Cormac Culkeen is a writer of poetry, fiction, short stories, and nonfiction. He lives in Galway, Ireland, and has completed an MA in Writing at the University of Galway. His poetry has been published in Skylight 47, The Wild Word, Causeway, Apricot Press, Bindweed, The Honest Ulsterman, The Orphic Review and Ropes Literary Journal. His debut poetry collection, The Boy with the Radio, was published 2022. He is one of the founding editors of Ragaire literary magazine.

The Hermit

Inquiring knocks still him
like a mouse in open grass
beneath a hawk’s shadow
shifting on thermals,

where cold lamp light
gathers night damp rooms.
Growing dust into
his daily path

curtains latch empty windows,
folds of drawing fabric swing
watching aged moments
pass into never,

floormap layers of newspaper,
accretions marking past’s mould,
where brief conceit
did immerse worlds.

Slowly, another knock moves him
through his curt, ancient trail,
his listening chair,
his mumbling radio,

where infinity becomes a stifle
of small gestures glimpsed unseen,
a stained mug,
a kettle’s hiss.

Rheumy squints through glasses
bring him a sleeved arm,
some tuneless whistling
stills his pulse,

movement muted to breath,
seeing quieter figures shrink.
Rain strums upon
fading steps.

Shadows melt in the panes,
shuffle from their rivet gaze.
Recognising a stasis,
spokes of sunlight

drop through cobweb depths,
seeds of light’s silence
angling for pause
touch his hands.

Echoes, Everywhere

1
The engine of Empire
is coercion.
A method of timed
ruin

to bleed resources and
gelt,
a fang on the throats
of lives

advancing rancor to
pick,
foes to weave and
vanish.

Its failures plot from
minds
new ideals of old
ends

made strange, worse. Acts
for
times ever hard to
flood

into our day’s hours,
these
chants of madness, these
sirens.

2
This fever dream haunts
everywhere,
in lands that count prizes
of

tallies made in darker
blood,
keening to its dream’s
revivals

to trail amongst us
all
a media’s hungry lie,
slogan

resentments of skin, races,
gods
of caustic flags. Acts
for

a future tasting its
rust
as clots of tension
travel

in a screen’s dead
light,
a fire born of
apathy,

its lowered virtues,
where
years mill around like
cowards,

a hiss of
things
in reverse, pulling us
under.

The Conspiracist

He turns, eyes
squint over in
dim uncertainty,

then blink as
his companion strides
from the shop.

I saw him first,
froze still with
recognition,

watched as he bent,
gathered butts from
the path,

his legs banded to
a dirty tracksuit,
buttoned jacket

over his frame,
collapsed on itself.
Eyes maliced

behind a beard
grey as still,
waiting sky.
They turn to
walk into the
street life.

Years ago, he
attended raves,
night’s dull abandon,

crammed his time
down a neck
bound to fires.

Now he talks
at friends, strangers,
in torrents; life

flexing its hands
in outrage, shadowed
in waiting corners

a pregnant staccato
of threats, foes
linked in a

scarecrow world of
resentment, words made
semaphore for his

echo of looped
madness, a voice
splicing endless reels.

Hope Street

Has few tenants; its streetlights wink
against littered darkness.

Billows of wind blow across its road,
climb cold walls

coloured with medals of grime. Curtains
twitch, eyes watch

behind windows spreadeagled with
pebbles of mold.

Cars oxidise in sullen rain, trapping
drizzle sluices obscured

houselights to waxen yellow, carries
ragged screen’s chatter,

a screed that draws tension to locks,
into clutched sorrow.

But days come when sunlight edges
from cloudbreaks,

lends doorsteps to beauty just so
amongst its virtues,

waits until a care returns,
moved from hours

added to hearts refusing
an era’s deficiencies

of watching walls, telling air
it hides in:

‘Allow this street’s name growth
at each chance.

Wash these grey avenues bright.
Lighten the wind

grained with daily recognitions.
Allow its people

songs like open fields, free
of steep lies

like birds airborne, a memory
remaining clear yet.

They’re ready to catch light
like trees

for its chanced release, grateful
nights, patient stars,

to pass into some new
unknown country

where hope bears understanding,
and luck,

to let its mystery touch
those that are,

in glimpses of purpose. To
accept what is

our time, flowing through and
beyond all things.’