Publications

Sample from Sweetie

They heard about the bridge to Tír na nÓg from the mud-spattered speakers in John Conor's Isuzu Trooper, which complained and sputtered along the Kerry country road, and no wonder. It should have been retired long ago, but it kept going. Like him. Like the Aga in the kitchen or his green fisherman's jumper with the holes and ragged cuffs that bulged around the belly. Like the Philips radio that played classical to the cows in the dairy. Like his love for his wife and the challenges of grown children. Like the slate roof on the house and the vintage boiler, thank God, for one couldn't find a builder, plumber, or electrician these days. Like the badger who'd destroy a stone wall of a night, looking for honey, an activity that once released John Conor's cattle into the neighbour's vegetable patch, ruining the spuds Ginger Lyons grew to make poitín.

Sample from An Entertaining Story

It was the day before the festival of Lughnasa, the day before the battle, the day before the book came, the day before immortals rose again. It was the day she fell in love and died, when the fearful horn cried its first alarm through beach grass and thatch, blared deep, warning notes of an invasion through summer leaves of wind-bent ash and scraggly hollies that grew by the king's compound. Then the sagging, pink-slabbed, wave-crunched cliffs and the rearing black sea stack called Ceann an Daimh passed the dwindling echo between themselves like irresistible gossip, a spell to stave off hardship, or a well-stitched bladder ball, before the Sliabh Mis mountains and the vast, greenish ocean swallowed the sound's last morsels. But that happened after lunch.

Night Walk, Sláidín

Pebbles, tide-tossed, huddle on strands of nets and seaweed smell,

shine as if dipped into that curved white bath of an Imbolg moon.

I'd love to climb up, jump, and splash in light, escape the east wind's

slap, slap, slapping of a sheep skull with a drained Domestos bottle.

Dripping home, candescent, you'd see me glow outside, as I ignite

within at the sight of you drinking tea in our lit kitchen window.

Published in Romance Options, Dedalus Press

The Increasing Weight of the Sky

As a child, heaven floated high above,

unmoored, mythical, stretched-balloon blue.

In grass, prone, scenting Aunt Carol's scones (love

was flour-fingered), I watched clouds unscrew

into spaceships, faces, trees. This fenced lawn,

I thought, a basket lightly held by breeze

of goodness – all those saints, relatives gone

where Mom said angels step with feathered ease.

Now, each year, cirrus wisps look lower. My

Aunt wanes gibbous, Atlas-pressed with pain, worries.

I would take a turn – hold her heavy sky,

push back heaven, but I'm not strong Hercules.

When it flattens her, will she find release,

unfold, untether, rise up into peace?

Published in Skylight 47