Stories tagged neil-mccarthy-poetry

The Eleventh Commandment

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{I}threw my head into a bar before happy hour ended to find The Quiet Man projected onto the back wall, just in time to see Seán Thornton’s lean-in-to-kiss; Mary Kate pure as a storm in the graveyard’s alluring loneliness.

On a bridge in Regensburg

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To hear my name, called out across the Roman stones on a bridge in Regensburg through the languid March drizzle, was to breathe again as my head burst through the water.

Small dreams of a late worker

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She stuffed the stars down her stockings and left;

Sphere

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Blankly, I watch from the safety of a satellite the giant swirl of cloud, seemingly innocent from this distance, bearing down on Leyte Island.

Proclaiming to go forth with the strangulation of his own son

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Earlier in my career as fantasist, I imagined my uncle had been a warrior in his previous life – not a soldier adorned with medals in full military regalia mind, but more a half-naked spear-wielding tribal chief in face paint.

On the subject of Brendan Behan, eight lines on why I'm fearful of Christopher Ricks

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Returning word for word, I, in my nightmare, bore an audience from the building

Four Bars

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Increase the volume of the music in a bar and rather than ask for it to be turned back down, people will gladly yell across the table at each other. It must have begun as a social experiment, to gauge interaction, or test hearing, or train people to be…

Do not compare the darkness

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Do not compare the darkness to the night

Criticism of the Dead

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The wind has no voice and yet we listen, perhaps imagining the ramblings of a mad man

Due to the volume of submissions

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Somebody pushed the automatic fuck-you button today, not the due-to-the-volume-of-submissions-we-receive button, nor the it-does-not-fit-our-editorial-needs button;

3 short poems

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Say the word and I shall become a photograph;

Owed to the IRS

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Sleep is a steep comfort these stock-still nights - the ceiling an artexed breadth of angst, the blue power light of the laptop in the corner exhorting me to turn it on

A man with bleeding hands

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A man with bleeding hands at the back door of Out of the Closet this morning asked me for the bride and groom figurines at the top of my donation box

Istanbul

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They are plastering on lipstick in pay-to-enter toilets around the corner from the mosques, where old men sit on back streets selling toilet seats, spices by the shovel, flashlights, and Audrey Hepburn t-shirts

The Eleventh Commandment

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I never thought I’d miss the sound of church bells, reminding me of my sudden apostasy, faintly ringing over the rumpus where even the birds can’t get a word in edgeways.