Five Poems by Brian O’Sullivan

 

The Hunter of Ostara

                   After A.E. Stallings

 

The small boy furrows

his brow as he considers

where he should look now—

 

between the cushions

of the couch? In the armoire

that never opens?

 

Where are the chocolate

bunnies and the marshmallow

eggs? He will ferret

 

them out, this master

seeker, so skilled he wins the

hunt every Easter,

 

and his sunken chest

puffs out with pride as they place

the pin on his vest.

 

Later, much later, he

is surprised to win a prize

for his poetry,

 

and more surprised that

critics complain it’s full of

“mere Easter eggs.” What,

 

he wonders, is more dear

than a hidden Easter egg,

that wondrous plunder?

Jellies Invasion



After “Sea Urchins” by A.E. Stallings and the “Jellies Invasion” Exhibit at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD.



The aquarium

exhibit hosts alien,

spectral cherubim



under glass. Light shifts

playfully through translucence,

a display that lifts



my mood; the jelly-

fish are superstars, with a

glamour that belies



their scary stinging.

But the exhibit warns of

disaster brewing:



thriving in warm seas,

the jellies will bloom and blight,

and they soon will seize



waters that once were calm.

An invasive species, they’ll

explode like a bomb;



even oil spills might

do less damage than these frag-

ile pieces of fright.



And yet, no spite lurks

In the brainless blobs; their rise

Is not their own work—



the anthropocene

has raised them up and dis-

placed them. I dream



of the ominous

jellies on the shore,

waiting to sting us,



when we moved here, love;

and yet we found home, while the

jellies still must rove.

 

An Irish Malediction

(After “An Irish Blessing”)



May the road rise up to meet you,

and may it beat you with a blackthorn stick.



May the wind be always at your back

and may it blow you far from here.



May the sun shine warm upon your face

--your pale, Irish, defenseless face.



May the rains wash away your fields,

and until we meet in hell,



May the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand

and clap.

 

Old Cures



“Butter rubbed on a cabbage leaf was applied to the head of a child who was suffering from "scabs." After a few days the leaf brought all the scabs off clean and the skin inside was healed.” [From the Schools Collection at Duchas.ie, as told to T. Holland by Mrs. O’Mahony.]



Did my mother have “scabs” on her head

One day when she visited from Kanturk?

Did she sit with a tortoiseshell cat on her lap,

while her grandmother Johanna, behind her,

methodically buttered a cabbage leaf crown

and gently, gently patted it down, and told her,

“now, now, enough of that fidgeting,

Maeve….There, now we’re done. Sin a bhfuil anois”?



I wish I’d known to ask, but it would’ve been weird

to ask my mother if she had “scabs”

and really the question would have been

whether Johanna was the wise woman,

the Cailleach even, whom I imagine,

with wisdom to let scabs do their work

and skill to peel them, peel them off

and let the air in.



Did she know how to bruise what needed to be bruised,

And heal the bruises she could heal?

And did she draw out the pain and hunger

of her warrior sons and daughter and leave

cabbage leaves of healing for those to come in her wake?

I stir the archival sparks and wonder.

 

To Save the World:

A Villanelle

 

The world is burning! It all is going to hell!

Where should I turn? Whatever can I do?...

I’ve got it! I shall write a villanelle!

 

I’ll write it well, and sure, it will compel

my faithful readers to arise and rescue

this burning world that’s going so fast to hell

 

that every “tick tock” sounds a death knell

for something that was cherished—something true.

I’ve got to write a mighty villanelle

 

to fix what’s broken and to softly quell

the rising tide of fear, and to undo

the world’s burning and its course to hell.

 

Some may say that I must be unwell

to think it matters what I say or do;

but I’ve got to. To write a villanelle

 

will be a way of casting a magic spell

to help save our world by saving me and you

from despair that would burn our hopeful love to hell.

We’ve really got to write a villanelle.

Brian O’Sullivan teaches English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Rattle, HOWL New Irish Writing, ONE ART, contemporary haibun online, and other journals. He is a poetry reader for Chestnut Review and a regular panelist at a blog, ThePoetrySpace_.

 

 

 

 

Three Poems by Ann Privateer

 

Embracing

Idle tremors, love’s joyful feelings

under the blooming bower tree

powerfully murmurs the breeze

flowers flit and rapture reposes

a together treasure that kisses

tastes and healing all there is.

Bound By Nature 

 

Visually identify’s why

by the because of it

in the parking lot

indistinct, unchosen

Virtue pines, too much wine 

the lost lottery tickets

perhaps locked in the car

with a brail reader mouth

and the corner of an eye 

I sigh, while the engine purrs

wave adieu to inaudible 

expletives, unfettered

beyond the window where

the unhappy soul jokes

in a made up language

called gibberish, nothing 

comes to call, nothing 

up the wall while tears fall 

from oblivion leaving 

and only smiles remains.

The Unknown 

No insults or praise 

Thanks is forgotten 

No gratitude gems

Boys, like flying ants

With too much residue 

While the larder freezes

And wonder halts.

By Ann Privateer

Five Poems by Byron Beynon

 

 

WOMAN IN AN ARCH OF TREES 

 

I have walked a path

that resembles the way she goes,

time's leafy screens

with those dark trees

arched closer straining to hear

words which are said

but never recalled

on a journey such as this;

I see her now

about to wave,

coming towards me,

gentle proof

that small windows of dappled light

still open to guide the mind. 

 

 

AT PÈRE LACHAISE 

 

Here the famous guests are scattered

in funerary plots and calculated divisions,

with sculpture, some reminding me of sentry-boxes,

ready and made to accommodate whole families.

During the hour or more

I stayed among the dead

I found the black and polished grave of Proust,

his name remembered in time and letters.

I searched for Balzac, Bizet,

and the young American

Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Blind men! But who's to say?

One by one the shadows disappeared.

At 89e Div 1-2 I saw

graffiti on Epstein's monument

to Oscar Wilde,

Oscar who? Someone had scrawled

in dark paint.

A gardener pointed

to Piaf's place,

smothered in flowers and notes,

as children from a school party

sketched Chopin's marble face.

Nobody could disturb them,

they had completed their cycle

in a city touched by sunshine and dust,

where unknown visitors leave bouquets,

vulnerable petals that see in the light. 

 

 

THE MARBLE TOWER, ATHENS 

 

An afternoon stirring memory

beside the marble tower of the winds.

I gaze at an architect’s imagination,

scattered flowers,

the urn chiselled with water

flowing from a precursor in history,

a solid octagonal craft

taking flight towards

the ebullient light,

this survivor from antiquity

displaying a calm dignity,

the sprawling compass-beats etched

within this city’s congested heart. 

 

 

THE COMPASS 

 

I think of Keats wearing an open collar

fashionably turned down,

the black ribbon

round a bare neck,

his fresh, shy nerves

tapping against a windowpane

in a room of quiet intensity

and free movement.

In the early hours of an October morning

he sealed a letter,

dispatched a sonnet

to a breakfast table,

the anticipation conceived.

Seeing the compass of words

he gathered from experience,

moods captured from natural objects,

the heavily marked book

an exorcism for disappointments,

the murmurs rightly used. 

 

 

THE BOY WITH A FEATHER 

 

The boy has found a feather

to play with,

a new toy for imagination's

threshold

he is introduced to science,

gravity captured

before the fall

sticks to the memory,

bold and clear

in slow motion

it meets the invisible ground

without sound,

only the child's sweet breath

recalls that never again

will there be such innocence.

Byron Beynon's work has recently appeared in the anthologies Winter in America - Again (Carbonation Press) and The Polaris Trilogy (Brick Street Poetry, Inc). Collections include Cuffs (Rack Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda) and Where Shadows Stir (The Seventh Quarry Press).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Poems by Linda Imbler

 

Pale 

 

Small of height,

hirsute of face,

lightly complected beings,

a puzzle for the ages.

 

They’d look you in the eye in the day,

but it’s their bad light, they hardly saw you,

a lucky phase of the moon

gave them the dark eyes of moon-glow

that would help them see

well enough to build

their citadels upon tall hills.

 

Where once stood their castles of stone,

there is now only rubble.

 

Pale hands/red hearts, 

they survived a thousand dawns

until a fierce reaction to their presence

only left their echo.

The air is still heavy with the rumor of their myth or reality. 

 

 

Western Moon Substitute 

 

A feather sweetly sleeping at the bottom of a cliff.

 

Thunder in arroyos

as clouds roll past,

with the promise of storms

coming strong and fast,

followed by an equally quick hint of blue.

 

Glory seen in a red moon risen.

 

Lightning’s song telling of what we call creation.

 

Pinyons framed by sunlight,

all who view them, loving that happy glow.

 

I heard a story once about

a western moon substitute that exists,

but there’s no such thing. 

 

 

The Lost Children of the God Mars 

 

Finding no family

because tracing a bloodline is not an option.

Finding no friends,

how will we ever know their story?

 

We know not where they began,

the milestones of their life,

of sin or those of innocence,

nor where any but their last

milestone occurred.

 

Their biographies should be an absorbing account

written upon a thousand cards,

with words that tell their human aspirations

and their callings.

 

Without the ability to cast counter-clockwise back in time,

to give them a third dimension,

we can only wonder,

were these sons of water or fire?

Whatever glorious distant regions did they see?

 

All we can ever know of them is that

each of them holds their own tiny field alone,

under flat plaques laid on the ground,

their tales now rooted in the soil.

 

The intimacies of their lives now only understood

by a company of angels. 

 

 

In Between Worlds 

 

I’m immersed

in a stream of unhindered fears

with no escape.

 

Everything I see in this panorama

has more than a single flaw,

although within each is what seems familiar enough.

 

There’s the wrong type of fire on the ground.

 

I can never see any light in the night.

The stars have withdrawn due to apathy.

The dim outline of a charcoal moon hangs above.

I’ve never seen such a satellite.

 

I have a body

so mythic in design

nothing could be proved its equal.

 

The loudest whispers

ricochet like silly pop songs

off walls in quite different ways

than I am used to.

 

Interestingly enough,

in an alternate place

belongs every other creation. 

 

 

Illumination Lessons from Diogenes 

 

Diogenes endured

the long walk

for the sake of

looking for an honest man.

 

He did so while carrying

one of the most famous lamps of all.

 

We should bear our own lamps,

in service to his cause..

We should seek truth before love,

and give truth to get it.

 

We are enduring plenty.

Human suffering is constant  

because of a lack of respected truth,

a shortage of truth both brave and fundamental.

So many cities are being thrown down,

communities vanquished,

empires are being stretched

and forced into corners,

because we choose to ignore

what truth would unfold.

 

Let’s help each other see the light.

Linda Imbler is an internationally published poet, an avid reader, and a practitioner of both Yoga and Tai Chi.  In, addition, she helps her husband, a Luthier, build acoustic guitars.  She lives in Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A. Linda’s poetry collections include eleven published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep First and Second Editions; Lost and Found; Red Is The Sunrise; Bus Lights; Travel Sights; Spica’s Frequency; Doubt and Truth; A Mad Dance; Twelvemonth;  Viewpoints While In Rome: and a paperback version of That Fifth Element.  Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, The Sea’s Secret Song; Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry; That Fifth Element; and Per Quindecim. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at 

lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.  

Linda has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and seven Best Of The Nets.