Poems by Afric McGlinchey

Quenched


Listening for the works of love
between a cuckoo call

and the staccato-sweet reply;
flabbergasted by the husky scent 

that emerges from a sack of hand-
decorated, sifted stones;

the light that leaps from a snap-net;
winging glass that comes

out of the cloudy nowhere;
kissing the copper apostles

as they fly across slow water,
and you, whom even the gods desire.

        *

Late stars subside
slowly, inhale the hush,
like a hesitancy,
as if certain things 
came in slant 

to sip the air he’s just 
finished breathing,
wine-light
in the sliver of rain 
through an open window. 

Age-old undulations
dance like smoke
and spinal moves,
second glass, perhaps 
a beat too long, falling

        *

Remember that flint-dark, 
with the rain chipped into it? 
And the streetlights, 

amber and pooling around 
our island of two?
Devilish midnight torrents!

And how, as the clock 
shifted its long arrow 
towards the inevitable, 

your mouth became a circus – 
no body could forget 
such trespass and obsession!



Threshold


I am day and night now,
the walls of the world

turning a lush of sorrow songs
into passageways.

I am standing 
in deep water, dear

body, doing things 
backwards, step-stirrup,

while singing makes
a sanctuary for some.

        *

Scarcely a night
for the river marbled 

by poison, 
spasmodic devil; 

taking us to people-otherness
in a city of black keys, 

weak light groping 
for the big door.

​

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Afric McGlinchey was born in Galway. She has lived in Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Paris, London and Spain, and currently lives in West Cork. Her first collection, The lucky star of hidden things was published by Salmon Poetry in 2012, following a Hennessy Poetry Award. The collection was translated into Italian and published by l’Arcolaio. She has since won several other awards, and her second book, Ghost of the Fisher Cat, published in 2016, has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Afric appears as one of Ireland’s ‘Rising Poets’ in a special issue of Poetry Ireland Review.
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Weblinks: 
​www.africmcglinchey.com
http://www.writing.ie/interviews/poets/learning-how-to-skin-a-cat-the-daunting-second-collection-by-afric-mcglinchy/
http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=380&a=221