Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer based on the west coast of Ireland. She has, in the past, been a teacher at senior level, worked professionally in education and management for an Aids Organization, and reviewed fiction and non-fiction for the Sunday Business Post, Ireland. She attended the Seamus Heaney Centre summer school at Queen’s University Belfast in 2013. She has been published or is forthcoming at Prelude (US), The Louisville Review (US), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Crannog (IRL), Ofi Press (Mexico), Frogmore Papers (UK), Cyphers( IRL), Apalachee Review (US), Foliate Oak Literary Magazine (US,) New Contrast (Cape Town), Quiddity (US), Right Hand Pointing (US), Grey Sparrow Journal (US), Off The Coast (US), The Galway Review (IRL), The Liner (US), Into The Void (IRL), Roanoke Literary Journal (US), The Rockhurst Review (US), Banshee Literature (IRL), The Catamaran Literary Reader (US), The Worcester Review (US), The Stonecoast review (US), The Main St Rag, (US), Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, (US), Poetry in The Park, Athlone. The Poetry collective, Clare Champion, The Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, (US, Spring & Summer 2018), The Cape Rock: Poetry (US), The Curlew (UK), The Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, (US, Fall 2018), Crossways Feb’ 2019, The Qutub Minar Review ( Intl,’ 2019 ) Southbank Poetry London , The Normal School (US), Beyond Words Literary Magazine (Berlin) CHILLFILTR – art is truth (US) , The Trouvaille Review (US), Shot Glass Journal (US), Albany Poets (US), and others. She was featured poet on Poet head – Contemporary Irish women poets, January 9th – 16th 2018. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Dermot Healy International prize for poetry. She was placed on the long list for the 2019 Fish Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the Dalkey Creates Writers Prize 2020. She joined the editorial board of Beyond Words International Literary Magazine, Berlin, for Issue 5, July August 2020. She presented her work on national radio, RTE Lyric FM, Poetry File in 2021 Her book, The Heart Uncut was published by Words On The Street publishers, Galway in October 2020.
Honeyed Youth
Brigid’s day is to be spent in Paris.
Psychotherapists speak of synchronicity
While Jung turns over in his grave. He has
Well, issues.
Brigid seems to be the patron saint of birthing,
Women, poultry, farmers (a lot of chicken things
going on), maybe sailors too and buildings or fires
It is exhausting.
But accounts differ.
I am drawn to the Centre Culturel Irlandais bibliotheques
To excavate Brigid, learn her trade, her method,
But I run out of time and trade St. Brigid
For, quelle surprise! A chicken dinner and a lusty
Camembert.
Listen, I am flesh, mostly water, and a lot of west of
Ireland bone. As if I would trade this for a saint.
I would not.
Maybe if I were not far from home and could feel her
Womanhood instead of theological wonders. Maybe.
No doubt there will be dispute.
I do not believe in saints. I have gladly, only known sinners.
This night the students are partying hard and sticking a stake
In every pious adult heart.
© Marian Kilcoyne
Sea Ghost
Ghost visits, petulant and bitter, his head wreathed
In wrack, fronds slithering down, salt crusting his eyes.
He crawled from shore to bog, feeding his grudge, cursing
all living things, from fish to bird. Thrashing nature
in his stride to redemption. She is the biggest obstacle to
his return to the husky intoxication of life.
He circles her, laying offerings of shell, anemones and feather
stars, from which she fashions earrings. He wants to tell her
It is not a good look, but her spit of disdain stops his volley.
Ghost makes his case over again, pathos his gesture, brio lacing
his stride. His sins lie at her feet stitched into a quilt of coralline
algae that moves and shimmies, pushing to get out for an encore.
In her star befeathered vanity, an impostor medusa lurks, but beneath
that again an unforgiving queen. Long ago he had invoked Hypnos who
claims half of every human life, and put a spell on her, leaving a rag doll.
She will not absolve the phantasm but in one indrawn breath subsumes
him into her being, mooring him perpetually, north of her icy soul.
© Marian Kilcoyne