By Eve Taft

Little blue-green terrarium spins 

Goldilocks distant from atom-smashing ball of heat

Which whirls through the void, carrying with it the eight 

Who depend on its life-giving brilliance

It carries them through the suburb of a starry city 

Build around a hole in the universe

Insatiable, tiny bipeds explore 

Little blue-green terrarium

And then tilt their heads upwards 

They go flying through the dark matter

Searching for new stars and new life

They play capture the flag with their moon

And send out glass eyes to find light

From the beginning of everything

Infinite universe keeps getting bigger

Tiny bipeds magnify its building blocks

And map its edges 

They write stories about the shapes of the stars

And study them, writing libraries worth of knowledge

Blue-green terrarium spins on

And tiny bipeds boldly go

Where no one has gone before

by Matt Fitzgerald

He remembered when they first met—

And how her eyes jumped over to him.

And when he saw beyond them,

And she beyond his,

He slipped his arm into hers.

Then one day she closed her eyes and left time in the dark.

Left him alone again.

Veiled undertakers scanned for the fine edges of grief.

Their eyes engaged with his

And clung to him like spores and were away again

As half-formed thoughts.

He saw them to the door.

They lifted her, close-eyed and steady, into the hearse.

No traffic, no after-traffic smell, no cramped streets, no …

Her coffin was framed by the kitchen window.

Then, in the quiet place, he heard what he always missed:

A fat hairy-bellied bee dancing and dithering on the pane.

He cupped it in his hands and felt its wings, its life, beat against his skin,

Felt its legs—plump with pollen—slip into his old lifelines.

He put it back and it slept for a while and died.

He thumbed his palms and said he was sorry. 

The summer stars careened above him 

As he made his way to the cemetery,

Sloshing through the cratered mudholes.

A flock of birds rose up before him and down again.

He squatted to her in the early morning gloom.

Then he stretched out and propped one heel over the other

And he thanked her for loving him. 

By Catherine Deegan

Busily awaiting the blackbirds, black rooks and rainy days:

expecting an epiphany would come with them.  

I had taken my muse to the cave and glued her eyes with sleep,

promising I’d be back in an instant.

Five decades and seven lives she lay there,

I, on the other hand, had a tryst with Hypnos,

and that lasted just as long.

Until, in that dream she told me the wave was on its way,

Hypnos’ brother would not be far behind.

I’m sinking not sleeping, she sighed.

Rattled, I desperately reached for the laptop 

trying to tap her eyes open.

All the birds and all the rain will fly and fall again,

and again.

But we, she beseeched me, must not wait for what is eternal.

We have work to do and crafts to hone,

 and all we have is now. 

By Catherine Deegan

The syzygy of betrayal and kiss.

Coins: minted in silver, bathed in blood,

The infamous event of treachery.

Mother of Jesus, mother of Judas:

The syzygy of motherhood and death. 

How could he do it?

###

But we are as innocent as Judas 

Cash: minted in plastic, thrown in the sea.

Unfaithful to all flora and fauna:

mothers of humans are mothers of greed.

The syzygy of motherhood and death

What have we done?

###

Betraying all Earth’s creatures: great and small.

With shards-of-glass hearts and sun- kissed faces

We mute lilting voices and devour trees.

The mother of you, and mother of me:

The syzygy of Mother Earth and death.

What must we do?

By Matt Fitzgerald              

I never knew me then.

If I were a duckling, I would have been shaking off the down:

For I was doubtful and unprepared for life.

But my grandfather would take me by the hand; 

Show me the way of the breadwinner.

This steely man had broken-in many days.

I saw these days on his face and many other faces.

I felt the toughness of his fingers—like dry fat sausages—

Where the creases, the years, fixed him good.

Through the double-wash, he took me to the boat.

A wholesome odour fell off him.

He was long-wooled and slow-speaking and quiet.

There were short-wooled waders too:

Uncles, fathers and sons, nieces and nephews,

Ghosting under the full speculation of the stars.

There were half-caught words drifting in the darkness.

And as we sculled away in a slightly snarling sea, 

I could see him wincing through curling caps.

Shirking off the nacre water,

Shuffling his sailing combover,

Glancing at the seawings above us. 

The gill floats pitched in the sea like speckled dinosaur eggs.

I thought ahead of him and grabbed one.

“Hook it on,” he said. 

We curled back to shore.

The liquid wash of the sea hummed like a hive.

The strain on his face flushed him pink with each draw.

The shore, an eye-train of lamplit watchers,

Moved to meet us and we to them.

The net came alive with tail-flappers;

The beach came alive with movement.

A host of silvery, slivery muscles surfaced in a silent scream.

What if these fish had voices? I thought.

They tinged with galaxies of reds and browns. 

They were coiled at the throat,

Snouting their last breaths—opening, closing, opening. 

My grandfather offered a reassuring smile which I took.

Then he whacked them off the gunwale. 

Their tails didn’t flap any longer.

If I had a tail, it wouldn’t have flapped either.

Then I met him—

The boy I did not know. 

Brought out by the man who always knew me. 

Knew me better than I.  

By Maria O’Rourke

Miss Boland burst the football 

That came over the wall from the boys’ school, 

Stabbing it with a knitting needle while the girls cheered.

You and I were well aware

The line of demarcation was not to be crossed

Though no one could figure out why.

You wanted to throw it back,

But Miss Boland had a precedent to set

Of indelible magnitude.

 Today’s lesson on Lysistrata 

 In a country school yard, 

 Is a circle of girls round a deflated, red ball.

Lysistrata

Miss Boland burst the football 

That came over the wall from the boys’ school, 

Stabbing it with a knitting needle while the girls cheered.

You and I were well aware

The line of demarcation was not to be crossed

Though no one could figure out why.

You wanted to throw it back,

But Miss Boland had a precedent to set

Of indelible magnitude.

 Today’s lesson on Lysistrata 

 In a country school yard, 

 Is a circle of girls round a deflated, red ball.

Lysistrata

Miss Boland burst the football 

That came over the wall from the boys’ school, 

Stabbing it with a knitting needle while the girls cheered.

You and I were well aware

The line of demarcation was not to be crossed

Though no one could figure out why.

You wanted to throw it back,

But Miss Boland had a precedent to set

Of indelible magnitude.

 Today’s lesson on Lysistrata 

 In a country school yard,