Roy Orbison’s Glasses

Ron Houchin

To me, they are, more than Beethoven’s hair or Einstein’s brain,

possibility, more important than authenticity or the truth.

Found in a Vernon, Texas pawnshop, atop a leather glasses case

inscribed with gold R.K.O. – said my friend who sent them.

He kept the case, mailed me the spectacles. I know they are unlikely

the Big O’s, any more than red words are actually Jesus’s in the Bible,

but they have leeway. Thick, smoky magnifiers in black frames.

Not sure I want them to be real. Not just a faith that there are

things out there worth twenty-four dollars and fifty cents, glasses

no one else will ever wear, but that we think there are. They lie

on the shelf of my vinyl collection, a lie, like most things sacred.

Reality radiates a little thicker around them, like air around the chopped off

saint’s finger, the gouged-out eye that’s seen too much, a deer skull hung on a fence – horns and all – rotting into the next six seasons. These lenses

won’t be destroyed. They have power, Mystery Girl before the heart

attack, a lottery ticket, frail paper, retaining power until the drawing.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 121:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.