Download PDF Here 13th Anniversary
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One December 2022.
Love, poems by Kate Ennals.
Love
after Mila Haugová
I can’t tell you anything about that
except some say it starts in the eye
others, the gut.
I believe it’s all fingers and lips
and the tongue is essential
It starts as a quivering bubble
full of breath and light
wobbling and goofy
attached to a wand
As it floats away, it seals itself
into a perfect sphere
of tension and air
but soon the beautiful
bursts on the sharp of brick
dissolves into Friday night puddles
splashed with diesel and mud
becomes an oily ripple, a dull
smear of colour
a smashed broken bottle
beneath a dirty streetlight
The Inchoateness of Being
Each step is dredged from silt
every smile is a wedge of lip
fixed by genetic modification, pandemics,
politics, hash tag poisoned umbrellas
eagles with golf balls stuck in their throats
wars, dead black coral, child soldiers.
I’m exhausted scratching poems
that bring the inchoateness of being
into an expressible state*
*Seamus Heaney
Tete de Veau Sweetmeats
‘The meat soft as the leg of an angel’ Billy Collins’ Osso Bocco
Garlic, tomatoes, carrots, and diaphanous onion gild the
dish with herbs and wine. My tongue forks the sensuous meat
into red rooster potatoes – salted, boiled, buttered, soft
mashed – to absorb the flavours of the tottering calf fed green grass as
fresh as April rain, and baked as pink as May blossom in the
flush of Spring. The calf, after suckling, is torn limb by leg
beheaded, its flesh then served on the bone, braised, its marrow of
life sucked clean, its head hollowed out to serve the sweetmeats of an
other, prepared by a chef who believes he is nothing less than an angel
© Kate Ennals
Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Live Encounters, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, Crossways, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, The Ogham Stone, plus many more). Her first collection of poetry At The Edge (Lapwing) was published in 2015.
Her second collection, Threads (Lapwing), was published in April 2018. Her third collection, Elsewhere (Vole Imprint), in November 21. Her fourth, Practically A Wake, will be published next year (Salmon Poetry). She has lived in Ireland for nearly 30 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan.
Kate also runs At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office. Her blog can be found at https://kateennals.com/. She is currently on the board of PEN na h’Eireann/PEN Ireland and Cavan Volunteer Centre.