Kieran Setright has previously had work published in Anthropocene, The Poetry Bus, Neon, Prole, Brittle Star, Deracine, and several other publications. He currently lives in the London area, where he has been involved in mental health, as nurse, therapist and patient, for the past fifteen years. Much of this experience is filtered through his work. He has previously lived in Dublin, Sydney and New Orleans, and is currently working on his first collection.

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As Celia Slowly Haemorrhaged

Even then you’d turn,
while on death’s hinge,
a sly doorway admitting
dark.
Even then you knew
the yield of your prods,
pointing past the soft
October mizzle in your head.
You, signalling specks,
chips, webs.
To be handed…no not that mug
the green not the red milk
that never saw the white insides
of an udder.
                          And Son, you said,
our drain is blocked. The place will flood.
We’ll be like Noah’s last two creatures.

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John Billy

He’d only need four knuckles
to give Joe Louis
what he’d never feel coming.
One wrist tied round ribs
he’d dance sweet as Sugar Ray

jab as quick as think –
his blows a sleight
a Glasgow air-kiss
the felt inside the flit.

‘Like a bullet through,’ he smiled,
eyes unbluing, snowing
small dementias. His left
they termed Long Sickness.
His right The Deeper Sleep.

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Podium Time

Come podium time he’ll turn,
eyes raised for his flag,
closed on his god, swing
his medal’s several pounds,
chew that edge – a smiling snap –
sensations in the round.

You see it each time, that eye-gleam,
that tickle of regret. Wavering –
and this his golden moment,
his Alexander’s brink.
The iron spirit. The bearing,
what all that glitter meant.