Eyewear: Guest Review: Maguire On Mitchell

Eyewear: Guest Review: Maguire On Mitchell: Jim Maguire reviews World Without Maps by Geraldine Mitchell The opening poem in Geraldine Mitchell's first collection, which won...

Chapter One Promotions poetry competition

I was a prize winner in this competition. To see my poem,
Fish Plates and Star Jumps, you can click on their link:
http://www.chapteronepromotions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=412&Itemid=123

Friday afternoon

I breathe your scent
collarbone
belly
elbow
hold your feet
till the blue melts
make a lotus around you
so you are trapped
between my breasts
where you bury yourself
trying to find your way
back home.


Published in Scottish Poetry Review

Tempo

Bat flits in the heart,
whip cracks in the brain
blood jingles in the veins
welcome back to life

Fingers reach the whole moon
communion wafer thin,
caution takes a spin,
edges razored as a knife

Fleet as a frisbee
high as a kite
this tempo’s very daring
just ask me, and I might


Published in Women's Works lX

Birthstone

My father laid them on the table.
I had first choice and didn’t hesitate:
its pure light, ice-rink smooth,
seducing the eye into a multi-
mirrored whirlwind of blazing crystals;

triangles, spiky, driven,
always offering a third opinion.
From every angle, lightnings guide,
like a compass with forty norths,
a captured star.

I think of its birth, deep beneath
the Drakensberg, source of the Orange
river, then slipstreamed west to Namibia’s
long Atlantic shore, strong pull of current
leaving alluvial deposits

on drowned terrace, pocket beach,
bedrock gully, wind corridor
hand-picked by smugglers,
or divers sweeping the seafloor,
ferrous gravels

jigged by suction hose and pump, seeking
this tear of the gods, the brilliance
of its beauty fitting, as far back
as Exodus, for the breastplate
of judgment.

This, my birthstone,
her perfect aphrodisiac;
neglected in my possession,
hidden during conflict days,
almost, as with her, abandoned.

Last days together, laughing
at childhood memories,
taking her hand on a hospital bench,
twisting the ring on her too-
thin finger.

I twist it now, on mine,
twirl my tongue over its cool surface,
until it sparks a different view -
and something in its light, a fleck,
reflects my mother back.


Published in Southword under the title Journey of a Birthstone.

Rumours

The street corner
collects secrets
in the red-eyed dark
She senses them behind the wink
of a dark-browed teenager who tempts her to venture
unobtrusively into the park then embraces,
in a rush her ripe bosom,

the feather-flutter
of her female heart. Eyelids like shutters
concealing their chastity, she is nervously overcome
with giggles until a Chinese whisper
of those second-hand stories, replays in her mind.


Published in Acumen.

Exile

cracked brown earth
under cracked brown feet
replaced

now urban pavements harden
strange radio voices
talk alien politics

he lies in bed, unhearing

oblivion of long, grey rain
insolent slap of colour lack
the metronome of his days

cravings for sunshine
obliterate all other possibilities

murmurings of Africa
his only mantra


Published in Southword

Ghost town

Stirring the dust of an eclipsed city,
a flamenco of flamingos.
Swizzle-stick loner
whirls through the sandpit street.


A flamenco of flamingos,
pot-pourri of abandoned possessions,
whirls through the sandpit street,
unearthing a history.


Pot-pourri of abandoned possessions,
left while a population took flight,
unearthing a history,
sifting like flour, old memories.


Left while a population took flight,
a muddle of linen drifts and collapses.
Sifting, like flour, old memories,
beaks bittering, twisting, lamenting.


A muddle of linen drifts and collapses,
shrouding the death of a city by drowning.
Beaks bittering, twisting, lamenting,
stirring the dust of an eclipsed city.


Published in Poetry Ireland Review under the title Lost in Namibia

The Seekers

(i.m Andrew)



Now we are tracking the cliffs,
Men at the drop, women further in
scattered widely, but bound by the silken cord
of him

There is his brother, deranged and staggering, alone
No-one dares go near, for fear of edges
A tiny cove, some tracks, shoes and clothes neatly stacked

The divers move east and west, into the depths, crevices
beaches are combed
Some walk with sticks, and in pairs,
murmuring

The air, chill and unmoving, ghostlike against our faces
sweep of dune grasses, crunch of footsteps, a few words
launched on the breeze

Some hours, days, pass and there is a gathering at the beach,
where the father speaks, gently, grateful
the weight of emotion, too dense to lift alone

Not like the weight, finally found,
unbound now, floating, free


Published in the SHOp

Eavesdropping in a Galway pub

Were you ever in love?
asked the Welshman
of a brooding Connemara man
with a spike pierced
into his lower lip
I love you
he replied, leaping off
the bar stool
and seizing him
by the shoulders.

Netting the Weather

Darkened days of it
landed clouds of it
marching on in

out on the ocean, surfers
topple with the white water foam
of it

sand is pitted with rivulets,
pulverised by it

long rain strings
unwind
with the steady drip of it

I heave into the net of it
string words together with it

the weft and the weave
of a week of wet.


Afric McGlinchey