Three Poems by Karl O’Hanlon

Bright

I never gave much thought to the word ‘bright’,
when one morning a crystal January sky coupled
with song from a flown bracelet of goldfinches
made its slight vowel as clean and blue as day.

Quasimodo’s Magpie

Hear its laughter
in the black orangery
of his words, sand grains in the book’s gutter

and an entire sea throws its solving pearls
like notes on a mouth harp
in summer, salt and citrus coarse lips

mouthing his lugubrious lines.
The poet’s shadow cast
far beyond the ark of his poetry,

no riddle to his page’s cool bronze rituals
that made the Telamons
more fixed in their ruinous stoicism,

magpie laughing in the black trees.

Night Rabbits

Now the window’s dark
I must imagine them: little deer,
furtive First Communion children,
velvet-horned snails in the kale.
Let them: may they eat the whole world.

Karl O’Hanlon lives in Maynooth, Ireland. His work has appeared in Agenda, Blackbox Manifold, The Hopkins Review, Poetry, and PN Review. His debut pamphlet And Now They Range was published by Guillemot Press.