Two Poems

by Eóin Flannery

Night tides

Raise the volume on

the closing strains,

the vials opened and closed

on the chrismed remains.

Ink spills on a page, fades,

soaking into its marrow

and its grain,

the horizon line blurs,

then disappears, and

we watch the Earth’s eye shut.

Tidal waters fill the caved-in

prints of our steps,

another dress rehearsal winds down.

We take the sea with us,

we are the violence.

We are the undiluted spores

that cascade through our veins,

angel dustings that dapple

the heaving ligatures of

our hearts.

The body’s pulse laps and turns

like the night’s tides.

An unbelieving hand – Lakes of Killarney

Along the mountain road,

perched above the lakes

that sit like silvering kidneys,

you come across

a blackened tree stump

no taller than your knee,

no wider than a hubcap.

If you were to touch its side,

your finger would pierce

the flaked skin, and darken

the coiled ridges of your

unbelieving hand.

You could map its

crisped organs with your palm,

crush its heart to dust.

But it might be a charred

treasure chest, gnarled and broken,

having breathed out its former life,

a wounded altar rooted

in repose, the congregation

now fled and the end of time

settled like wet ash on the ground

beneath your feet.

BIO: Eóin Flannery is a writer and critic based in Limerick, Ireland. His poetry has appeared in The Honest Ulsterman; Libre; The Galway Review; Rochford Street Review; Red Ogre Review; Juniper; The Tiger Moth Review; the engine(idling; Cigarette Fire Magazine; Sparks Literary Journal; Inkfish Magazine and The Hog River Press. He is working on a collection of poems entitled, Unshadow.