Six Poems by Paul Connolly

 

Christmas Past

 

Grimaces turned at his transgressions were joys he didn’t recognise until

future seasons of lethargy, hanging with malingerers in festal waste and

vindictive memories, or in the later holiday goodwill of severance agreements,

the pricked watch for things to come. Weeks before, she’d left a letter

in his room. They’d laughed at the spasm but made space for possible intrigue.

 

The couple who’d never forgive him would forgive him soon. The awkward lunch

disintegrated. He left with her and a few others. Was there a fine sleet

slashing their faces bloody-fresh on the bridge? There’d have been bells, lights

hallowing the brown and grey. When did she take his hand? They paused at the bar

for whiskies, she puffed her flatmate’s cigarette, or that was some other time

and they went straight to carols in the hall where he sang too deep and loud.

 

He wasn’t sure. He remembered the taste. It lasted, although it was an end,

hospice sweet, savoured in music again and dulled with drunkenness,

a recollected act of recollection, knowledge that he wasn’t in his perfect mind. 

 

Lebanese Sublime 

 

A sandstone hill face, where erosion reveals

strange dwellings or cultic tombs cut into it,

desert-dusted, as if its Nabateans were long gone

leaving rubble for the dogs, puddles and litter

that gather in destruction and abandonment.

 

A pine-disinfectant pool elicits the viewer’s

stumbling exegesis until wider angles

show a lagoon and spread the sea. Surrounding

activity and settlements suggest a battered port.

How can catastrophe be beauty, in a delicate bulb,

 

white-flower bloom, sky-seeking towers,

a Babel of russet fumes, the all-shaking breath?

Silence is fitting, but we slake conscience, cry

miasma words of news, stats, and all the while

aesthetics will get the ends we love from ruin.

 

August 2020

 

Beata Viscera

For Notre Dame

 

Hell was grafted across

your sanctity dwelling among us

speaking without limits

between and among us

 

the fug and fire were dislocation

like seeing you for the first time

was dislocation

impossible loss

a martyrdom of someone known

 

and there was weeping

bitter resolution and defiance of course

but dry weeping into emptiness

 

till a solitary breath is drawn

 

while cinder-falls cool

and activities of audit

assessment and relief

are hungover with nothingness

the gash a noiseless scream

limbo

because another baffle to the battering

seems lost

 

and released the breath

 

stirs the ashes

with a possibility of birth

from blessed entrails

hesitates

arcs towards the firmament

 

and quells the fear of broken promises

and betrayals to come and softens

the circumambience of distinctive sirens

birdy flourishes of backpacker giggling

to a single vibrancy in space

 

quieter than silence

 

and through the frying aroma

from tourist traps

the rubber-toffees fuming up

between the flagstones

and even the ever-present blends

Brownian suggestions

and rich enveloping gusts

of cooking stock boiled

and reboiled from innards and scraps

 

it drifts with the solemnity of dust

whiffed off stone

 

and off books that teach us that even

what is mocked

in the violence of fluid and flesh

what is broken and bleeds

can perdure

and guts and gutting

cradle a never-ending promise

whose proclamation burns

 

again the voice quavers in your belly

trembles your vaults

caresses window bones

prominent as the ribs of a ribcage

stretching to breathe

 

then rises and soars up

past the belfry’s many shades

out across the rooftops

over boulevards of destruction

and restless reimagining

 

 

Fire Sky

 

Sky was white inferno:

laminate of dazzling glare

with thick fiery rending,

sheets collaged then spattered

with shell fragments glit

in mother of pearl whose

het-up edges catch

and burn, paper edges

afire in silver filament,

heat’s writing on the sky,

monster and warding once

upon a time, still

half-glimpsed with terror

for a moment, quelled here

at a busy ice-cream van

on a Bank Holiday outing,

a moment only but still

a moment, for heat’s voice

calls into the face and demands

attention or quiescent breasts

at least, ready for worship.

 

A Memory

 

comes at her from the fuzz

surprises of half-doing

scraps of face and thought

nothings not done, what

 

do they say to you child,

the sparrows, said Mum

should’ve said, said

somewhere in something

 

to the child in the pushchair

staring or seen staring 

later in what, a poem

maybe, poem by the child

 

grown up, looking then,

then, and looking across 

pithead shadow in

ever-present asphalt scent

 

layered on posh suburban

now, the defective sense

still witnesses roundabout

the copy of her expectations 

 

Obstetrics 

 

Culled Agamemnon gets fresh culls

from chilled Orestes’ butchery. Wild Electra

waltzes away through crimson. Joshua trumps

 

Jericho down, exile-victim, annihilator,

chosen instrument, and lays every soul

in Eglon waste. Mamillius is no more,

 

Jenůfa’s boy’s under the ice. Olwen’s owned

by bloodying the earth. Unlettered chimpanzees

stalk a neighbouring troop, lock and load,

 

then tear, rape and eat. They spit on the fields

of Gaul, fresh with hands and pretty chickens.

So shatter rocks and backbones with magic spears

 

while a famed onanist circles the women, beats them,

seeks out and sends the inconvenient their summonses

to a private show trial, where he finds them

 

wanting, hits delete, for they’re exhausted,

their lives and limbs spent to realise a plot

to get the rippers, gore’s idols, perfected.

 

We’ll even flower this Autumn morn’s dewdrops

as countless polyps bleeding on the straw

inside a minatory band of mist. Out pops

 

something we’ve nursed at the gate again. In forms

we deliver wrecking horror, fresh paradigms

to hallow disproportioned wrath, incarnate the brainstorms

 

behind a muscle’s heedless traction, and with rhyme

glut a Cycnus temple, though the bones mutter

speak peace my friend and let us lie.

 

 

Paul Connolly’s first poetry collection will be published by Broken Sleep Books in Spring 2027. Nominated for the Forward Prize and Best of the Net, shortlisted twice for the Bridport poetry prize, longlisted for the Orwell Prize in the blog category and for the Bridport novel prize, he has had poems published previously in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, as well as Agenda, The Warwick Review, Poetry Salzburg, Stand Magazine, The Reader, Scintilla, The Manchester Review, Chiron Review (USA), Dawntreader, takahē (New Zealand), Dream Catcher, Orbis, The Journal, FourXFour, The Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, Envoi, Obsessed with Pipework, The Bombay Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Southlight, Foxtrot Uniform, Guttural, The High Window, Nine Muses, Eunoia Review (Singapore), The Honest Ulsterman, Canada Quarterly, Unwhispered Legacy, The Book Bag, Cable Street, Ink Sweat and Tears, Littoral Magazine, Northampton Poetry Review, London Grip, The Saltbeck Orion, Wildfire Words, Sixty Odd Poets, The Courtship of Winds, and Quadrant (Australia). Shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize and a finalist in the Walk:Listen:Create Walking at Night competition, he was highly commended in the Sentinel Quarterly and third in the Magna Carta Competition.