Author: Martha

Derek Mahon We tire of cities in the end: the whirr and blur of it, so long your friend, grow repetitious and you start to choke on signage, carbon monoxide, the hard look. You always knew it would come down to a dozy seaside town — not really in the country, no, but within reach…

Chill awakened eyes wide open  At the penultimate point of return  Where sleep’s pure stupor ended  And kind chromatic currents began  To haunt vision with sunken sights  At sunrise hour, ablaze in sanguine Folds through feather clouds—as steps unmapped cast traces in sand muslin. 

on Reenroe Beach: late for a cleanup of blinding blue rope, blaze-orange nurdle;  mauve pebbles, sprawl-stunned and ravaged  beneath dusk’s grim-reaping firmament, greyed.  a couple in tryst tandem carry a gentle giant  like a shoulder-to-shorter-shoulder lifeline  as if their nesting comforts depended on it.  dwarfed by the decay-decimated immensity yet unburdened by its wooden splendour’s…