1. Christmas Lights
What made it December, in the fields, was that everything
Was silent, except for the ice creaking in every blade of grass,
As if each one had been fastened in place by ropes so tight
None would shift when the Earth spun; or the floorboards
Of the clay were drying out after the autumn rains; but
What had seemed pliable and enduring now so brittle, the tail
Of starlight a child might draw on the sky, or a fox’s bark, might
Finish it off. How were …
Milling about before the clinic
opened for a routine blood test,
I walked through a flurry of parakeets,
ducking as they swooped to feed
on blueberries & sunflower seeds,
& …
The fusty pinstriped suit jackets of larger men
are sagging the racks. Stretch full length in one until
your ears surge and still your fingertips won’t reach
out of the …
Cats own the breakwater rocks of Cádiz. This has been decreed – or has grown up as a consequence of cats deciding it and congregating there: Cats own …
Paul Maddern was born in Bermuda and has lived in Northern Ireland since 2000. He has four publications with Templar Poetry, the latest being The Tipping Line in 2018. The …
for the stolen water, lands, and lives of Hawaiʻi, and especially those of Lahaina
to divert, to steal, to hoard,
to pollute, to contaminate
to leak fuel into
to …
1.
I walked down the street towards the subway attentive to the shifting geography ahead, to the uneven sidewalk, which looked as though an active fault line ran below. …
Once in autumn’s ease date palm branches
swung over my back, sugars creamed inside their skins—
I’d never have guessed owls would nest in
anything called the phoenix, that we’d …
I am in a eucalyptus grove next to a playground. I am seven, or eight, my school is Catholic, and recess begins and ends with a bell that stings. You …
1
I do not remember how old I was when my grandmother showed me Phillis Wheatley’s poetry. Ten, maybe 11? Young enough that my hands were open to everything she put …
