Everything’s up for the chop or already cut back Roadside hedges shiver half-bald above ditches Last year’s haws have succumbed to slash and hack Nothing but wind to darn the birchwoods’ britches The growing decade hunts with a hawkish eye Whatever it is in the air has caused this flap […]
From Songs of Robert the Cutler from the darkest hull of the head from the cold light of day’s contradictions from the high hill’s rhythming contours from the dull earth’s heaviest ores from the loud mouth of the forge from the brazier’s fiery barrenness from the charcoal’s black heart from […]
An old saw rips through bark and bough; a ballad ignites in my bones as the hot teeth bite, one of my dad’s soaring to McCormack’s heights. I just wanted to sit in my room and write. Moon-dumb, twiddling my thumbs, waiting. Time was what language had set aside to […]
I must have been only three when Michael Flynn my mother’s father hoisted me up on a chair outside that smoky cottage in Castlecolumb; his dark blue suit I recall, his milk-white hair. With a pair of brass binoculars big as skittles he tried to introduce me to the sights; […]