Solstice
This is the shortest light
we have to live with
and in every minute
we feel the life left in its stem
and the slow pulse
of its fluids
keeping the plant of the day
just enough alive.
Rebecca Gethin has written five poetry publications. She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Vanishings was published by Palewell Press in 2020. Her next pamphlet, Snowlines, will be published in 2023.
Fledglings
I was, once again, renting a lighthouse
in my dream, the walls blue and arced
inside. I realised I had suddenly
lived there for a year without ever cleaning,
dragged an old mop through dust
sepia-thick. I woke and saw
you had sent me pictures
of the baby seagulls on the roof
of your workplace – in recent weeks
they have grown plump, left
the concrete-hidden scrub of their nest.
They stand between thatches of weeds
and two squat chimneys,
their beaks and legs ink-dashed.
I am here, home, despite seabirds; there are no
split-screen shots of an ocean roiling around me.
I will walk places later, see pale pink
and magenta flowers grow in little arcs
by the Hendrons building.
I have a memory of a memory
of a night clamouring here on this road
like we thought we could soften the echoes
an expanse like this might harbour,
fill the intersection with words and wine.
Dr. Alicia Byrne Keane is a recent PhD graduate from Dublin. Alicia is in receipt of Irish Arts Council Agility Award and Dublin City Council Bursary Award funding, with a debut collection forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books (2023).
Julebukking
It must terrify you, that words said in a certain way
Can tear you from your house.
Come and wear goatskin with me.
Step with me on the scattered snowflakes;
Pentagram shapes weigh down the white world tonight.
Hooves leave a hard imprint, a dark wet mark.
Hoof-clop like the noise your tongue makes
When it leaves the roof of your mouth.
I leave a goat’s head on your porch
Next to the old broom and car windshield scraper.
Daniel Hinds’s poetry was commended in the National Centre for Writing’s UEA New Forms Award, has been published in The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Stand, Southword, and Prairie Fire, and broadcast on BBC platforms. Twitter: @DanielGHinds
Note: this poem was first published in The London Magazine.