Strange Bedfellows

The Painter St John’s Point Lighthouse 9th August 1950 Sir I have to report him absent from work all day yesterday he did not return to station until 1.25 am this morning his attitude is one of careless indifference and no respect for…

The Iceman They will find you face down on a higher plain In feverish exaltation for Spring Gods who would keep Your belly swollen. A coat of woven grass with tint of fern And olive now abandoned.  The crimson vigour of an Alpen rose…

Goldilocks Was Here A tiny seed thing pops    from a warm crease of skin as I turn over in bed. All thoughts of sleep are plundered.   I roll the pip round and round on the cushiony centre of my thumb, and let my imagination…

Diane Arbus Black and white drag queens Meet your gaze Staring from their Metro posters The last day of her retrospective Waiting outside At Place de la Concorde Gold neon of the ferris wheel Rippling out in circles The…

Nothing Is Stranger than what we settle down with every night –– our bodies in the turned-on dark, its flight into the swirling of the nowhere lights. Nothing is stranger than what we truly own, forgetting, when we can, that it’s on…

Leonard Cohen on Centaur Street It happened as if in a dream. Leonard Cohen walked into my bedroom, using my main window as if it were a door. ‘It’s not right that you be alone, poet, it’s just not right. I’m here to bring you…

Valentine for Bredeen Your face is a manure heap your eyes John Deere hub caps your nose a pitch fork your mouth barbed wire. Your breath is a slurry pit your breasts are bulls’ balls your waist is the long way home your rump pork…

Penelope’s Truce with Odysseus The past was still barking at you when you came through the gate Someone who saw the wound long ago recognized the scar hoped for you the memory was healed. You sailed three sheets to the wind…

Back in February, in a year when the centenary of the Easter Rising loomed large, Ireland went to the polls to elect its 32nd government. The sins of both parties leading up to and during the recession were still fresh in the minds of…