Dear Lavinia

Shame on your boyfriend!

What’s a little bread knife?

And besides, what, exactly,

did you do?

He said he would tell your mother,

twist the screw,

his fingers going

like a second hand

on the skype screen

just because your habit

was becoming,

becoming,

well, habitual,

though he saw how your hands

twisted on the handle

of the knife

heard you insist you would be

careful.

What a show it must have been,

when you lifted

the laptop,

and wrapped it around his head,

the way you’ll bandage a heart, no doubt,

when you qualify as a surgeon, soon,

your degree an unblemished

badge of honour still

because the judge would not convict

such a beautiful young prodigy

from Oxford.

If only he were as humane towards

the less privileged.

So this vexing day out at court

is just a brief havoc;

it will float out of the window

like light,

light as the blond shine of your hair,

away from the prying eyes

of the university panel,

leaving your character

intact.

© Afric McGlinchey

Why the Oxford stabbing student really is too talented for jail

Afric McGlinchey won the prestigious Hennessy Poetry Award (2011). Her début collection,
The lucky star of hidden things, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry.

Off With Their Heads

I asked him, a vegetable gardener,

to prepare me a bed for flowers.

My newly bought blooms were tenderly

planted with compost; watered

every evening. They thrived in a sunny

aspect, next to an old stone wall.

A neighbour offered a bush. Within weeks,

its ugly spiky leaves were a profusion;

the insipid blooms overhung the bed

and sprawled untidily into the garden.

When I went to do the weeding, I found

it was suffocating the delicate plants beneath,

and pruned it back, almost to the roots.

My other plants began to thrive.

It was weeks before he noticed.

Then I saw his wrath, a spittle-spewing rage.

What was so special about this bush?

Something between him and the neighbour?

When I returned with a peace offering,

there was my bed – the entire length of it –

shorn of its desert roses, lilies and camellias.

The pain of it hit my belly, physical

as a pounding. And just for good measure,

my three-year-old spiral herb garden

had been demolished too. I wasn’t about

to escalate things further by reacting. Look

at the posturing between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Already I’m worrying about every living thing.

© Afric McGlinchey

North Korea dismisses Trump threat, details plan to attack Guam

Afric McGlinchey’s début, The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon Poetry, 2012), was translated into Italian and published by L’Arcolaio. Her second collection, Ghost of the Fisher Cat, for which she received an Arts bursary, was nominated for the Forward Prize, Irish Times Poetry Now Award and the Piggott Prize. Afric also blogs at Poem as Totem

Flight MH370

            And a crack in the teacup opens

                                                –WH Auden

Their faces stare out,

pressed against the ovals of panes

as the aeroplane hastens

into radar silence.

She is sitting beside her husband, who secretly

has cancer, knows she’s having an affair.

Under that blanket, a boy is counting time on his fingers.

A girl sleeps against her mother’s shoulder,

while the man on her right

soars away, thoughts exploding:

I should have had more sex.

The angle of a wing dips

into refractions of light

as they frantically ask questions.

Two hundred

and thirty nine passengers,

texting those precious three words.

One woman turns to the stranger beside her,

takes his hand.

She does not pray, holds

on to loneliness, though he squeezes.

His face is salt. Sensitive eyes.

Touch will keep them feeling alive, until

the last moment.

She thinks of drinking rum with those fishermen

in Kuching, the music, everybody laughing,

her eyes squeezing tears.

Malaysian Airlines confirm all lost.

©Afric McGlinchey

Afric McGlinchey’s début The lucky star of hidden things (Salmon) is being translated into Italian. A Pushcart nominee, she won the Hennessy poetry award and Northern Liberties poetry prize. www.africmcglinchey.com

Mayan finale and End of the World, or a New World Age

Mayan Finale

The new gods re-line the stars,

boomerang clouds to blanket

over all the ancient myths,

hammering each with iron nails. 

A Niburu parachute snags

on one, letting its ragged cloth

sink colour into sky’s pavement

until the Milky Way is bruised to purple.

And now a humming starts; then god-bees

buzz, turn to screaming rockets,

as they discover the magnetic breath

of death across the world:

electric blankets, laptops,

mobiles piled in too-late pyres

offered to a solar flare equivalent

of a hundred billion atom bombs

  

and all the runaway leaves,

a squared-off sun, midges darting

in sprays of reckless spittle;

mountains topped with seers

and mass suicides, mosaics

of blood across cracked cheeks,

while thirteen crows line up along

a cemetery wall, and watch

the ticking clock.

 ©Afric McGlinchey

A Hennessy Poetry winner and Pushcart nominee, Afric McGlinchey’s début collection, The lucky star of hidden things,  was published in 2012 by Salmon.  Afric lives in West Cork. www.africmcglinchey.com

End of the World, or a New World Age

People everywhere are scurrying in fear
as the date draws near to 12/21/2012—the end
of the Mayans’ calendar; the stage set for doom:
World War, Apocalypse, Enlightenment, or peace
and a New World Age. Some Christians, too,
believe, perhaps, Revelations is coming to pass;
after all, the perfect number in the Bible is 12—

the Trinity multiplied by the four earthly elements
of water, air, earth and fire; there were 12 Disciples,
12 seals, and 12 heavenly gates (star gates?)
named for 12 tribes, guarded by 12 angels. Media
heightens the hysteria with themes of Armageddon,
Apocalyptic horrors, and theories of ancient
aliens. All cultures, religions and nations seem
to be drawing together, for once, in the belief
that the end of the age is upon us… but how

will it end? Will a sun flare set the world on fire,
or will a comet or Hubris knock Earth off its axis?
Will magnetic poles shift; will our last days
be spent in darkness? Will we blow up
the world with the H-bomb we designed to protect
ourselves? Will Jesus, Osiris-Dionysus, Vishnu, Ra,
and Buddha sit and argue about which one should

save us? Or will they just watch in judgment
as the world shrinks into a hot core, covering
us in gas and ash, burning us alive; or while
the world is beaten into bits like wadded up foil,
trash floating away to join other space

debris? Can humanity survive? Will a chosen few
hunker down in a secret government bunker
hidden deep in a mountainside to live for years
without sun, then emerge to plant seeds
in the frozen ark and begin civilization
again? Or is this just another hoax,
the gods’ secret joke—Look at these fools
expecting us to save them
from their imagination.

©Wynne Huddlestone

'End of the world' hysteria boosts tourism

Wynne's poetry can be read in nearly 40 publications. She is the winner of the 2010 Lifepress Grandmother Earth Environmental Poetry Contest.

Existential risk

The Greek and Roman gods have run out on us
leaving Makemake of the birdman cult,
only slightly dimmer than its sibling, Pluto,
and lacking – so far – in atmosphere.

Will our focus on things distant
miss the looming Pandora’s box
of  artificial intelligence?

Its very white ice is methane-filled
but at this greatest distance from the sun,
so far, it’s still frozen;

while behind telescopes, robots are escaping our control
pressing buttons, writing programmes,
deciding who lives and dies on the battlefield.

Perhaps Makemake, god of fertility
will shift axis, organics, seed the dark terrain,
create birdmen in the outer solar system,

while on earth, all that will remain
of the culled human herd, carved petroglyphs,
buried beneath bones and monuments.


© Afric McGlinchey

Distant Dwarf Planet Secrets Revealed

A Hennessy Poetry winner and Pushcart nominee, Afric McGlinchey’s début collection, The lucky star of hidden things,  was published in 2012 by Salmon.  Afric lives in West Cork. www.africmcglinchey.com

A short-lived tyranny

Last week she was a pop up girl,
pouting prettily by a brand new car;
next week she might be tossing seaweed in a wok
for customers who idle by the counter, staring at the pretty
in the poster behind her.

The big chill
of realization, swarming tremors,
as she hands over their wrapped takeaway,
fast food, like fast beauty,
gobbled right before her eyes.

The once-pretty won’t be able to say
how she recognised the moment
– perhaps it’ll be a quivering eyelid,
where once there was covetous attention –
that shudders her through the thin door to silicon.

Fat sucked and re-injected
in the nick of time, she thinks,
needle threading her skin, erasing flaws,
stalling fine lines that may be
blurring her future.

The man with a scalpel in his hand is god.
Pretties face their new Dorian Grey illusions,
poised beside each other in a startling symmetry;
this engineered beauty necessary, they are told,
for wealth and sexual power, recognition.

But there’s a risk in seeking
cosmetic artifice, believing the promises
of counterfeit consultants; the danger
of the arrow that may pierce mistakenly,
prematurely, call time.

© Afric McGlinchey

The cost of being 'pretty' in Thailand

Afric McGlinchey won the prestigious Hennessy Poetry Award (2011). Her début collection,
The lucky star of hidden things, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry. 

Rites and wrongs

Now’s the time for wooing,
but instead they choose to use the boot.
Those men in black might find, however,
that they’ve kicked a landmine
which blows up in their face.
The congregation knows all about
the cover-ups and secrets
that lurk behind so many cassocks.
Not to mention the mass
lining of a million burrowed pockets,
while the Catholic empire is strewn
with AIDS orphans, the homeless and the starving.
It’s a new approach, adding insult to injury,
one I’m betting will create a  further exodus,
as every thinking Catholic  rises up
from kneeling, walks back down the aisle,
shaking holy water from their fingers.
This betrayal is more a hiss
than a kiss. Time to burn some incense,
rid us of this stench
of demon.

© Afric McGlinchey

German Catholics lose church rights for unpaid tax

Afric McGlinchey won the prestigious Hennessy Poetry Award (2011). Her début collection,
The lucky star of hidden things, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry. 

Random Acts

Spiderman and Cinderella
weave through bubbles,
wands, balloon-swords;
the street is teeming
with new romantics,
streams of pink
and purple,
blue and real
red hair.
From the lorry stage,
a band plays 'random
acts of kindness',
the mosh-pit crushed
as kids make trains
and spinning tops;
while somewhere else,
a joker waits
till everyone is seated
then pulls out
his bag of tricks.

© Afric McGlinchey

Gunman announced himself as the Joker, says eyewitness

Pucker fair: random acts of kindness prove big hit

Afric McGlinchey won the prestigious Hennessy Poetry Award (2011). Her début collection,
The lucky star of hidden things, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry.