Jacky Stephenson-Gaspar is a Texan-born Romani writer, educator, translator, poet and Ph.D. candidate now based at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City– where they specialize in Marxist Theory and Postmodern Italian, Spanish and Lusophone literatures. As a writer across mediums, they can elsewhere be found writing on American poetics, surfing, queer Texan identity, the globalization of sport and the Latin American Boom. Selections of their work can be found in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Open Doors Review and the Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology.

Beside Yeats’ Grave or, St. Columba’s

 

And what muse bends

          freedom fighter 

to knees?

What face, 

might so melt the

          hardened heart–

blind the eye 

to once just anger?

 

What if I’m yet still, the angry lover?

 

Is there no space shared 

for muse and country?

No politic of love

          and revolution?

 

Oh, 

how we desire freedom–

          I fear love exists

where freedom needs not

          be dreamt.

 

What bound soul is loving?

Perhaps love

          is the unbinding?

 

Will crows visit the grass

which grows from the

          fungi on my chest?

Will spilt blood refrain my

          sultry whispers

or my lambast shouts?

Love and freedom, I recall

on such stained hallow ground–

twin lifely yearns

in death

          finally found.

 

The Isle’s Isle

 

Into the mist

          this afternoon

leaving

          offerings

to a beach called Keem        for gods gone and woollen totems.

          

Awakening still–

What if I said Gaeilge sounds

          a sheep bleat?

What if I said it stirs–

          stew of bronzed

ancient trumpet fare.

          White walled village, 

insurance bides the ram dents

          in the van’s passenger door and

a traveller camp bonfire

engulfs the once tepid midnight–

          grandah, I wish

                   you knew this place.

 

Down a mountain slope, in

          earshot 

of the only open

pub on Achill, I dream 

that Heaven appears

the souls’ derivative–

          maybe then, grandah,

you’re already here.

          

In this fog,

sheep littered rock face–

          my Heaven smells of sheep shit

          and the sea.

I wouldn’t want it

          any other way–

not now, 

never again.

 

Between Buddha and O’Neill

 

If Buddha’s way be earnest,

          then I ought be

more a prick–

          chase off enlightenment

          with tight wound fists.

Revert,

          abandon humanity–

          pray in disdain to might

return a sheep,

a gull,

          out here,

on an emerald Atlantic cheek.

 

O’Neill monologues read

          translucent now–

humanity 

is wasted on me.

          How pure a life I’d

live, 

an oyster,

          basking beast–

off an inlet,

or bay

in the wealth

of a

poor man’s Eden.