The Catch
By Philip Davison
The reason Uncle Harry had
spare sausages was
that they weren’t quality.
It was his own fault.
He had done the run to
the butchers,
had gone for the special offer
on a new brand of banger.
What is it? I ask
shading my eyes
against the sinking sun.
A juvenile minke whale,
came the reply,
disorientated and now
in the mouth of the harbour.
He was excited working
the sausage onto the hook.
The minke didn’t bite.
Harry was convinced he
would have got him
with a Hafner’s.
What endures
is not the absurdity of the sausage
hook
but rather, had he caught the minke
he would have carried through,
with my Aunt Sylvia,
also a sea fisher,
equally game.
…/…
This electrical contractor
farceur and sentimentalist,
keeper of sea-going fishing rods,
longbow and brass band records,
builder of model airplanes
and consumer of large plates of
food, domestic and foreign,
would have found a way to
load a minke into their car,
would have got it in the hall door
and onto the kitchen table,
would have butchered it
regardless,
cooked and eaten some of it
or all of it
with mashed potato.
Curmudgeon
Driving at speed
is what I call this,
in my old classic,
with its watery soul
and cataract headlights.
The just me and itness of it
a small wonder, I want to say,
and that engine still sounding right.
Now, left or right?
Which the feck?
Philip Davison lives in Dublin. Among his published novels are McKenzie’s Friend (Cape) The Long Suit (Cape) and Eureka Dunes (Liberties). He writes radio drama. He co-wrote Learning Gravity, a BBC Storyville documentary on poet and undertaker, Thomas Lynch. His poems have appeared in various journals.
Mother Tongue
By Patrick J Cassidy
1. Mother tongue:
In a house without grammar,
The walls spoke a different language,
Each room held onto an ancient dialect,
An old tradition,
That passed down from generation to generation,
The evolution of words,
That were never written down,
An economy of speech,
Fed to the hungry little by little,
Mysterious, haunting, ancient verse.
Sound fluttered in through the window,
Like moths in search of firelight,
From streets filled by the impecunious,
Who dwell in the shadow of Dubhais,
In the shadow of metaphors and similes,
I would sit and listen to the vernacular of the elders,
As they whispered of elder things,
With a vocabulary of instinct,
The wisdom of survival,
A people who had no root in etymology,
Peopled deprived of education,
Verbally gifted but despised,
The dichotomy between us and them,
A people raised on weak soup & spuds,
A people who shared all they had with those in need,
With outside toilets; a coal fire, few comforts to boast off,
Still I was captured by the imagery of poetry,
As it moved around the room on light feet, like incense spiralling in a church,
This was my introduction to the tenement Prophets, the people I would grow to admire,
The literary traditions of the working class who knew more than they are credited with,
Where great minds are formed!
Learning from experience,
And when they took that house from me I fell silent,
I was numbed, I was orphaned in language,
My tongue went dry,
Stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Gaeltacht
I have heard rumours of an ancient tongue,
Far off over the mountains,
Where the people speak in the one voice,
Uncontaminated or adulterated,
They read poetry in an age-old dialect,
Share in archaic discourse,
I long to share in their dialogue,
To fill my ears with their music,
But my mouth has been harnessed,
By one who came to rule over me,
Who tried hard to kill the language of our people,
Who put her in a cage and clipped her wings,
Forbid her to fly,
Until at last their tongue became our tongue,
But I have heard the rumours,
That beyond the hills,
Their dwell a race of people,
Who still have that sparkle in their eye,
The lyric upon their lips,
Who live in peace linguistically,
Who keep the faith of our fathers,
How lucky they are I tell myself.
Patrick J. Cassidy, is a poet from Belfast but now residing in Spain. His work has been published in various anthologies in the UK since 1991 and has also appeared on numerous occasions in a “New Ulster” magazine and Stripes Literary Magazine.
The Day is a Sleeping Octopus
by S.C. Flynn
changing colour as I try to describe it.
At first, clouds stretch their long red tongues
towards the sun, while Spring encourages
unexpected brightness from the streets
that quickly melts away to grey. The wind races
like a wolf pack through fluttering puddles
as the rain whispers its apologies.
Later, the moon drags the evening’s corpse
to join the light’s mass grave in the west
and then hangs like drift ice in the sky,
surrounded by crevices where stars rest.
The octopus sleeps on, black in the blackness.
S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His collection The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) was The Observer Poetry Book of the Month. An Ocean Called Hope (Downingfield Press, May 2025) is forthcoming. His poetry has been published in more than a hundred magazines around the world. He has been highly commended in the Erbacce Prize and nominated for Best of the Net. He has very recently given readings at the Waterford Gallery of Art, Ardgillan Castle, Notre Dame University, and on the Rattle magazine podcast.
Comhairle
Le Julie Breathnach-Banwait
Sa seomra codlata, lastall den halla, is í ag clupaideach na mbraillíní nite os cionn na leapa, chuir sí comhairle ar a hiníon maidir le guaiseacht a grá nua, á rá léi go meallfadh sé í leis na focla milse úd, is í ag filleadh isteach na gcúinní, go ndéanfadh sé alpadh uirthi, is í ag slíocadh le cúl a boise, ag iarnáil na bhfilltíní amach go coirnéil na leapa. Go sínfeadh sí a croí chuige ar leac óir, go bhféadfadh sé é a roinnt is a dháileadh mar a thogródh sé. Mar sin a bhí sí, ar sí. Ró-oscailte, ró-ghoilliúnach. Seafóideach. Go mbeadh sí ag tógáil a cuid gasúir léi féin, is go mbeadh seisean amú ag fiach, ag sáinniú is ag caitheamh uaidh, is í ag plimpíl na bpiliúr, á ndíriú go réidh in aghaidh chlár cinn na leapa. Bheadh sí coganta le buairt aigne chráite, a lean sí, ar foluain is amú i saol gan aithne, ag streachailt na mbrailliní thar leithead na leapa. Is cé a chuirfeadh suim inti ansin?
Déanann sí seabhrán uaithi, dóite is ag púscadh, a gúna breac le spotaí fola, smionagar srapnail sáite ina craiceann. Giorranálaithe ag focla.
Chuirfeadh sí féin suim inti féin, ar sí. Is d’alpfadh sí í féin. Léi féin.
Counsel
In the bedroom, beyond the hall, whilst flapping newly washed linen over the bed, she counselled her daughter on the perils of her newfound love. Telling her that he’d ply her with honeyed words, whilst she tucked in the edges, devour her, she said, consume her, smoothing out the centre with her flat palm, tugging the creases to the corners. That she’d serve her heart to him on a golden platter to slice and distribute as he saw fit. She was like that she said. Too open. Vulnerable. Foolish. That she’d be raising their children on her own and he’d be lost in the chase, the catch and the discarding, whilst she plumped the pillows, positioning them at angles against the headboard. She’d be chewed by existential angst, she harped and pummelled, adrift and bobbing in worlds unknown to her, dragging the bedspread to size. And who would want her then?
She walks away oozing and scalded, speckled in a blood-stained gown, shards of shrapnel lodged in her skin. Winded by words.
She’d want herself she thought. And consume herself. Alone.
Comhairle has previously appeared in the Anthology Washing Windows V; Women Revolutionise Irish Poetry, 1975-2025, by Arlen House, Dublin.
Counsel has previously appeared in 2024 in The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry.
Both prose poems form part of Julie’s new collection hypnogogia/hiopnagóige and is pending from Pierian Springs Press.
Tinteán 