An Education in Silence

for Julie McClure

This morning, light spilled into the courtyard
like God had opened a window.
The light is quiet and can’t be herded
from dormitory beds to morning mass –
it shines where it wants,
blushing the stained glass windows,
washing the priest’s words.

My mother doesn’t write.
It’s been three years. My hands
crack from the heat of the sheets
as we feed them through the mangle.
The high windows admit one square
of light, on the word repent
and I am silent like the sunlight.

© Jessica Traynor

Stanhope St women to get assistance

Jessica Traynor is a Dublin poet. Her poems have appeared in Southword, the SHOp, the Moth and the Stinging Fly. She has won the Listowel Poetry Prize. Her blog is jessicatraynor.wordpress.com

Sunday Review

Here in Cornwall, so far as the weather is concerned, we have had a dismal beginning to 2013. For much of the time a heavy grey mist has engulfed the beauty of our landscape and, in the intervening periods, we have been treated to - yes, you've guessed it - yet more heavy rain. Because of this, like Jessica Traynor in Nollaig Na mBan, I too could wish for 'a day disrobed' that looks beyond 'January's darkness/to search for the horizon's light'. Equally, I could wish for 'a little more promised each day'. On Tuesday, however, far from the promise of light, David Mellor's  It's Breaking News reminded us of the media's appetite for tragedy and of the fact that, all too often, the perpetrators of the most terrible violence are 'rewarded' by a perverse kind of celebrity while 'those who have gone / have no name'. Here at Poetry 24,  we ended the year sadly in the shadow of the Sandy Hook shootings and, with the greatest respect to the poets who wrote so powerfully in response to that tragedy, we hope and pray that this year no such poems will be penned.

On Wednesday, Philip Johnson's Fantuckinfastic Ideas gave us a sharp-tongued and insightful response to the recent proposal  that we should legislate against high levels of fat, sugar and salt, particularly in those products targeted at younger people. Then, on Thursday, our own Hamish Mack gave us Australia Ablaze, a delightfully spare and understated piece that ironically reassures us that we 'can / maintain our / lifestyles' but quietly asserting that we may 'make our children pay'. Then, on Friday, it was me again with 'A Dream of Retirement'. (I make no apologies for having a bit of a rant. There is, in my opinion, not enough of public ranting going on at the moment.)

Moving swiftly on, however, we arrive at Saturday and James Bessant's 'Food for Thought'. This was a piece that posed important questions about prevailing attitudes towards food and about the way in which western society both produces and markets it. Thank you, James, for ending the week on a note that may be uncomfortable for many of us. It is fitting that we should remember that, as we in the west hit our January diets, there are those, far too many, who may starve.

That said, I wish all our readers well. Please, if you will, spread the word. In order to continue this important work, we need your submissions. Remember: Poetry 24, where news is the muse.

Nollaig Na mBan

(In Ireland, the feast of the epiphany is known as ‘Nollaig na mBan’, or ‘Women’s Christmas’)

It’s all over the radio this year
as if no-one ever noticed it before -
all talk of women celebrating
with their ‘women’s foods’
(goose and tea as opposed to the men’s
Christmas of whiskey and beef).

Well thanks a bunch for this grey-washed
little nothing of a day, tangled up
in broken Christmas lights,
the pudding still mouldering
in the back of the press
like a rusted civil war-era bomb.

What I wish for now is a day disrobed,
shivering in a slicing wind,
to remind us that this is no ‘little’ Christmas
but a day for casting the mind
past shedding pine trees,
through January’s darkness
to search for the horizon’s light;
a little more promised each day.

© Jessica Traynor

Are You Celebrating Women's Christmas?

Jessica Traynor is a Dublin poet. Her poems have appeared in SouthWord, the SHOp and the Moth and she has won the Listowel Poetry Prize. Her blog is jessicatraynor.wordpress.com

The Big Sky

It’s about the bigger picture, you say,

tilting my chin skywards,

How can we make sense of something

we can never see in its entirety?



All I know is I am happy to be

an un-joined dot, sometimes obscured

by low cloud and light pollution;

a past fast diminishing.



But I understand the urge – no matter

how we direct each other’s gaze,

there are things we can’t share.

We are a picture seen only from the inside.



I wonder if we’ll ever be worth study,

as an example of something –

a man, tilting a woman’s chin

towards a picture neither understands.

© Jessica Traynor

Picture captures a billion stars
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Jessica Traynor is an Irish poet with poems published in New Irish Writing, The SHOp, The Moth and The Stinging Fly. She won the 2011 Listowel Writers Week Poetry Award.

A Modern Mayan calendar

Must set a reminder for 2012 –
how to keep this within
the 250 character space limit?
Sun stretching arms to grab satellites.
Hide magnets. Turn off TV.
Cancel business trip.

It’s a storm.
We remember storms, don’t we?
Hatches battened down,
voices hushed, a single candle,
family all a-huddle?

It’s not like they’ve been lost
to living memory; the shadowy groups
we see from the corner of our eyes
still crouched beneath our stairs
or in tube station stairwells.

Coax them from their shelters,
turn off your phones and ask them to tell
their stories, no character limit;
make a living reminder,
a solar flare lighting the line
from the past to today.

© Jessica Traynor

Solar storm passes without incident so far
The strongest space storm since 2008 creates a dazzling display
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Jessica Traynor is an Irish poet with poems published in New Irish Writing, The SHOp, The Moth and The Stinging Fly. She won the 2011 Listowel Writers Week Poetry Award.