THE KILKENNY INVOLVEMENT CENTRE AND RECOVERY COLLEGE SOUTH EAST HAVE PRODUCED A WONDERFUL ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY AND PROSE. ‘WHITE TWINE AND OLD SUITCASES’ COMPRISES OF 128 PAGES AND 60 AUTHORS AND IS COMPLEMENTED BY SOME WONDERFUL PHOTOS AND ARTWORK BY TASK CAMERA CLUB. IT IS PRINTED BY MODERN PRINTERS. IT IS DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED READING FOR ALL LOVERS OF POETRY. THE KILKENNY OBSERVER IS HAPPY TO RUN THE POEMS EACH WEEK TO PROMOTE CREATIVE WRITING AND TO HIGHLIGHT THESE WONDERFUL CENTRES. AVAILABLE IN ALL KILKENNY BOOK SHOPS. €10
The Phoenix
My tree of desire
I breathe your perfume, you are my air
Sweetness pours from your branches
Sweet fruits doth bear
Calling softly on the breeze
A voice that cradles my anvil
Rapture grasps me in your presence
Ocular beauty filling my field
Lambent flame that warms my blood
Infernal smile that captivates
Nomadic limbs of spiderlegs
Extend full flight with elegance
Harpful music in your song
A sound that levitates my mood
Novel honesty in your thoughts
Like a new day dawning
Object of desire, Ocean of love
Name that flows so easily from my lips
Therapeutic trusting hands
Healing touch, as magic wand’s
Aura protects your earthly form
Nymph of spirit and goodwill
Knead my fears away
Slow my beating heart
Dominic Kelly
A Map
The size of my childhood stretched from Michael Street to the Sion Road,
sometimes as far as Freshford where we picked cowslips on Quirke’s lane.
Or to Bennetsbridge.
A horde of cousins, we barely wanted friends.
After school, in my grandmother’s garden,
the boot factory siren, a cue to cry
followed by soft words, a biscuit.
Altamont Park, our shelter in the middle of it all.
One long weekend, our house was stuffed into Little’s van,
a kind of game.
Laden down it left, returning empty.
The house slowly became a cave of echoes, bare and cold.
That day, we were the news, carried to Carlow in the ‘People’ van.
I remember the door sliding firmly shut, the boxed cat meowing.
We weren’t refugees, we had belongings, a roof, each other, even the cat.
Carlow, with its broken fortress and big river, wasn’t to know about our cousins,
or the Castle Park.
The red door slid open on the Black Bog Road, we tumbled into strangeness,
and, oh, how we needed the friends who caught us.
Angela Keogh
McCauley
‘Will you come to my funeral?’
he said to me once.
We were up the town drinking,
I visiting, and he at his usual station:
Houricans’ bar counter, knocking
back his pints and whiskey chasers.
I said I would, and now
the call upon my word,
to see him off on his last outing;
all his chat gone,
his early years in England,
women he’d had there,
fights he’d seen and been in.
I am held by the promise made:
the one hundred miles of road
to his graveside, and the clay banked,
after the prayers to be shovelled down
on all those lurid memories.
In my head I picture him,
his last laugh on me, his final prank.
Tom Kiernan
