Dear Reader

CW: Please note 'Elegy for Her', the second poem on this page, contains reference to sexual assault.  I am rooting for us We are like two sunflowers,  growing  tall, but individually,  almost touching, but we never quite     manage it. We have found ourselves so desperate for the sunlight, that we forgot to work on our life in the shade. The sourness that lies unspoken between our roots, sits silently, rotting our foundations, until there is nothing left to nourish, until, we  wilt away.  --- Elegy for Her  She lay silent, buried underneath  his body  that was about to suffocate hers  of life,   he used her body as a sin, as he   ripped apart  her skin  with knives,  she was a mannequin  to be cast aside  and placed on to a pile  with other statistics,  mirrors became her enemy,  she did not want to see  the reflection of defeat, as  the pain still feeds o...

I had paracetamol for breakfast then didn’t eat at all. the effort to meet deadlines and stay on track made stress lines on my skin crack, bent spine as the bricks stack; I drink red wine to distract myself from it all, in fact, I don’t even drink red wine.   I tell lies all the time, like of course yeah, I’m fine just can’t talk yet I’m busy avoiding everything.   It’s annoying, actually, how I treat my body like a factory; gradually I’ll grind to a halt and revolt decline orders to keep pumping out lies like Ford Model T’s on assembly lines.   I can hold on a little longer.   I feel my joints grinding, bones spark; making lightning, striking for fair treatment, my body a city and the streets screaming to relieve them of the pressure and lessen the load lest they drop together a lesson still not learned after the bricks that built my city walls corrode.   I can hold on a little longer.            You kn...

Having used the dark, dismal days of January to shake off my survivor guilt and watched the fading tail of some stellar resolutions flicker for one last time, I wake to a neat and tidy month:  just four short weeks to get through, calendar still unsure whether it is winter or spring. Mornings are candle-lit with the first flame of magnolia, a late flurry of snow pixelates the otherwise clear air and the street hurries itself into an almost forgotten future, where nothing unusual happens. --- A graduate of the MA in Poetry Studies at Mater Dei, he won the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland Competition in 2015 and published his debut collection, ‘Growing Up in Colour’, with Doire Press in 2018.   His poems have been nominated for Pushcart, Forward and Best of the Net prizes and his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. He is curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site.

The green-brown burrs of autumn have gone, the beechnuts consumed or rotting in the now-fallen foliage. When people come they'll walk this straight path, see boulders lined shoulder-to-shoulder, stroll beneath soon-to-be-bare frames of slender trees. In the avenue they'll be safe if they take care;  light and large-wheeled phaetons stay upright, horses permitting, but tip-tilting curricles must beware! As they pass, the leaves swirl and twirl before settling once more. Artists arrive, all chatter and clatter,  paints, palettes and easels; they point and name the colours:  oxblood red, sable brown, topaz, ochres, and charcoal black; hints of olive and pistachio green remain, as if to be tasted. While, hovering around the corridor of trees  amethyst tints imbued with light and shade applaud as the scent of winter approaches. These are the minutes, all the wishfulness, every heartfelt loss and glorious gain  of our times. As many wishes as leaves on the ground, tho...