  She shook.
I’d last heard her cry the day JFK had died.

*

Though the Slaney has deepened its rolling
Bed, grandmother retains her spot
On Barrack St., fixed between drayman’s
Whip and blinkered beast.  Perhaps, as I recall,
It has begun to rain, or the hill’s been layered
In ice.  Long from angina she had suffered.
I find her seated too in her kitchen spot —
Farthest from the door and closest to the fire —
That Saturday stout Steve Kelly beat about
A stone-still dray and hit and pulled and beat.
He whipped and flayed, and hit, and beat, hit
One more time, and more, everything carried,
Note for note, along the chill mid-morning air.
He cursed and shouted out such red-faced roars
Our Grandmother had absorbed only to disdain.
The noble beast standing solemnly stolid in the rain.

*

Grandmother tugs the drayman’s arm.  We
Were children then who waited for them
To separate, the scene bathed in slow, lucid
Light.  Indoors, her sobbing ended, breath
Caught, face of color drained, I watched
Mother climb a stool to release a Power’s
Gold Label from the highest cupboard shelf
A drop to press medicinally into her mother’s
Tea.  Grandmother went about the house
Silently; she cherished tender calm the aged
Favour; she read her missal, recited her rosary,
Not once that day did she offer another word.

*

This morning, on wall of our old house
On Barrack St., I take note of grandmother’s
Image heralded cabinet high above sofa
Mugs and telephone.  She’s seated on a white
Bench beside her brother Gerald in the garden
Of a chalet by the sea, these two for lifetimes
Holding warm because I can read it in their faces.
Happy, as I suspect, to seem children in eternity
Racing along the grooved potato drills for home.

by R. S. Mengert

I stayed in Las Vegas until my hair turned gray
looking for my innocence
but lost my innocence on the Circus Circus
midway I drove four hours L.A. to Las Vegas to try to get it back
I must have been about seven or eight at the time
I lost my innocence when my brother lost his mind
shooting marbles for keeps in an alley behind the docks in
San Pedro
I lost my innocence cruising Harbor Boulevard with my brother
and refused to pick up hookers
in my mother’s small apartment by the pawn shop
I must have been about seven or eight at the time
when the girl from the gated cul-de-sac up the street
came an hour late to my retirement party
and said that she detested cheap wine
I was about seven or eight at the time my mother was my father
my father was my grandfather and my brother was my only friend
we ate frozen pizza we drank wine I stole from Pick ‘n Save
in my mother’s small apartment in Westminster by the pawn
shop
I lost my innocence eating slices at the Westminster Mall hung
over
the next day, a smuggled flask of wine, the perfect slice slightly
singed
on the bottom Boston style of the embryonic
birthplace of my mother and the democratic dream I never knew
where
I knew I’d find the lights of Vegas and my lost innocence
waiting, I knew I’d find more wine waiting
to find home, waiting in the starless dark
for the Santa Ana Winds, the democratic dream,
the wine.  I lost my innocence when I realized
I couldn’t make more from the Pacific seawater.

by Gerald McCarthy

She is looking
for something
in the sand,
this child
pulling
at dried
seaweed
and shells
until
she almost
leans
into the wind,
unafraid
to sit there,
sifting
unafraid at what
she might
uncover —
as her mother
slides a slice
of peach
into her daughter’s
open mouth
            and the girl
turns
toward
the sea —
waves cresting
this day full
         with its
sweetness
            of peaches.

by Gerald McCarthy

Yesterday, turning over
the compost
I found a blue
hyacinth
blossoming
in the web of fence,
down beneath the leaves
& rinds of fruit, leaves,
coffee grounds —
its periwinkle blue
came as a surprise
like seeing you wake
in the morning light.