Night Boat
The seats haven’t changed
since last year. Bodies wash up
marooned by the news.
Someone’s been at the volume.
A girl smiles – they were sat there.
Football shirts run free
down the wrong walkway, with pints,
bend their knees, wait for sea legs
then double-back. Everyone watches
the children no one’s watching.
A couple stroll around the shop
for the third time, pick up the same toy,
it makes no difference
the exchange is closed.
Dawn pushes in, pale with Dublin.
Laughter drifts through the swing doors.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 129:
Issue 129 is a fitting finale to Eavan Boland's term as editor of Poetry Ireland Review. Along with Eavan's inspirational editorial, the issue includes new poems from Eleanor Hooker, Luke Morgan, Mary Montague, Simon Ó Faoláin, Geraldine Mitchell, Brian Kirk, Dane Holt, and Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal. The titles weighed and measured by the reviewing team include new books from Mary Noonan, Tracy K Smith, Nessa O'Mahony, Susan Millar DuMars, Stephen Sexton, John W Sexton, and Eileen Sheehan, along with Thomas McCarthy's expert appraisal of Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy, edited by Benjamin Keatinge. Ciarán O'Rourke provides an essay on William Carlos Williams, assessing his influence on Irish writing and the influence of Irish writers on the New Jersey-based poet and paediatrician. And artist Ailbhe Barret provides the landscape images for PIR 129, a stunning visual send-off for this last issue of 2019.