The Death By Drowning Of Twenty Seven Migrants In The English Channel on Wednesday It could have been twenty seven Cliff Richard fans who quite like that Boris Johnson really; twenty seven Noel Edmonds lookalikes whose wives stimulate themselves with The Daily Express; twenty seven former double glazing salesmen from Folkestone, Kent who blame everything … Read more
One Big Union is a self-published collection of essays by Irish poet Ciarán O’Rourke. The essays, many of which have been previously published in such outlets as Poetry Ireland Review, Irish Marxist Review, and indeed, Cassandra Voices herself, are a mix of literary criticism, political theory, and personal writing. The book’s introduction locates itself in … Read more
Dutch Masters An age away, the scented evergreens are still, a lucent wave commits to hush, the sun emits a breath, as the noon-deep labourings commence: the slender, severed necks are tossed, the throttled mouths are mounted in the heat, and inch by inch the fragrant earth is stripped of human foliage, an evacuated island … Read more
Spring For Lois P. Jones I The gentle discord of rainfall, its alternating static dance are Reeds of air in suspension before the corona of sensation. A droplet splashes and trickles along your neck, its joyous grief is welcomed by you with a shudder. The courage of the leaf passes beneath the banks of … Read more
Ace of Wands Fire & Desire And then, at the right time from the heat of our hands a love that was old and new lit up like a torch burning from the depths like fire to the turf. Eight of Wands BOOM!! Someone’s heart whispered: Boom!!! And everything blew up The Earth stopped moving and … Read more
Introductory Note “Icarius’s Daughter” celebrates Penelope, Odysseus’s wife and heroine of Homer’s Odyssey. In the Odyssey, two narratives are woven together by means of changes of scene and frequent flashbacks. In the first strand of the plot, Odysseus has many dire adventures as he makes his way home to Ithaca from the siege of Troy. … Read more
The Sacred Mundane 1 We might say with confidence that the world is a lovely catastrophe—paradise buried in a rubbish heap; devilish, angelic, perishing, precious, priestly, proud; one home to the light that is oil and the water that is darkness, this poor dazzling Earth a jar cracking with the strain of their dueling dual … Read more
Leaf-ladder to the Sky Dusk drums down the harbour, Seagull sirens sound alarms, A quiet motor sings; Shards of mingling words slip away Where huddled houses hug the bay; A fish flops on the scalloped sea, Ripples spreadly ring, Ring, and ring, diminishing, to me: Here are all enchantments reined, Stowed within this compassed, solitary … Read more
Three Poems by Charles Baudelaire IV – L’ALBATROS Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’equipage Prennent des albatross, vates oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage, Le navire glissent sur les gouffres amers. A peien les ont-ils deposes sur les planches, Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroit et honteux, Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes … Read more
Questioning a Tank Into the shocked, shucked shell of the hospital at Kunduz, which for ten days past, in streaming light (the season’s slant of sun), has spilled a steaming trail of twisted bricks, chewed up rails, a grieving mist – the site where the counted, cradled sick burned up, the still un- bordered doctors … Read more