All posts tagged: Crannóg

“Threads” and other poems by Sara Mullen

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  Threads Not long ago we were wearing our neighbourhood’s pass-along clothes. Dirndl skirts, duffel coats, old dungarees did the rounds of our townland. Two hills away, fourth or so cousins broke in new blouses and pinafores. Their jumpers next on the boys up the road; mine for a time the following year. A spell awhile with second cousins then back in time to fit my sisters. Mothers knitting, prodding, stitching love and themselves into raiments we wore. Fibres of us in the cotton, the wool, spores of our summers, the thorns and burrs of our everyday; secrets too, silently absorbed like melting snowflakes. Knots of us trailing to school in our communal stitches and threads, hawthorn blossom on our shoulders, catchweed clamped to our backs. Gossamer skeins of blood between us, but our clothes bound us thicker. We nod now from cars as we pass on the roads we used to tramp. At the back of a press the odd little giobal discovered, unfolded, held up to a face.   Dresden Plates My fingertips …

“A Life Unanswered” and other poems by Susan Kelly

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The Bittersweet Her passion was historical biscuit tins or so he’d tell visitors who marvelled at the growing stacks of embossed lids that glinting with landscapes, landmarks locations she hadn’t seen, he thought it best if the world came to her. He liked her to display these gifts he brought back from places he visited with work, that was what he called her. He’d produce a new one the morning after his return assuming her quietness over breakfast had been due to the non-presentation of a tin, she accepted them but never the treats that she bagged in black where they grew crumbly and green and sweated in the confines of their own wrappings. No tins came for some months work no longer needed him so he dozed his days away in front of the box until he breathed his last, the remote control limp in his hand. She scattered the tins around the living room and took a hammer to the shiny lids that remembered everywhere she had never been until they didn’t shine …

“Sundowner” and other poems by Clare McCotter

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The House The regularly-occurring representation of the human form as a whole is that of the house ~ Sigmund Freud This is my house my place my home first one I ever owned leave now you dirty scum she screams at auxiliaries gripping wrists and raging elbows washing face and neck and shoulders. This is my house where stairs climb roots to a crouching door there an old key turned in a raven’s heart spreads out blankets of bare brick a pear tree’s silver fruit a skylight in low rafters its pendant handle – first night’s umbilical. This is my house it is mine alone one tramps like you could never own she shouts as holding her hands tight we chisel faeces off nails ours wrapped in disposable wipes. This is my house, these high windows – a geometry of winter echoes dreamt in dusky corners. And over there a rosewood armoire its soul kindled with rags and linseed oil. In its lacquered drawers prayers and poems laid out like ammonites and white shells. This …

“Villanelle to Cold Psalms” and other poems by Jane Burn

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Villanelle to Cold Psalms Here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms I am treetops, bearing a crown of night. The dark is born. I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms, shiver beneath the void of stars, sing the charm of moths. Wish them against my neck. My skin mourns, here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms. Dusk is a lie. This is crushed light, visions of curious calm. I am prey, twitching in uneasy sleep, a distant spire’s thorn. I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms. Here are the tendons of my neck. Here is the throb of harm. I am lost as one drop of rain is lost to a storm, here among the gloam owls, their cry of cold psalms. I bear a ghost of gloom in the curl of my palm. I am the moonlight’s gash where the sky is torn. I imagine the death I would make in the strange of your arms, …

“Viksdalen” and other poems by Fiona Smith

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Shell shock   He built his laftehus in the old way, As it should be done, using cured wood, Beam on tremendous beam, an X joint With interlocking notches at the seam.   Sweating over plans, permits, rights of way. Helicopter drops in snow, cajoling The bureaucrats, architects, authorities. His wife, to just let him get on with it.   A truffle hog, he sniffed out each stick, churn Implement, coaxing farmers, dealers, Collectors to part with their cherished pieces For him to enshrine in his sacred wooden space.   In the hard work it took to fell trees, drag them, Haul them across the forest, dig foundations, And shape the beams, he buried some memories. Then he nailed a few more into the walls.   You can hear him up there still, pottering, fussing By the woodpile, stacking tins of condensed milk, Cod roe from Svolvær, provisions to last him Until he is forced to cede to a new generation.   Already they come, screwing up his systems, Logging their jaunts in his cloth-bound …