FRANCIS O’HARE was born in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, in 1970. He has published two collections of poetry; Falling into An O [2007] and Somewhere Else [2011] with Lagan Press, Belfast. He published a collection in America, with Evening Street Press, Ohio, entitled Home and Other Elsewheres in 2011. He works as a teacher.

A. K. THAYSEN is an artist, cartoonist, writer, and poet from Texas. She has a Bachelor’s in Painting and a second Bachelor’s in English Literature, graduating both summa cum laude & Phi Beta Kappa. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Glasgow, where she was an editor of its literary magazine, From Glasgow to Saturn. She is currently a project manager for the charity Uncovered Voices, a series of creative writing workshops for survivors of sexual and domestic abuse in Glasgow. She has bicycled across four countries, traveled to 24, and lived in the US, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Scotland, and England. You can view her portfolio at: https://akthaysen.wordpress.com/.

TOBY SHARPE has two degrees from the University of Edinburgh. He misses living in Montréal, and currently calls London home. He is the co-founder of Project Myopia, a movement to diversify university curricula: www.projectmyopia.com.

Carlingford

I will arise and go now, and go to Carlingford,
and a small B&B room rent there, with en-suite bathroom supplied:
Nine oysters will I have there, and a glass of wine afterward,
and sleep alone in the hen-loud night.

And I shall read some Yeats there, for Yeats feels like the rain,
falling in the early morning to where the alarm-call rings;
There midnight’s all a downpour, and noon a pint of plain,
and evening full of the sea-gull’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for as I drive to work each day,
I hear sea water slapping with slow sounds in my ear;
While I sit at a zebra crossing, or on the motorway,
I hear it, more urgent every year.

                                                                                Francis O’Hare

Driving Conversation: Texas as Text

The immanently meaningful nature of space is closely connected with the semiotic essence of a human being, beginning, on the one hand, from the dependence of the physical well-being of an individual on her/his ability to handle the surrounding space, and, on the other hand, from philosophical discussions on the true nature and aim of human existence as connected with movement of semiotic structures in spatial configurations — Anti Randviir, Space and Place as Substrates of Culture

the crucifixes lining the sidewalks
like bumpers in a bowling alley

the sharp geometry of a fast food sign
created with a pile of 5×5 inch plastic letters

they’ve run out of e’s and s’s
and must make do

today it’s “ChsebuRgr & coke 4.9O
Kome again & god bles u”

the headache from squinting
at the small print of the road

let’s never give anybody all the letters.

                                                                                             A. K. Thaysen

salutations

with one guy
every time we’d have sex / make love
i’d gaze upon his limbs, stomach, jaw,
as if they could look back
and i’d whisper ‘hi’.

having spent my life / youth, trying to be invisible
it was exhilarating to know i could be heard.
‘hi!’, ‘hi.’, ‘hi!’.

i’m sure it got tiresome:
a partner who constantly hails your genitals
as if they were old friends.

after a while it started to sound more like
i was reminding the both of us that i
was still there.

with each kiss and each ‘hi!’,
i was insisting that i hadn’t
left yet /
that i’d never go.

                                              Toby Sharpe

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