Two recently published poems today. The first one is part of a series exploring what it means for me to have returned to live in Ireland generations after my family left. The Famine Way is a long stretch of road leading from Strokestown in Roscommon (where my family came from) to Dublin. In the 1840s… Continue reading On the Famine Way and Phase Change

So much was lost in the leaving, in the shuffle of feet to the sea and the coughs below decks, lost in the squinting at unimagined sunlight and the sting of feet on burning sand; so much I can never regain. Right now I could be stepping on hungry grass that cannot harm because unknown… Continue reading Return to Roscommon

VOYAGE OF THE ICEBERG Australian Antarctic Territory, midsummer Now evening’s wearing midday’s face. Our floating time capsule, sparkling and popping, is shoving through the flimsy sea ice. I now feel Gondwanan voices simmering beneath my feet; every rising bubble of air that gouges our tall ship’s sides carries off a puff of history. The penguins… Continue reading Voyage of the Iceberg

OLD TESTAMENT PLAGUES IN NEW MILLENNIUM CITY Inboxes swarm with junk mail locusts. Flies of stress buzz in corridors and settle in meeting rooms. Silicone boils gather and a collagen plague sweeps the cattle markets. Viruses pulsate through electronic veins and erupt on traders’ screens. The rivers of the underground run red with anger. No… Continue reading Four Poems

STRAW MEN IN THE FIELDS OF THE MIND Nothing stays the same when you look at it for long enough. There always remains an empty reality in the centre, a little town abandoned by the imagination; as soon as someone has been there, they tend to talk a lot less. It’s a feeling of being… Continue reading A Lesson from Loneliness

The World Wrapped snugly in its coat of space and time, the world puts up the hood and runs away, never showing its face and always one step ahead, casting us off like loose change as it goes. But the world doesn’t really move anywhere; it’s a balloon on a string thrown by a child,… Continue reading The World

In a strange land, everyone does what he must. As usual, the bird in my dream was a dove covered in blood that sat on my clothes rack, preening itself, spattering my shirts red. I catch and devour small kindnesses as if they were locusts full of the ripe fruit of domestic life, but for… Continue reading Diaspora

I should have known from the retching crow that passed on my way to the station that morning. The signs were there in the sprinkle of chocolate on my cappuccino, in the graph of plunging share prices hidden in the newspaper’s entrails. She’s gone; I should have known. The signs were there this evening as… Continue reading Omens