Mindfulness

Colm Brennan

Don’t tell me about silence.

Don’t tell me you made yourself sit

cross-legged on the bedroom floor.

You gotta just be, you know? Don’t say it.

Without your phone, like, truly alone.

Don’t tell me about living in the moment.

Don’t tell me the bloody alarm bleeps when

ten minutes of being present have expired?

I already know what it’s like. To lie in a darkened room

with nothing but my life to distract me. To stomp

over the slippery leaves and resilient needles

of a forest floor on a crisp November morning

and peer past bare branches at the bright grey sky.

And I know what it’s like to wait in line,

wipe someone’s breath from a tram window

and hurry, forcing a path through the throngs,

just in case, god-forbid, I miss my stop.

Don’t tell me I should try it sometime.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 124:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Poetry Ireland Review 124 contains new poems from Paula Meehan, Ciarán O'Rourke, Lizzy Nichols, Mark Ward, Gabriel Rosenstock, Özgecan Kesici, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and many other compelling voices. Also included is Eilean Ni Chuilleanáin's remembrance of her Cork childhood, excerpted from The Vibrant House: Irish Writing and Domestic Space, a book of essays reviewed in issue 124 by Caitríona O'Reilly. Other books considered in this issue include collections from Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Mark Granier, Tara Bergin, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets, and the Collected Poems of the late Dennis O'Driscoll, and there's also a short interview with Thomas Kinsella along with an essay on Kinsella as poet and civil servant. Another Kinsella is this issue’s Featured Poet, Alice Kinsella, and all artwork for the issue is supplied by artists associated with the Olivier Cornet Gallery on Great Denmark Street, around the corner from Poetry Ireland.

Available now to purchase online or in all good bookstores.