by IB | Mar 29, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Great Depression If they ask where I am, tell them: I am wintering. I have secreted small acorns of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs and shall be savouring their bitternesses on the back of my tongue until the days lengthen. But mainly, I’ll be...
by IB | Mar 28, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
the universe in her face she said she was a teller of stories her name was elspeth, elspeth davie it was so strange to meet her in the dark tunnel beneath the liffey cold we were, the both of us coatless and unwashed a hot shower would be delicious she...
by IB | Mar 27, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
You always ate oranges I am peeling an orange at the end of something At the end of a line from each time you took up the fruit Dug your thumb in, hooked out a chunk of skin Pulled pith from flesh from round heralding its colours so loud no one could...
by IB | Mar 26, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Mum’s Skull Contains a Vacuum Cleaner Every five minutes it does its job, hoovers every inch of her memory, declutters all pains and sorrows. It booms, roars, heats up, leaves no space for nostalgia. When I ask her if she’s had dinner, she says she...
by IB | Mar 24, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
The Work of Hands And once the father frowned As the boy struggled to fasten The drawbridge on his fort. ‘He’ll never be any good With his hands’ he declared, As if the boy wasn’t there. And once he beat the boy For palming a Dinky toy His mother refused...
by IB | Mar 22, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Afterlife Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon or rush to hear the tales of that beyond they hoped and feared to face. Perhaps some cried or shook and got themselves quite drunk by noon. Or had the...
