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_.