Francis O’Hare was born in Newry, Co. Down, in 1970. His first full collection, Falling into an O, was published by Lagan Press, Belfast, in 2007. A further pamphlet collection was published by Lagan Press in 2009, entitled Alphaville. He published his second collection, Somewhere Else, with Lagan Press in 2011. In the same year, he also published a collection in America, with Evening Street Press, Ohio, entitled Home and Other Elsewheres. A new collection, Sailing To Omeath, was published by Arlen House, Dublin, in January 2020. He has published poems in various magazines in Ireland, the U.K. and the United States, including Poetry Ireland Review, Evening Street Review, Glasgow Review of Books, The Galway Review, PN Review, The Blue Nib and The Yellow Nib.
On Location
I’m standing outside
The Homeland Diner
on Downpatrick Street
in Rathfriland, under
a dull, cloudy sky
the colour of gruel
smoking a Marlboro
Light, looking cool
as James Dean
in a black and white photo,
my zipped-up Harrington
jacket pure retro,
as if I’m the star
of a Hollywood movie,
a deep, method actor,
pure Stanislavski,
when a lorry swings round
the corner, from Main
Street, blown by the wind
past me and on
down the street, like a stage-
coach. I stub out my smoke
in a nearby bin, gauge
the time, then I walk
to my Chevrolet car.
I get in and turn
the key, check my mirror,
and slowly discern
the oncoming lights
of traffic through drizzle,
before joining its
Oregon trail
to various places
off in the distance:
Katesbridge, Poyntzpass
and other locations.
Inniskeen
Midnight. Moonlight. Monaghan.
I walked the roads of Inniskeen
trying to find my B & B
amidst a thick fog. Poetry
had brought me to this sorry state.
The Kavanagh weekend. I blame the late
licence, booze and wide-eyed wonder
for leaving the others in the bar
of the Nuremore Hotel and Country Club,
and getting, after a mist-chill pub-
crawl of the constellations, lost
between the stars and winking frost
of the dark townland. The universe
stretched out above me, fine as lace,
as night fell into morning like
a burnt coal through a grate. I took
a wrong turn somewhere near Orion
or Cassiopeia, I’m not sure which one,
and ended up back in the glow
of the hotel grounds, my epic solo
odyssey into the unearthly
estate that Tarry Flynn once thought he
knew by heart (until he came
to the haggard gate and found his home
place translated: strange, eternal)
over. But I’d sensed a spell
being cast upon me as I listened
to that silent parish as it glistened.
Elvis Presley
after Thom Gunn
Nearly half a century since he died
his voice still echoes, a lonely mystery train
unreeling through the early morning rain
to somewhere far away, the countryside
still lost in darkness, empty and forlorn.
Towns appear and disappear, their lights
as fleeting and ephemeral as nights
in Vegas, glittering, rhinestone-bright with neon.
His voice rolls on, a rumbling, thunderous growl
of yearning, longing, misery and joy
that deepened from the one the wonder boy
from Tupelo unleashed upon us all
to that sad moan he made us cry with, death
waiting in the wings to claim the man
offstage; a doomed king, pure Shakespearean,
the audience hanging on his very last breath.
The Bat
Alone in the house
late on in the night
she senses the darkness
becoming incarnate
as a creature appears
out of thin air
to embody her fears
of lonely despair
she tried to drown
in a bottle of red,
blood-red, wine.
She must have invited
this unwelcome guest
in by not closing
the window. Aghast
as the shadow takes wing,
she watches, wide eyed,
it circle the room
like a lasso, pure dread
filling the gloom,
until she is caught
in the noose of its stare
and feels her dry throat
sicken. The monster,
sensing its prey
in its power now, compels
obedience, every
heartbeat, each pulse,
until the entire
house is the heart
of darkness, a vampire
’s crypt, deep as claret.
Chandleresque
I fall asleep listening to
Philip Marlowe’s hardboiled tones
recounting how his latest case
involves more dames and murders, grue-
some gangsters, cops and telephones,
crummy joints, lost witnesses,
and all the usual Chandleresque
ingredients: the Camel smokes,
bougainvillea-scented nights,
a whiskey bottle, roll-top desk,
drugstores, D.A.s, coffee, sex,
drugs, blackmail and highballs, lights
turned on in darkened rooms, matchbooks,
fedora hats and stocking tops,
stiletto blades and neon signs,
guns, gardenias, gloves, ice picks,
drives through L.A.’s suburbs, slaps
from angry clients, kisses, swoons,
all leading through a labyrinth
of plotlines tangled as a web
to one big final scene, which I
hear/hallucinate for the umpteenth
time; our hero, bitter, glib,
dissolving in a long goodbye.
The Galway Review 