All posts filed under: A Saturday Woman Poet

“Fintona” and other poems by Aine MacAodha

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Windowless church   My church has no windows in fact it has no doors either and to be fair no altar it has no ordained minister or priest or gospels. Its in my heart, in the starry sky the moon shining over the land its the planets in our solar system the sun when it shines or not its the foods god/creator left us, berries, leaves, nuts my church has winter winds that cut to the bone and to enlighten I have the sweet smell of roses as I follow the seasons. It is bog cotton waving on an early Autumn evening as the sun bids farewell. On nights like these dark and Irish wintery the familiar trees and hills become ancient septs ready for battle with the ether. Fields caped in winter fog appear as crafted cities of the dead souls roam among the rushes in search of utopia or a home. Trees scan the darkened horizon the wind calls out names too and winter hangs around like a threat. This is my church. …

“The Pathologist’s Wife” and other poems by Natalia Spenser

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For Sylvia-Down in Adoration   You were Fulbright a seismic enigma the fleet foot hare rising in pastel dusk. It stalked like crows in the breast of a man who sold your head for hapless wanderlust. Your damage was like splintering of glass. Could he not understand what it is to be a milk jug, wasted lipstick, the outcast shadow hung from a star-struck hemlock tree. But a quiet voice is so more loquacious than a risen phoenix roaring through air. Maybe now is the time for tempered hush time to weave your bridal crown through red hair. He brought Devon sea shells to your headstone you were his lotus his night passage glow.   For Jane Kenyon   Ten years on, while storm buffets glass and juniper, snowflake tiers inside my porch finger an army of miniature baubles.   The plastic robins perch lopsided. Even that new star, a rushed afterthought, curtseys on its axis where a black one legged doll should be.   Dear Jane I never met you. But I guess your …

“Satellite” and other poems by Roisin Kelly

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To a Writer   You write of raspberries and snow of the mimosa flower’s scent of how it makes you feel to put on lipstick and heels. Of how it feels to wander home   below the stars, drunk but not too drunk how you always like to show a little cleavage though you never undo more than the top two buttons of your shirt.   But there’s so much else I’d give to you like the full pale weight of your breasts bared to the world and wild. During menstruation, don’t stay in   breaking chocolate before a laptop screen: dip your fingers between your legs and stain your face with red. Write down all of last night’s dream   not just the parts with crystal seas but the parts you’d rather not think about. Drink whiskey until you vomit. Stand on a beach in your bare feet   and cry about the guy who betrayed you but comfort yourself also with thoughts of his drowned body his groin now a home for nibbling …

“The Aunties” and other poems by Josephine Corcoran

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Honeymoon   I wouldn’t call it a honeymoon, those muffled nights in mothballed rooms. With cake in the boot we pilgrimmed north, taking a young marriage to old widows,   my father’s brothers dead, their crucifixes still hanging. In each house we were given the double bed, my aunties inviting us to fornicate   on concave mattresses holding dead men’s seed. Had we come one week before, you would have been given nothing but dusty blankets on a downstairs floor,   and I would have sunk, alone and deep, into the mildewed sponge of a cousin’s bed. My aunties would have spread as wide as angels in their marital sheets,   their doors ajar, the solemn whispers of their night-time prayers beating as sweet as deathbed love-making. But our wedding vows were said,   so we sipped tea on upright chairs still dimpled from Brylcreemed heads, and rolled like screws in sideways jars on shelves in locked-up sheds.      Seven years, one son, one daughter later, Jesus has been sent to us. (The aunts …

Poetry for International Women’s Day 2016

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Both a page and performance poet, Anne Tannam’s work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and abroad. Her first book of poetry Take This Life was published by WordOnTheStreet in 2011 and her second collection Tides Shifting Across My Sitting Room Floor will be published by Salmon Poetry in Spring 2017. She has performed her work at Lingo, Electric Picnic, Blackwater & Cúirt Literary Festival. Anne is co-founder of the Dublin Writers’ Forum.    “The World Reduced to Sound” by Anne Tannam   Lying in my single bed a childhood illness for company the world reduced to sound.   Behind my eyes the darkness echoed inside my chest uneven notes rattled and wheezed. Beyond my room a floorboard creaked a muffled cough across the landing grew faint and faded away   My hot ear pressed against the pillow tuned into the gallop of tiny hooves then blessed sleepy silence. In the morning steady maternal footsteps sang on the stairs. I loved that song.   The World Reduced to a Sound is © Anne …