The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: out of emptied cups by Anne Casey

Nang Ta-khian murmurs to me

carve your name into my skin
i won’t flinch
if you go deep
lie beneath me and make love
to someone else
i will hold you while you sleep
i don’t mind you dancing
on my toes
swaying gently with my groans
know that i’ll
stand by you still
bow and bend me to your will
and when you’re old
but not as old as me
lean your back against my side
i will eat you
while
you lie
we’ll be married in the spring
when you burst out of my skin
a leaf-bud unfurling in the sun
or some such
precious thing


This selection comes from the book, out of emptied cups, available from Salmon Poetry.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Australia, Anne Casey is author of two poetry collections— ‘out of emptied cups’ (Salmon Poetry 2019) and ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017). Her poetry is widely published internationally— The Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), The Irish Times, The Canberra Times, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Quiddity, Entropy, apt, The Murmur House, Barzakh (State University of New York), DASH (California State University), The Stony Thursday Book, FourXFour, Westerly Magazine, Cordite, Verity La and Plumwood Mountain Review among many others. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in leading national daily newspaper, The Irish Times’ Most Read. Anne’s poetry has won/shortlisted for awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney. 
 

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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: out of emptied cups by Anne Casey

burnt offerings

swilling cinders
of eucalypt forests burning up
and down the coast
tinged with hints of fear
singed possum hairs lifting into
clear blue air
an earthquake in Italy shakes me awake
a mother crying somewhere
volcanic embers cycling into
smoke of broken promises
women’s choices smouldering
charred remains of exiles’ lives
democracy doused with lies
and set on fire
headless horsemen prancing in the coals
blackened souls stirring
soot from scorched relics
ashes to ashes
and my mother in a box too small
to hold her all
laid in a field with all the others
when she could have flown
with the four winds
so I could taste again
the sharp tang of her loss
married to the rest
lately everything tastes of ash


This selection comes from the book, out of emptied cups, available from Salmon Poetry.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Australia, Anne Casey is author of two poetry collections— ‘out of emptied cups’ (Salmon Poetry 2019) and ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017). Her poetry is widely published internationally— The Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), The Irish Times, The Canberra Times, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Quiddity, Entropy, apt, The Murmur House, Barzakh (State University of New York), DASH (California State University), The Stony Thursday Book, FourXFour, Westerly Magazine, Cordite, Verity La and Plumwood Mountain Review among many others. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in leading national daily newspaper, The Irish Times’ Most Read. Anne’s poetry has won/shortlisted for awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney. 
 

 

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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: out of emptied cups by Anne Casey

Suffer the little children

The last star climbed the still-black night
Sha/dows creep/ing, he app:eared
lam/b/ent shaft by her side
unholy wailing un/leashed under eaves
The first star crossed the coming-night
Shadows rose:as he declared
Take her now be/fore it’s light
Spit(e) searing smoke- filled air
No bright-star came to guide
Shadows scat/tered, no shep/herd
on that long and winding ride
Through stinging sleet un/heard
All the stars had hid their light
In shadowed gather/ing he emerged
Bring-him-away-quick devil’s blight
looming ha/bits, great black birds
Not-a-star climbed the heap/ed night
Shadows fall/ing she slipt-away
Child-mother night-visited only-son sacrificed
Secret burdens she would bear to the clay
A lone star skirred the cloven night
under- sha/dow he was dis: appeared
Swaddled tight stones piled high
Alone to hold him through the years
until the last star breached the darkling brume
Between gasps came their cries
Shadows passing through-the-tomb
From which
He’d rise


This selection comes from the book, out of emptied cups, available from Salmon Poetry.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Australia, Anne Casey is author of two poetry collections— ‘out of emptied cups’ (Salmon Poetry 2019) and ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017). Her poetry is widely published internationally— The Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), The Irish Times, The Canberra Times, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Quiddity, Entropy, apt, The Murmur House, Barzakh (State University of New York), DASH (California State University), The Stony Thursday Book, FourXFour, Westerly Magazine, Cordite, Verity La and Plumwood Mountain Review among many others. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in leading national daily newspaper, The Irish Times’ Most Read. Anne’s poetry has won/shortlisted for awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney. 
 

 

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The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: out of emptied cups by Anne Casey

PLEASE DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS

a colleague of mine once observed i have a mind like a steel trap
—it may have been meant as a compliment but it didn’t
feel like that at the time

he was wrong of course it is much more like a labyrinth
expertly appointed to hold within safe confines a variety
of monsters of commonplace yet
inexplicable design spectres hermetically sealed in lightless
spaces where they pace unattended waiting
to be fed

which i do periodically subconsciously—ignoring the signs and
tripping that switch to wander into
familiar habitats here the electrifying jolt of nightclub lights
striking out of the demi-dark

there the fluorescent flicker of the too-bright doctors’ rooms or the overhead strip lights humming along with the rumble of subway tracks a twilit street or the sunny
play ground running-running from the old man coming

with his white-haired wreckage of sagging
flesh hanging from his open
fly and i am eight years old again
and i can think of
nothing else but running and in that room there
is only running an
d running and in each
other there are
the others—other things coming and then
there is the no-nono

No NO!! cell where the light is nothing but
subterranean murk the soundtrack
a thundering heartbeat above oblivion

each time determined i will try something
different but it always ends the same so i lock the do
or again praying one time the switch flicks
i will find the light
warmed to an early evening
glow where there is nothing hungry
waiting just a tattered mound of dusty rags & a scattering
of shattered twig-like things only slightly too
white—fragments crushed
between steel teeth


This selection comes from the book, out of emptied cups, available from Salmon Poetry.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Australia, Anne Casey is author of two poetry collections— ‘out of emptied cups’ (Salmon Poetry 2019) and ‘where the lost things go’ (Salmon Poetry 2017). Her poetry is widely published internationally— The Irish Poetry Reading Archive (James Joyce Library, University College Dublin), The Irish Times, The Canberra Times, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Quiddity, Entropy, apt, The Murmur House, Barzakh (State University of New York), DASH (California State University), The Stony Thursday Book, FourXFour, Westerly Magazine, Cordite, Verity La and Plumwood Mountain Review among many others. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in leading national daily newspaper, The Irish Times’ Most Read. Anne’s poetry has won/shortlisted for awards in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the USA, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney. 
 

 

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