by Jack Harte

Three telephone masts

on the shoulder of the mountain

the three wise kings.

by Órfhlaith Foyle

My left hand
Builds a grave and puts words in
Dead words that don’t shoot
Words that are born but
Slip and cripple me.
All words perform acts
That mean nothing
In the end.
A hole in the ground where your brain
Turns and sees its own oyster gleam,
A lychee gloss of eye.

My left heart creeps over my right.
Ventricle wars.
Like new bones climbing from an
Older grave.
My lychee eyes turns dark under a
Newborn heel.
My nose is peeled inside out
And letters are halfway mutant.
Shelley’s monster lies in wait,
Mumbling through green shot grass
And he lists his kills on his left hand
His kiss kills.
Thrills and the sun is backwards over
The sky and the earth smell of dirt
All is red raw drip, flesh sponge
Birth, and the sky rips out its stars
And the lake is boiled anew.

Shelley’s monster and I walk across
A convenient heath. The air is acid morn.
Our feet splodge in mud. His nails are
half–grown and his teeth are sly
Through his smile.

Hand in hand, we walk. My left hand
Remains perfect. My right hinges from its
Haphazard wrist. Sheep muse at us
and the wind tussles my dress.
Far below is a crescent valley, inhabited
Less these days. We sit on a high stone.
Hundreds of years pass. Habitation ebbs
And flows. Graves spring with life and
life falls dead.
Shelley’s monster speaks:

‘How dreadful is the word.’

by Susan Millar DuMars

Trumpet, blood, the reveille
for American boys in basement rooms —
stars behind their skin, their eyes.
At night
the flag sings lullabies
to the near–men in their dream cocoons —
songs of Iwo Jima,
hymns about the moon.

Wake up! You boys in basement rooms.
Climb the umbilical steps to breakfast.
Stripes of bacon on a white plate.
By day
hand on heart like a swung–shut gate
you pledge your allegiance
like son, like father
like swing batter batter
like air guitar hero
like kung fu fighter

like who am I who am I
student loaned soldier
like for God sake keep it together
tell no one tell no one
the flagpole at night clanks lonely, lonely
and you shove your dresser against the door.

My American boys, behind your skin
flicker warmer lights than stars.

by Theo Dorgan

I think of you driving to the edge of town
And beyond the edge, out and over into the ocean of tall
grass,
The wind combing the long hair of the yellowing grass
And the grass sighing under the hand of the wind.
There will be a high blue sky and in the far distance
Where the deep ocean swell rises to a round crest
A horseman in cut–out against infinite blue light.

Now I think of you far out at sea, the coast of Clare
A blue smudge on the horizon. I make it a hooker
Because I can, and because I wish for you
The feet–planted feel of salt raw boards rising and falling.
Behind the horizon a steep rise of green and then a high
Wall of cloud against pale blue. Like yurts on the green
plain
The whitewashed cottages, their flashing window panes.

Now you must write the rest. What the heart yearns for
On the grassy plains, what the heart thirsts for on the salt
sea
And what the mind conjures from the mind inside when
Eternity opens before you like the open book of home.