Felix in Free Fall

The Man Who Fell to Earth

We have been falling all our lives.
When we first learn to walk
Our parents cheer the walking but for us
The suddenness of falling is the prize.

We earn degrees in falling
Learn to dredge success from every fault
We are the much-praised generation
We know the power in the fall.

We fall into everything
Falling forward into steep-climb futures
Falling backwards when emotion pushes
When memory drags us down.

The years are falling from us
Thoughts we clung to are so many leaves
Our lives are autumn and the branches
Sketch their meaning on a purple sky.

Not long ago we saw the people falling
Turning from the firewall at their backs
Tonight a man stands up, a resurrection
After the farthest fall from the highest point.

©  Helena Nolan

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner breaks sound barrier

Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.


Grounded

Strato-stupendulous,
Austrian Baumgarten,
spinning and thinking of
strawberry jam;

falling from space like an
extraterrestrial,
home to a hug and a
smack from his mam.

© Anthony Baverstock

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner's out-of-control spin

Anthony Baverstock is from Colchester, reputed home of Humpty-Dumpty. 

The Ghostmother

My mother is a carpet, my mother is a chair

My mother is a blanket, flowers cover up her hair

Her scent is all around me, her arms have disappeared

Her hands are hard - I’m frightened

What is happening to me?


 is happening to me? For a long time now I have been floating here

 is happening to me? In a room I do not know, light sifts in patterns,

 is happening to me? On the walls and on the floor,

 is happening to me? There is dimness, then a flash -

 is happening to me? The man says sssssh!


My mother does not feed me, my mother does not sing

Her breath is cold upon me, her lips are whispering

Her lap is like a statue, her smile has gone away

Who is the stranger, watching

Is this a game?


 is happening to me? For a long time now I have been smothering

 is happening to me?My face, my breasts, my thighs, all shrouded like a corpse

 is happening to me?He is making a new image 

 is happening to me?He only wants the child

 is happening to me?I know my place.

©  Helena Nolan

Old portraits of children with 'ghostmothers' in the background

Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

The Real Meeting on the Turret Stairs

Frederic William Burton's
Hellelil and Hildebrand,
the Meeting on the Turret Stairs

Everyone thinks that this is our goodbye
That, after this, we never meet again
Only we know that this is how we met, this
The first touch you ventured on my sleeve.
Why don’t they realise that when you left
For the last time, your future a sea of blood
You would have kissed me fully on the mouth
And met my eyes directly with your own?

How can they think that this kiss is the last
Shielded from skin by folds of cloth and mail?
How can a kiss like this translate the love
That tore me from my family and home?
Our lost embrace was so much more than this -
The branding of the blood in every kiss.

©  Helena Nolan

Romantic scene voted Ireland's favourite painting

Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

Leaving for Gliese

If I leave right now, I will be sixty seven when I reach you
My skin blooming again in your ambient glow
A soft red blush will blossom in your climate
Like the dimly-lit atmosphere of a cocktail bar.

Your red sky wears a sunny, starry face
Such beauty will have me always looking upwards
No time to turn around to see the past
Recede behind me at the speed of light.

I will be glad to start again in another universe
There is room in one life for two lifetimes, after all,
I should go out into the night seeking a moonbeam
The one that will lead me to the exit door.

And yet the greens and blues of here still tempt me
Even the greys and browns have subtle tones
That your new look has not yet re-invented
The tugs and ties of gravity are strong.

©  Helena Nolan

Astronomers find new planet capable of supporting life
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

The Stolen Heart

You can take my heart

You can take my heart and put it in a box

You can take my heart and put it in a box and lock it in a cage

But my heart will not be there

When you wake in the morning

The bars will be cut open and the box will be elsewhere

I will take nothing else

Not your chalices or candlesticks

I have no use for ornament, no need for burnished gold

I am gone to the old place

To the cave above the lake

I have pared back my ribs to make a new mansion

Lent has come to remind us

Of the need for human sacrifice

For too long, you have made a fool of my heart

I have taken back my heart

I have taken back my harm

You must fill up all your cabinets with other magic charms.

©  Helena Nolan

Dublin patron saint's heart stolen in cathedral raid
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

At First Sight

im Wislawa Szymborska (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012)

You have seen someone like me, once

And I have met you too, perhaps

At the curve of an iron stairway

A junction with lights, some pause

On a railway platform, a meeting of eyes

The passing, steamed up window of a bus



We are all of us only each other’s

Shadows, foretelling of future’s past

Walking in familiar footsteps

On the city’s Google maps, watched

By the same dark satellite, I wonder

How we missed each other for so long



The years will pass, the only thing

That’s definite is time, shaping our passage

We move between the lanes

Like careful liners, watchful for the rocks

The threat of secret icebergs, we are trained

To call for help but do not like to shout



Don’t make a fuss, the days are growing longer

Spring will soon pull hope out of the earth

Do not regret the dark shroud of winter

You will forget again what was forgotten once

I will remember only the silhouette of one

Once glimpsed, the one who smiles like you did

©  Helena Nolan

Wisława Szymborska obituary
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is the 2011 winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

The Tears of the Devil (Are Tears Of Laughter)

The devil is in the detail

The devil is in the clouds

Hidden there for centuries

We find him grinning now.



When we least imagine him

We see his face for real

For when we stop believing

The devil reappears.



The sky fills with his laughter

Bitter to our ears

The rain is slowly turning

Into the devil’s tears.

©  Helena Nolan

Devil's face revealed in Giotto fresco in Italy
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is this year's winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

Instructions for use

im Steve Jobs and inspired by his Stanford address on life and death

Fall in love with the world

Love it as one you are about to leave

Love all the terrible inconsistencies

Forgive the inconstancy



We are born naked

So much of life is

The clothing we put on

Nothing stays with us



Embrace change, the seasons are

The days saying goodbye to us

Time is farewell

Acknowledge it



There is still room to live

In the wide air

Near the clear water

On the waiting earth



Rise today as your own dawn

Be your own light

Never try to be normal

It will rob you of the right to be

Extraordinary

©  Helena Nolan

Steve Jobs Apple 'visionary' dies aged 56
Editor's note: View the 2005 Stanford Commencement Address here
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. She is this year's winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

Day 44

Two weeks before you die, you take a flight
Leave Africa in darkness for the stark
European light of a new beginning.

Your first time on a plane, first time
To feel the weight of air as coolness
Not the breath of heat.

You are too chilled to shiver, your long limbs
Wrapped up for protection, as if you matter,
As if somebody cares.

Soon everybody wants you, calls out your name
Naming a price, strangers put you in a vehicle, roads,
Then ferries carry you away.

Within days, your final destination - a hotel, a private suite
With bed and silver vase - nobody sees you but the maid
For a whole 8 days.

When you die, there are no mourners and no funeral,
Why should there be? You are a rose,
You are one in every three.*

©  Helena Nolan

The life and death of a rose
* One in every three roses sold originates in Kenya and lives for 44 days from bud to death, the last 8 of which are usually spent in a vase.
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. Last year she was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

The Shipwreck Grave

They became unwilling sailors first and then, submariners,

These farmers and shopkeepers, their children, servants, wives,

All suddenly captives of the ocean, all lost in chains,

Buried beneath the sky, the sea, until the murky earth

Reclaimed them and grew fossils in a rib-shaped cage

Of rotting wood and iron and torn sails. They slept for centuries

Like fishermen decaying in too far-flung, careless nets,

Caught up by ankle or by throat, the salt upon them a preservative

So that today we find them, like the next page in a book-



-turned over in astonishment, a copperplate illusion

Of some smothered truth, mute heralds of the future

From a dim-lit past, such buried kisses, fuel for a candle flame

That flickers in the empty dark we rummage in for energy,

Like a faint light at the back of the deepest cave.

If they could speak, these souls might sing in unison:

Forget us at your peril, we are the last of the bravado

We are what remains, and if you hold a hand to us

We’ll surely burn you,

one,

by one,

by name.

©  Helena Nolan

Ancient remains found in Dublin
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Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. Last year she was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award.
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Editor's note: Each day, we move about the land, but how often are we conscious of the layered history beneath our feet?

Speak Other Voices

Speak Other Voices

(The last Poetry Now Festival, Dun Laoghaire, March 2011)



Speak other voices

From other mouths,

Mouths that shape the language

Of other countries, other lives.



We know nothing about each other

But we know these words -

The ones that makes the sssss

The ones that make the oooos –



The suck and pull of sibilants

The essence of the vowels

The soft touch of emotion

The sucker puncher verbs



The humour and the sorrow

Self-deprecating veins

The quick flick of an eyebrow

The slow burn of the page.



We are always, always watching

And listening for the sign.

Here, we find the signals everywhere

Their words, your words, are mine.

©  Helena Nolan

Heaney wins 'Irish Times' poetry award
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Helena Nolan's poems and short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, Abridged and The Moth, as well as on the Spoken Ink audio website and The Guardian Poetry Workshop. Last year she was shortlisted for Strokestown, runner up in the Fish poetry competition and came second in the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCD (2008).