All posts filed under: Nomadics

“Considering Their Pale Faces” and other poems by Erin Wilson

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Seed tōgarashi / omoikonasaji / mono no tane the red pepper / I do not belittle / seedlings ~ Bashō I keep a chestnut in the breast pocket of my secondhand leather jacket. When I picked it I thought of (I don’t know why) my mother. The last time my first husband and I made love I knew my womb, because of my mind, was tipped at such an angle that no seed would germinate  there. This is also a true story. Our children and I collected acorns to use for a project we had not yet imagined. They exploded into weevil larvae all over the floor.   A Letter to My Ex Concerning Houseleeks I retrieve the hens and chicks, reminiscent of farms, from my sister’s yard and press them to the dirt in the small half-circle we dig in our own yard and then leave them there to grow and separate   The Mother The last bladder is emptied, the last gleek shot into the sink, the last struggling out of and into, …

A Celebration of Women’s Poetry on International Women’s Day 2019

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Image: Srilata Krishnan Poethead has been celebrating the achievements of women writers, editors and translators for over a decade. International Women’s Day 2019 is no exception. This year I have decided to highlight the work of women poets from my international index and to introduce my readers to some new Irish poets. I am very grateful to all the poets who submit to the site, especially for their patience. I do not think we would be heading into eleven years this March 2019 without the generous support and uplift that comes from my daily correspondence. Thank you, C. Murray, March 2019 ‘Birth Mother’ by Srilata Krishnan   We are standing in front of the mirror, my daughter and I, brushing our hair and being vain when I think of the doctor’s question: “What was her birth cry like?” I don’t know and never will. She is fine, or will be, I know. But looking in the mirror and into her almond eyes, I wonder what she is like – her birth mother – if she …

‘The House That Don Built’ by Kevin Higgins

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“The sky is high / We shit on earth / We look up the sky / The earth gives birth / To our future”                                                                     Yoko Ono, Poetry (July/August 2018) (i) The Christmas lights which bat their eyelids all year round on the screaming pink terracotta roof are classy as Demis Roussos’s ground-breaking retranslation of the Odyssey. The gold-plated giant front gate tasteful as the prison raps of Bill Cosby and Orenthal James Simpson combined. The foundation wobbly as the sestina sequence Access Hollywood says, Miley Cyrus, is currently sweating over. The walls and internal supporting beams solid as a verse novel by Big Bird of Sesame Street. The water faucets in the vast bathroom he had purpose built for himself understated as the last line of the Haiku Admiral Tojo wrote the morning he was hanged. (ii) In cases made of …

‘Prime’ and other poems by Peggie Gallagher

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Parlour   A bolthole, a room half elsewhere adrift in distant grandeur, where breath condenses between damask drapes and the wing of a mahogany table. Where an ear might catch the scratch of a pen, a girl trawling the depths of an inkwell pouring words, slippery as a river of fish spilling loose of their net, slapping their wet tails on the brocade.   What to do with such riches — feed them to her mother’s wedding gifts, pile them into fluted dessert dishes, fling their blue-black panic into the belly of the lamp ravening on the sideboard, the soft spill of innards silvering her fingers cracking their verbs and consonants the way her mother cracks the necks of chickens.   The Three Card Trick Man   After a line by Tom Duddy   The reason I come here is not the horses, though bookie shops abound and a litter of crushed slips. It is always sunny and work is over for the weekend and the girl in the red dress has just stepped out …

‘Fourteen days’ and other poems by Maeve O’Sullivan

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  Sri Lanka haiku after traveller’s tummy — a calming breakfast on the Laccadive Sea ˜ handbag-free no iPhone to count my steps — beach walk ˜ Gangaramaya shrine… an old lady adds some jasmine to our flower tray ˜ accompanying us uphill to the sacred footprint — frog tones ˜ the temple’s lily pond stripped of its blooms — full moon day ˜ chatter in the tour bus stops tsunami damage ˜ storm breaking we circumambulate the wishing stupa ˜   Fourteen Days   Mother has stopped eating I google what happens next: others who have done this survive around fourteen days.   I google what happens next: hunger-strikers and anorexics survive around fourteen days, declining to drink water.   Hunger-strikers and anorexics turn their faces to the wall, decline drinking water, refuse all foodstuffs.   She has turned her face to the wall though she seems quite serene: refusing all foodstuffs, just lying in her bed.   She seems quite serene, like others who have done this, just lying in her bed – …