Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Two Parades, poems by Luke Morgan.
Two Parades
We watched from the Claddagh
artists from Macnas puppeteering
their giant amphibian named Alf
with blinking eyes, steering
his paper-mâché head toward
children who had the glare
of their parents’ phones ignored
in the briefly shimmering air.
Nights later, thousands of folks
lined O’Connell Street for a parade
that did not happen – a hoax.
The social media brigade
quickly took to points-scoring –
misinformation and its effect –
but in the photos from this outpouring
on those who’d failed to fact-check
I saw vacant silhouettes
starved behind the structures
cold made of their breaths
for fire, drumbeat, sculptures
of newts hewn from kitsch –
a great connective stem
rendered by the streetlight which,
alone, could not reach them.
Mathematics
Given they did not believe that one was a number,
according to Aristotle, Archimedes,
and the other great mathematicians,
I do not exist on this anonymous Sunday
as the hours tottle up to night
outside my country home.
These days between subtracted summer
and added winter are the realm of twos –
hands held at a Christmas market,
the possibility of root vegetables in a pot
before work is finished, an ultrasound polaroid
tacked to the door of a dyadic fridge.
Instead, I define my tidy life
with the cold stock-taking of the calculator –
enough money, enough time, more books
than I could ever hope to read,
my face by lamplight in a window
like an abacus bead the world forgot.
No Funeral
The Royal College of Surgeons collected her body
and we were left with no God to pretend
in front of; no trays of sandwiches adorned
a room, no uncle quipped about how
she didn’t believe in any of this; no bloated tyres
signalled the arrival of in-laws, gaudy
neighbours, those of increasingly tenuous connection
blessing themselves out of some clumsy trend
to consider her wax-like non-self mourned;
we were left with no grey morning, no awkward bow
before the shuffle into pews, no gentle fires
of tall candles, nor greetings whispered out of affection
for a place unfamiliar and familiar as a church;
no cold marble floor shocked our knee-bend
and no perfume-choked hugs from high-fliers
who were sorry for our loss, but keen to lurch
on what our plans would be, just the same;
above all, no mass card, made with the lend
of a flash-flattened photograph taken on a warmed
Mediterranean bench of her smiling, now
above no fridge stocked with all a loss requires;
fruit salad, smoked salmon, a potato dish without a name;
while no kettle nearing overspill
invited no old and cherished friend
who grabbed hold of our shoulders, scorned
by the sorrow these occasions avow
to make us roar with laughter, despite the criers;
celebrate the living, the living still.
© Luke Morgan
Luke Morgan is an Irish poet. His third collection “Blood Atlas” is new from Arlen House in 2025 and was completed with the assistance of a bursary from The Arts Council of Ireland. He is the recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award 2025. He lives and works in Galway, Ireland.