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2010 - 2025 - 16th A n n i v e r s a r y

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth September 2026

Noel Monahan

Celebration of GULLIVER’S Travels Cover artwork ‘Beneath the Surface’ by Irish artist Emma Barone 2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

LIVE ENCOUNTERS MAGAZINE

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph by Mark Ulyseas. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G

September 2026

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Donate Now and Keep the Magazine Live in 2026 Live Encounters is a not-for-profit free online magazine that was founded in 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. It showcases some of the best writing from around the world. Poets, writers, academics, civil & human/animal rights activists, academics, environmentalists, social workers, photographers and more have contributed their time and knowledge for the benefit of the readers of:

Live Encounters Magazine (2010), Live Encounters Poetry & Writing (2016), Live Encounters Young Poets & Writers (2019) and now, Live Encounters Books (August 2020). We are appealing for donations to pay for the administrative and technical aspects of the publication. Please help by donating any amount for this just cause as events are threatening the very future of Live Encounters. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om Mark Ulyseas Publisher/Editor

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Contributors

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G

September 2026

Noel Monahan Richard W Halperin Anne Donnellan Arthur Broomfield Colin Dardis Debarati Bhattacharyya DeWitt Clinton Dominique Hecq Ian Watson Janet Downing Jean O’Brien John Grey Martina Tierney Maurice Devitt Michael J Leach Peter Witt Scott Thomas Outlar

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

POEM

Noel Monahan © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

NOEL MONAHAN Noel Monahan is a native of Granard, Co. Longford, now living in Cavan. He has published seven collections of poetry with Salmon Poetry. An eight collection, Celui Qui Porte Un Veau, a selection of French translations of his work was published in France by Alidades, in 2014. A selection of Italian translations of his poetry was published in Milan by Guanda in November 2015: “Tra Una Vita E L’Altra”. His poetry was prescribed text for the Leaving Certificate English, 2011- 2012. His play: “Broken Cups” won the RTE P.J. O’Connor award in 2001and Chalk Dust, a long poem of his, was adapted for stage and directed by Padraic McIntyre, Ramor Theatre, 2019. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Noel had to reinvent his poetry readings and he produced a selection of Short Films: “Isolation & Creativity”, “Still Life”, “Tolle Lege” and A Poetry Day Ireland Reading for Cavan Library,2021. Recently, he edited “Chasing Shadows”, a miscellany of poetry for Creative Ireland. His ninth poetry collection, “Journey Upstream” was published by Salmon Poetry in April 2024.

300th Celebration of GULLIVER’S Travels Lilliput made me a prisoner, Arms and legs fastened, My hair tied down, Human creatures Not even the size of your finger, Climbed ladders to reach me “Quinbus Flestrin / “Man Mountain” They called me.

“Qui / Quid” / “Who / What” Didn’t I put out the fire By unusual means … “Le Jour Est á Nous, Mes Enfants What are you all talking about anyway? Mouthing away in Liliputian: About Lilliput and me a giant, Given the “Freedom of the City” And now I’m charged with treason For urinating in public And I have no alternative But to escape …

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE ANGELS IN AN ICON 2

Richard W. Halperin. Photo credit: Joseph Woods. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

RICHARD W HALPERIN Richard W. Halperin, born in Chicago in 1943, holds U.S.-Irish dual nationality and lives in Paris. Since 2010, he has seen five collections published by Salmon/Cliffs of Moher and twenty smaller collections published by Lapwing/Ballyhalbert. The two most recent Lapwings, just published, are Silk Threads and Some Walk with Stilts. ‘Now, Mother, What’s the Matter?’ from his 2025 Salmon All the Tattered Stars: Selected & New Poems was Poem of the Week in The Guardian January 19th. A new poem ‘Echoes of a River’ is on the Danish artist Else Pia Martinsen Erz web site, as a tribute to her painting ‘Faith and Migratory Birds’ in which refugees and geese are treading through puddles of water toward a small hole in the sky.

Three Angels in an Icon 2 My wife and I frequented Three Angels when we lived near the Église Saint-Honoré d’Alyau, Paris 16th. An enormous painting of the icon in a niche over the altar. They the three angels – or are they a kindly

interpretation of God? – sit around a table with food or flowers on it. Years later I bought a Three Angels icon for the kitchen wall

of my flat. A table, with food or flowers on it, after all.

Three angels in an icon.

A shift to the centre, and everything takes on the perspective of fear

continued overleaf... © Richard W. Halperin

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE ANGELS IN AN ICON 2

of falling, roofs sharply tilted, faces angular because that’s what shock does, or as circular as the bottom of a well, colours made of eggs

and of mineral grains, spasms of love, of creation, gilt and excrement taken into account, originality counting for nothing because of the I AM of God – so one picks up from the bin the discarded tools of creation: proportion, absence, breath, simplicity, mercy mercy mercy because that’s what the artist needs. The artist has fasted and prayed, fasted and prayed,

RICHARD W HALPERIN

has incised lines which are those of the first cave paintings, lines

which connect the stars, which are those on one’s palm, on the faces of the very old and on the faces of children trashed. A universe of flat: of Jerusalem, of Maalula Syria,

of Novgorod, of a Patrick Pye copperplate, of the rack in my flat where call it clothing hangs, of keyhole windows, of knobby trees caked with Christ’s blood and with Kundry’s insomnia.

continued overleaf... © Richard W. Halperin

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE ANGELS IN AN ICON 2

Something on wood, a substance which cracks, something in tempera an edible substance which is poison and which is honey,

platelets of blood and of ichor, floating things which are nailed with

rusty nails upon trees, upon horses, upon the oval Mother, upon a chuckle

maybe hers, all held by lines which will not converge in infinity because who gives a toss about infinity? A noci because all icons are mirrors.

A small gathering, a conversation which is bread, a piece of broken wood, a Simon of Cyrene because bystanders are also responsible.

RICHARD W HALPERIN

©Mark Ulyseas

Photograph © Mark Ulyseas © Richard W. Halperin

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE BRUTAL

Anne Donnellan © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

ANNE DONNELLAN Anne Donnellan has published two collections of poetry with Revival Press Limerick. Her second collection If Only We Could Bottle It was published in December 2025. Anne’s work has appeared in several poetry journals including Crannóg and Skylight 47. She was the 2023 winner of the Allingham Poetry Competition. In 2025 she was a recipient of the John Hewitt International summer school bursary. She is the curator and host of the Galway Poetry Lobby.

The Brutal My stomach in my throat I watch faith heads stroke your cloak lay hands on your greasy frame invoke heaven’s help for the fury campaign

your handlers boast of sheer destruction a precision hunt to torch the culpable this spiel fake as the orange of your follicles lines of dead school children testify to the brutal I ask who in heaven could guide this horror direct the febrile head of a deluded dealer as rockets ignite middle eastern skies and frantic knots the guts of the innocent I need to interview God

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE BRUTAL

Testimony I can barely hold my balance trekking the Portuguese Fisherman’s Trail face a lid lowered to the crumbling earth ochre clay deadens my step hazard placards testify to collapsed cliffs plead attention bizarre shapes of sea stacks grab my gaze in the depths preaching on the jade of a cunning ocean that always wins this pitiless battle for land

blocks of centuries back Columbus sailed from this place to seize what was not his to take I rest my case

ANNE DONNELLAN

Kill Chain this mind battery combat at the battle hub console when everything seems possible and nothing looks real fury fills the screen makes it sizzle with menacing messages

artificial drives the deadly in the sky-conflict path swarms of shooting missiles dispatch destruction at the front only the bleeding resistance of dead school children pinches the pulse this kill chain is not a game

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

UILEANN

Dr Arthur Broomfield © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

ARTHUR BROOMFIELD Dr Arthur Broomfield is a poet, short story writer, novelist and Beckett scholar from County Laois, Ireland. He has published six collections of poetry including At Home in Ireland: New and selected Poems. (Revival Press, Limerick. 2023). His study on the works of Samuel Beckett: The Empty Too: language and philosophy in the works of Samuel Beckett (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014) is a recognized work on Beckett. Dr Broomfield is a regular contributor to academic conferences and journals. He delivers workshops writing poetry and short stories. His poetry has been published in journals in the UK, USA, Canada, China and India. Dr Broomfield’s current work is the novel An Ireland of Snakes and Bollards Savoy Press, Limerick.

Uileann A man on a kitchen chair Is playing a lament on the Uileann pipes. You hear the sighs, the intakes of breath. The dirge. .

A figure, in a gown that shimmers from her shoulders kisses the unruly vetch. She’s drifting five or six sheep from the shadow. Her back the last rays of twilight.

Then the curlew’s cry— a purge gushes from Glenbarrow— anoints the melody that curves and stretches on the eider fleece, as the sun dips below Upper Sconce. You are one with the cryptic moon that presumes a situation beyond Cullenagh.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

UILEANN

After Francis Bacon Portrait of John Edwards, 1988 Picture a rectangle raised in the ensign of Treblinka set in a surround of smouldering vegetation. A man is balanced, cross-legged, on a two-legged bamboo chair. He is the written question. The answer from the clatter and jostles of the steam train, its carriages crammed with poets and harlots is belched out in hisses, eerier smoke, and lurches on. His body burns upwards, from his melting to a pink puddle left foot, to his charred ribcage

ARTHUR BROOMFIELD

[the passe memory card], that had jumped and danced to the rhythms of who knows what, the hands that painted his last hues on noon’s molten bones. Is this the son of man in his click clock hour? Even if his eye is closed his Sphinx stare looks beyond the hellish sun.

Does he sense the love flame, its colours, that nicks the soft tissue, below his head stone?

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

MELANOGENESIS

Colin Dardis © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

COLIN DARDIS Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent writer, editor and sound artist from Northern Ireland. His recent collections include My Life is a Film I Haven’t Yet Watched (Buttonhook Press, 2025), Microcosms (Rancid Idols Productions, 2025), and with the lakes (above/ground press, 2023). He co-hosts the long-running Purely Poetry open mic night in Belfast, and is editor of the poetry blog, Poem Alone.

Melanogenesis It is easy to forget that the skin is an organ, a singularity that breathes without sound, renews without fuss, senses without sleep. I walk through Botanic Gardens and see wrought iron twisted over cement arches to resemble old trees, how some folks treat themselves to tanning, their pigments oven-baked, their limbs never oven ready, eumelanin bags weighing heavy in the sun. In Ireland, there are industries that hope the sun never comes out, ready to give you a bath in the artificial glory of their light. I have been pale all my life. The sun tanners call me The Milky Bar Kid. Burning is still possible. Perhaps I am closer to the moon.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

MELANOGENESIS

Moonku dancing in moonlight, winter a bare-legged travesty

spotlight moon the bare arse of winter demands attention dot of moon pointillism in minimalism

COLIN DARDIS

Right Now Somewhere, someone you know and love is dead and the news has not yet caught you. You exist in the safe inertia of not knowing: no call, no text, the phone ignored while you sleep or eat, or watch tv, or have sex, the moment of climax just as someone is trying to reach you, or Death stays silent, you finding out weeks later in a passing reference you see while online, having to decipher the difference between your fears and the truth, calling a friend to confirm. There is no advance notice, no planning application for our funeral. Let us know that we love each other before we die.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

LOVE-MATHEMATICS

Debarati Bhattacharyya © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

DEBARATI BHATTACHARYYA Debarati Bhattacharyya is an Indian bi-lingual poet from Kolkata living in Scotland being equally fluid in both the languages, English and Bengali. She also has translation work in Hindi and English to her credit. Debarati has authored five poetry books in Bengali and a rhyme book for children. Her latest collections of contemporary poetry, Wada Phir Wohi and Srabone Agun, were published and released in 2020 in Kolkata International Book fair and Dhaka Ekushe Boi Mela, respectively. Her English poems have been anthologised by many publication houses globally. She was awarded the ‘Amitesh Maity Smith Puroshkar 2015’ for promising poets for her debut collection. One of her contemporary poems made a successful entry in a visual poetry project produced by Avant-Garde Productions, Dhaka. Debarati’s poems in English, Bengali and Hindi are regularly published in national dailies in India, Bangladesh and on online platforms in UK, Canada, Nepal, China, and other countries. She has also written the lyrics of some Bengali modern songs. Debarati is a science and law graduate from University of Calcutta, India and a postgraduate in Business and Human Rights law from University of Dundee, UK.

Love-Mathematics Crimson conic rays Penetrate the noir soul of the long obtuse silence. Silence, silenced by derivatives of damp swampy growth of the Obscure thought and the hexagonal instincts, Existent in the dark alleys. They passively glide through the circumference of time, Tangentially touching the sphere of infinite love. One single night seems not enough though, To traverse the parabolic path of the meteoric love, And the non- geometric diffused feelings. Moments of silence bursts into atomic fractions of pain. Countless sleeps fall loose, On the teary eyes of the elliptical shadows. Long trapped, trapped in the frozen rectangle of the past Groans my pyramid-love juxtaposed with your intersecting refusals Blooms again and erupts my integral love for you Breaking the matrix of deceit, hypocrisy and pretence Few feudal hugs, nomadic kisses and algebraic expressions Surrender one by one To the hypotenuse of the triangle of mathematical love.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE ART OF FALLING

DeWitt Clinton © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

DEWITT CLINTON DeWitt Clinton taught English, Creative Writing, and World of Ideas courses for over 30 years at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. Recent book collections include At the End of the War (Kelsay Books, 2018), By A Lake Near A Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters (Is A Rose Press, 2020), and Hello There (Word Poetry, 2021) which was awarded the 2022 Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. His newest book of poems is When & If (Kelsay Books, 2025). He is a student of Iyengar Yoga and offers a gentle chair yoga class to seniors in the Milwaukee Public Library System, and the Village of Shorewood Senior Center.

The Art of Falling After Elizabeth Bishop Isn’t hard to master as most don’t even know What’ s going on as it’s true, or perhaps For few, some I’m told, have no recollection, And why would anyone want to remember What just went down as that’s you down there, Semi-conscious for some, for others, simply Bamboozled how one can be there, and now Here, lying down like that, and of course Stunned like all of us, but the tragedy is that Some end up in a room with crazy bright Lights as if to see if anything there can be Repaired and yes orthopods see this all the Time, year in, year out, until even they feel The trembling as some like to call it, though No one really says that at the moment one Descends, just like that, even Icarus all Wax-winged found his dilemma odd very Odd as why is he melting though that’ s What all the artists and painters are wonderIng about as well, the big Why question. But do remember Peter Bruegel the Elder’s Old masterpiece, then all the other master Pieces then all the poems we almost swoon Over and who doesn’t remember Old Auden’s Masterpiece, “Musee des Beaux Arts” from A while back, but who really is interested These days, as so many keep falling these Days, oddly, just like That.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE ART OF FALLING

Especially Here After “Winter,” by Jorge Galan, trans., Janet Hendrickson There, just now, more than anyone can count, Yellow leaves, all floating, not at all in sync, Heavens no, all twirling in descent, different Aerial twists, not at all like a parachutist on The way back to earth, but the day is quite Ripe, for this of course, as in an hour and a Few minutes, we’ll reach the first seconds Of our equinox, and of course, at last, to the South, ripe smells of spring, though up here, It’s still hot, and muggy, waiting for frost. The sky is certainly, of course, up there, But we’re so confounded to know exactly Where, and that’s what keeps us up, but For others, just say up there, but don’t Ever ask, exactly where, as we don’t Have time to ask about the time, always Ticking mercilessly ticking, but nothing Like those grandfather clocks tick tick Ticking so loudly, even Hitchcock would Have gone mad, wouldn’t you, and why Not, what, por favor, is so in your tiny Brain that’s not in our constant ticking? Thankfully, I’m not a shut-in even if I’m Shut in for now, but not for long as I’m off to the park where there is no Ticky, unless of course, and you know, Don’t you, what the of course is.

DEWITT CLINTON

The sea, well, someone else would say Yes, an inland sea, but there are four Others, all connecting, amazingly Through what captains might call a Waterway, but that’s not exactly Right, is it? No neighing of neighbors Even if it will take us a whole hour Or more to find even an Appaloosa, Or even an old grey mare, just standing Beneath the only old Oak, out there. The breeze, of course, that pulls the Yellowy leaves off the tendrils like That, and even now it’s raining yellow Yellow. The crows are minding their Own business, not even tapping the Downed leaves for bugs or worse, Something even lower than the bugs. Actually, it’s quite quiet now, almost Impossible to hear those soft landings Of what you should know by now. But for most, it really doesn’t matter, Does it? But then a nanny in tow With small giggly little ones, does Not see, or care, what any of this Might mean, and for most, say it Simply, nothing, nothing at all Is oblivious to the splendor of

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE ART OF FALLING

This morning. We could live like This forever but who in some god’s Name would want that? Just picture An Amtrak pulling up to our house Just like that. Whole leaves are Tumbling so softly, carelessly, almost, and who could count them all? The chances for survival are not Infinitesimal, if that’s the proper Word and words with that many Syllables nearly always tie up So many tongues, but tonight Here, we’ll all see, before the Light goes out a soft yellow green That might bring a softness to Us all which we all need so much Of, especially now, especially here.

DEWITT CLINTON

Astute, As If Something is Coming, This Late Here we are, so very glad, we are still breathing, but not like everything, leaving imprints as a record on all the shelves of what some like to call our planet, others, Earth. Though all the green everywhere is still in deep green everywhere, though we know how easy it will turn, just barely, undetectable, most will not see the turning, the paler color just before we’re chilled, slightly, for here we’re in the northern parts where our seasons are slowly shorter, less summery, wetter, even colder but nothing quite like what we know will be a much more serious cold, but for now, we have such warm winds, and for now, the stars will not plow into our thin skins, and then, as we predicted, and not all at once some say, we’re almost drowning, especially if we live on the plains known for floods, yet sometimes, before the rains, a quick chill and suddenly the ground is popping with pellets of ice, and still, in wonder we know, certainly, it’s the first day so hot, so steamy, so unpleasantly August.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

HOOKED

Dominique Hecq © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

DOMINIQUE HECQ Dominique Hecq is a widely anthologised and award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist and translator. She lives and works on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land, Australia. Hecq writes in English and French. Her creative works comprise a novel, six collections of short stories and nineteen books of poetry. Together with Volte Face (Liquid Amber Press, Melbourne) and Otopos (Beltway, Rockville MD), her bilingual sequence, Pistes de rêve (Transignum, Paris) appeared in 2024. Errances (Recent Work Press, Canberra) is hot off the press. Among other honours Dominique Hecq is a recipient of the International Best Poets Prize administered by the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre in conjunction with the International Academy of Arts and Letters, and the James Tate for poetry. Otopos has just been long-listed for the Maya Award in the UK.

Hooked between I and am is a fish out of water thin king of oceanic distances it walks streets unfurling shadows that augur a poem

skin encoded with holes heart ciphered with motives and metaphors meant merely to warn the line as it moves stroke after stroke promising the resurrection of the non-ego as if the sun could take the hook from my mouth

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

HOOKED

Vigil under the open sky in the twilight haze

a silhouette emerges from the plain bloodless, immutable

not the slightest shrub, slightest furrow, slightest breath a petrified, voiceless presence

suddenly tremors alive in the emptiness of this vigil of shades which, yes, in the desert’s heart becomes spiral, bleeding glow

vermilion flow

DOMINIQUE HECQ

A proclamation Golden-leafed sky. A magpie browses sundown – mother of pearl nape, flight feathers ebony sheen. Encased in leather pipes, the bird splendidly exposes its throat. Carrolls out.

A wedge-tailed eagle takes off. Chorus of kookaburras. Small tarnished world hushed with pealing.

You hanker for the stars, your language a relic.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE PROPELLERS

Ian Watson © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

IAN WATSON Ian Watson is originally from Belfast but lives in Bremen, Germany. He is the author of two poetry collections in English: Riverbank City (Blaupause Verlag, 2013) and Granny’s Interpreter (Salmon Poetry 2016). His poems have been published in magazines and anthologies in Ireland, Britain, Germany and the United States, and his recent German-language non-fiction includes Spielfelder: eine Fußballmigration, on football and identity, and Bremen erlesen, a literary and cultural guide to his second-home city in Germany (both with Edition Falkenberg). He also publishes translations of poetry from and into German and English. He has worked regularly for radio and made the film Cool to be Celtic on Irish popular music for German and French television (arte 1999). After twenty years, he has recently retired as vice-chairman of the Literaturhaus Bremen, is a member of the British Poetry Society and active in their Germany Stanza group. His first novel, East Antrim, is complete and up for offers.

Three Propellers At the ‘immersive’ Titanic Experience Exhibition, Hamburg, June 2025 A chilling thought that if grandfather Stuart had not caught a fever, he’d be under the ocean. Full fathom two thousand the answer lies. Headhunted, for the yard was well behind time, he spoke of the three propellers he fitted and the four apprentices he lost.

In the dry dock beside the three propellers, a baker’s dozen of flat hats admire their work. I imagine him among them, but the image is too faint. I have stood twice where he once did, deep down in that dry dock, full fathoms four, and closed my eyes to hear them all, muffled: the clanging, the caulkers, the shouting, the riveters’ hammers, the foremen’s curses, and Gandan’s floundering apprentices.

On his mother’s side, Stuart was a Sloan from Straid. We read of the first-class stewardess Mary Jane Sloan, born just a couple of miles away from there.

At the ‘Experience’ each is given a passenger to ‘be’; and Mary Jane Sloan, the servant who survived, turned out to be Stuart’s great-granddaughter Hannah.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE PROPELLERS

Bibelgarten And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed … (Genesis, I, 11) Sankt Jakobus welcomes me on his plinth: Santiago, the patron saint of pilgrims and migrants, with his round-knobbed staff and his flappy hat and his bones in La Compostela. The Bremen Bible Garden is a symbol: God’s no-charge dispensary. The herbs are said to be the fragrance of the gospel, healing the pilgrims’ cholic and blisters.

Like Friar’s Bush Graveyard in Belfast, home of the Famine and cholera dead, a high-walled park gives me shelter to think. His statue offers me a corner to write. He knows I am the only pilgrim here by the red-brick nave of our Cathedral, sucking a pen in my voluntary exile; hiking along from line to stanza.

Only twenty yards behind my back is the city’s gross spaghetti junction: roaring buses, squeaking points and rattling trams now just a distant soundtrack.

IAN WATSON

But the patron of herbs is really Fiachra, an Irish monk. I think of him as I write; the prototype emigré. Now I am as far from home as ever he was from those beehive huts of Sceilg Mhór. But today my poet’s pilgrimage is a cul-de-sac; the lines will not come. My wooden bench is cold; there is no topsoil to feed my muse. And, so, for the sake of a weedy rhyme, I sip my lukewarm coffee in full view of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THREE PROPELLERS

Surfing Home Everybody has their Forthlin Road (Paul McCartney, 2026) Donegall Place in 1920; Arthur Square in snow Coal boats in the Abercorn Basin, no date Castle Arcade, Brand’s Arcade, a trolleybus

The blond one at the back there, third from the left … My great grandfather had a butchers shop next door … Sandstone Edwardian department stores George Best as a prefect at Lisnasharragh School Ruby Murray and the Rolling Stones In them days, the floors all had to be scrubbed … My Granny used to work their too, so she did … A Methodist College Rugby First Fifteen Phil Lynott outside the Opera House Campbell College after the Blitz

Just behind that was the shop where my Ma … I knew Joss very well he had a great voice … Yanks in Royal Avenue on VE Day Mill chimneys and people’s parents’ weddings Dodgems and long-gone lounge bars

IAN WATSON

Does anybody know about what happened to … Can anybody help me … Uch, I must stop stop scouring the net at night for Facebook ‘Images and Memories’ of home. They’re all flat caps and Troubles and bowler hats; The city is just a creepy black and white.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

MY MOTHER’S RAINCOAT

Jane Downing © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

JANE DOWNING Jane Downing’s poems have appeared at home and overseas including in Meanjin, Rabbit, Cordite, Canberra Times, Not Very Quiet, Social Alternatives, e.ratio, Last Stanza, Borderless, Best Australian Poems, and previously in Live Encounters. In 2025 she won the NSW Poetry Prize. Her collection, ‘When Figs Fly’ (Close-Up Books) was published in 2019.

Heavens Above Bodies synchronise within the crowd Eyes closed cued to the rhythm – beats up through the floorboards the old hall shuddering under the weight of Saturday night expectations

Sweat is a drug slapped sober by the cool air in the queue to the dunny down the back music throbbing against the ear drums – muffled not muted regarding the stars

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

MY MOTHER’S RAINCOAT

My Mother’s Raincoat Today I borrowed my mother’s raincoat from the back of the hall cupboard The brown one, quilted with snappy press studs It wasn’t raining when I arrived she hasn’t worn it for years – she will not notice its absence amongst the bigger absences

Like a childhood memory blackberrying in the hills scratches down my shins running to find her up ahead a handkerchief from the pocket of this brown raincoat wiping off the blood before it reaches my socks but also ice-cream containers filled with fruit, the plumpest from furthest in amongst the brambles deep purple bursting the skin smearing fingers and lips blood or juice impossible to say and not mattering because we were safe under the low grey sky with tubs brimming and mum producing a thermos of milky tea taste scratching the back of my throat The blackberries became jam the darkest shade of Torvill and Deans’ outfits at the Olympics the slow crescendo of Bolero

JANE DOWNING

aching in the chest as he flings her across the Sarajevo ice A line of perfect scores A line of jam jars labelled 1984

The lining of mum’s old coat is the cream you get at the centre of chocolate eclairs pockets on the inside speak to reversibility I take the coat off in the rain turn it inside out and have a whole new coat not the one my mother no longer recognises from days blackberrying in the Wicklow Hills on the other side of memory

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

MY MOTHER’S RAINCOAT

There is a Man on the Roof There is a man on the roof while I read poetry His footfall is a cat’s prowl on the brittle tiles as light as a poet’s pen across paper and not the usual possum thunder I scan lines as the man on the roof scans valleys and ridges (though definitions change up there) taking a moment, I like to think, to lift his eyes from the roof to the horizon dressed in jacaranda hues

What else is there to do to look busy as a tradie so obviously gets to work? Billy Collins tells me the window is to the poet what the oven is to the baker the mirrors and chairs to the barber but I must avoid my favourite pane of glass now layered by the rungs of the ladder belonging to the man on the roof placing the lemon tree and the birdbath and the wisp of cloud in the shape of a Frenchman’s hat (I do not believe in UFOs) in different frames

It is coincidence my Monday has made me think of Collin’s poem Monday with its workmanlike windows It is simply the day the man on the roof has come to give me a quote for much the same reason I’m now dipping into Billy Collins

JANE DOWNING

The real work will come later when I pick up a pen and the man on the roof and his squad pick up hammers and mallets (because you have to destroy to create) plus nail guns and sealant and wood as thick as two short planks and as long as the western eave and tiles fired in a kiln each like a word spoken in anger – hard and resistant fragile once time has worked on it In my framed window boots appear knees groin chest and the man on the roof is no longer on the roof and indeed he has a quote (Collin’s quotes can be mind-blowing this one lifts the roof right off) Life is about plugging leaks and any blue sky you see above is likely a hole where the rain can get in To end on an optimistic note

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

DESIRE

Jean O’Brien © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

J E A N O’ B R I E N An award winning poet, Jean’s 6th collection Stars Burn Regardless was published by Salmon Poetry (2022), her 7th collection Whole Cloth is almost ready. She was visiting lecturer/mentor to Carlow University, Pittesburgh winter 2025. She was Writer in Residence in 2022 in the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris and hold a Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship. She holds an M. Phil in cw/poetry from Trinity College, Dublin and tutors in the Irish Writers Centre and at post graduate level. In july 2026 she had a poem published in The Irish Times newspaper and broadcaste on RTE Radio 1.

Desire The teasel is losing its purple it has been ravished by butterflies and bees, it sways gentle, barely moving in the slight, early evening breeze, that lifts tendrils of your hair like a lover might to softly kiss the nape of your neck and bring back thoughts of earlier, of once upon a time, of before. The air becomes dense with desire.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

DESIRE

Picasso Museum, Malaga “We all know that art is not truth, art is a lie that makes us realise the truth.” Pablo Pisasso.

We viewed the world jigsawed, as he saw it. Fantastical creatures, heads elsewhere, a collage of women with misplaced breasts, eyes askew, strange pairings, tint and shade, rough beasts lighting the dark gallery walls. Brutal ceramics, sculptures, sketches – swirls of a restless mind, whatever worked. Then deep cuts of the palette knife impatient impasto brushstrokes, wood, paper any paintable surface to hand. In this museum photos of his young son Paulo seated on a scruffy donkey in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I have walked those same gardens, smiled at the sight of children legs astride the small animal’s back, hanging on to the reins for dear life. We paused then before his brief Blue period – saw the loneliness, melancholy, poverty before his spirits lifted to Rose, when he painted himself out of that dark corner and burst into exhuberant harlequins, experimental clowns, canvases awash prisimed with rainbows. His life. A rollercoaster. We passed from the dim gallery out to the terrazzo courtyard, glazed light and the chiaroscuro effect of the Spanish sun on a quiet January day, our minds sparking colour in that golden hour before dusk.

J E A N O’ B R I E N

Summer Nights Long evenings stretch into night, it is summer, night is short, twilight will last till ten pm. dawn will break around four in the morning, We watch as light lengthen, how it jewels the grey of the city, how it sparks rainbows in the fountains, makes golden the flecks of mica in warm granite walls and burnishes the Portland stone. The city’s pulse, Plura Bella runs out seawards under bridges guarded by their jealous river gods and we drive out to the coast or the nearby mountains to enjoy these extended days, gifted as a reprieve from leaden winter. We are released from the everyday, time to ourselves from the bustle and busy, from the eye-watering screens. We can scan for horizons, see where skyline and sea merges, rest our eyes on light, smell the seaweed on the tideline, burst the brown bladder-wrack with our toes and smell the sudden sharp stink of ocean salt. We keep an eye on the sinking sun, marvel at the moon rising in the sky cradling each other till summer’s done.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE FOREST FIRE

John Grey © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

JOHN GREY John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.

The Forest Fire The forests are burning. Smoke rolls up into the sky, black and ash-filled. The moon glows red like it too is on fire.

‘Turn back,” orders the cop on the only road through here. So I take a slow U-turn, head back the way I came.

I should have known better anyhow. I saw the news on the motel TV. But sometimes reality needs me to be there. And then…I discover it doesn’t want me anyhow. “Leave me to the experts,” it says.

I idle a while at the shoulder, wind down the window. The intense heat adds to the conversation. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m only passing through.” I learn again how small a visitor should be.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

THE FOREST FIRE

The Immigrant What is home anyhow? It’s nothing more than paperwork – a stack of lies stapled together by men in suits who never sweat.

I struggle with the connection of home to belonging. I expected a continuity – like the curve of a signature. Instead I’m trying to exist within the boundaries of apartment lease, work permit, and a mailbox that sometimes brings word from home, but mostly frightens me. I’m working through the labyrinth of survival. heightened by the fear that freedom is just labor in a different form. It’s beautiful, exhausting, and must be ready for inspection on a Monday morning, before the sun rises.

That’s when faceless men stamp on some papers, “Insufficient proof.” “Insufficient proof” is not my name.

JOHN GREY

Tell Me A Story The forest is the great storyteller. How willingly it reads from its pages. I listen as I watch. I admire the illustrations.

The oak explains its seasonal rotation. The fir, why it exempts itself from stripping naked just because it’s Autumn. The birds sing as is their custom, add a winsome soundtrack to the unfolding adventure. The spider has his own chapter. He spins a tale as adroitly as he does a web.

A squirrel provides comedy relief. A chipmunk acts as his nervous sidekick. The forest reads on. Its voice is like a breeze. Maybe it is the breeze.

2026 September POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net

RITUALS

Martina Tierney © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary

MARTINA TIERNEY Martina Tierney is a poet who grew up in a large family in rural Ireland. She is the thirteenth child in a family of fourteen. Her poetry reflects her lived experience with home, family, faith, childhood, love, loss, and the people and places encountered along the way. An occupational therapist for more than forty years, she is also an author, educator and entrepreneur, and the founder of the family business Seating Matters. Her previous books include her autobiography The Stairway of My Life, The Clinician’s Seating Handbook and The Power of OT. Martina is a mother and grandmother. This is her first poetry collection.

Rituals I’ve rehearsed my childhood memories of you again and again

trying to cling to the pockets of time we shared. Blurred, dreamy, sometimes unreal, but I hold on, it’s all I have of you, nine short years.

Sitting at the wooden kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon, blue, crisp airmail paper waiting for the thank-you words— our annual, quiet ritual to your sister Etta.

Spelling out the message to send across the sea, a note of gratitude for my birthday gift. In my child’s mind I pictured the destination: a world distant, out of reach, alive only in my imagination

I am wearing the emerald ring you bought at the Mission— you didn’t need to entice me to sit. This was my time with you, a cherished moment. continued overleaf... © Martina Tierney

RITUALS

Fresh sausages wrapped in brown paper tied with string, a treat from the Friday market. I perch timidly on your knee, the few Friday whiskeys revealing a warmth you keep hidden. Large, rough hands skin like leather from daily toil, strong but light of touch.

Cracked around the knuckles, I never felt the weight of them, only their strength carrying the white enamel bucket from Felly’s well. Holding your cap like a basket full of eggs gathered in the hay, climbing over straw bales in search of the hidden ones.

A rope of twine knotted round your waist, your practical belt. Reaching into your pocket for a sixpence mixed with straw and dust, a parting gift for me on my way to school.

MARTINA TIERNEY

I skip away, lighter now, something to boast about.

Your heavy body half supported on a three-legged stool milking the cow for our daily ration

The gentle rhythm of your strong hands making it look easy, pumping out the milk I stand half in at the byre door, I say “Let me try.”

The stool is my size, the warm udder feels soft, but no milk comes, the cow holds back at the strange feeling of my small hand.

She swishes her tail telling me to go.

RITUALS

I reach for the stainless-steel strainer battered and dented but sterilised and clean. You’ve already shown me what to do. The square blue box which holds the straining pads, a precious commodity, left safely on the high shelf. The warm fresh milk gushes through leaving a heaped swirl of froth.

Enough for another day, another memory made. I didn’t know there would be so few.

MARTINA TIERNEY

No River Red flames and smoke rise over the hill I hold her hand tightly Will it reach us? ‘There’s a river to cross’ My mother’s words. Next day, The fire is subdued. There was no river.

THE INTRICACIES OF FRIENDSHIP

MAURICE DEVITT A past winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland and Poems for Patience competitions, he published his debut collection, ‘Growing Up in Colour’, with Doire Press in 2018. Curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site, his Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. His second collection, ‘Some of These Stories are True’, was published by Doire Press in 2023.

The Intricacies of Friendship Have you ever tried to write a poem about a friend, capturing your times together, how you met and how the friendship survived? There is always the fear of it not being enough, or simply too much. Faces of other friends gather at the window, wondering why it isn’t them. The echo of childhood when you found it so easy to pick your best friend and so easy to lose them. Maybe there are too many reasons not to write the poem, but it is always worth the time to mine the little gems that make friends special, even if you only keep them to yourself.

THE INTRICACIES OF FRIENDSHIP

The Perfidy of Storms I’m cocooned in the upstairs study trying to write about the wind gusting fitfully outside. No pattern to the rattle of the windows or the effortless trickle of the rain snailing into every crevice. Water is pooling on the flat roof, soaking patiently into the felt. Nobody knows when or where the first leak will appear, basins and buckets placed judiciously to attract the drips, while the words dribble from my pen, as if they knew there is no point trying to capture what the wind will later deny. Tomorrow the trees may be still, the paths dry, while we await the next incursion.

MAURICE DEVITT

The Unsettled Past Maybe tomorrow will prove that all the things I seem to remember never happened and the life that I lived was never mine. It’s so simple to recall the days counting down, blurred by the memory of constant rain, the easy happiness of childhood and the tangled agendas of growing up. For so long, nothing I really wanted to happen, did happen and my dreams were a confusion of things I had never known, streets and people just a little off centre, as if I had landed in a world that was only vaguely familiar, yet everybody looked at me as if they knew me.

NATURAL STATES

MICHAEL J LEACH Michael J Leach resides on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Victoria, Australia. Michael’s poems can be found in journals such as Cordite Poetry Review, anthologies such as The Best Australian Science Writing (NewSouth Publishing, 2024 and 2025), and his four books: Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020), Natural Philosophies (Recent Work Press, 2022), Rural Ecologies (In Case of Emergency Press, 2024), and Chords in the Soundscapes (Ginninderra Press, 2025). Michael’s poems have been recognised in competitions such as the University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize, Woollahra Digital Literary Award, Liquid Amber Poetry Prize, and Philippa Holland Award for Poetry.

Natural States Here on this airbus, I turn in my aisle seat and peer over two passengers to see through Plexiglas.

The topography is hilly and pastoral, rolling out roughly 35,000 feet below. It forms the patchiest patchwork of (im)perfect parallelograms of such variegated viridescence. Gum trees are (in)visible in the distance, their foliage concealing limbs that branch like calm fractals. That land is shifting considerably slower than the strait we just passed over.

Every single thing is distant— background foreground ground no ground. It’s all the same in a sense.

HOW TO WRITE A HOW-TO POEM

I feel the need for perspective the need for sea change the need for tree change the need for core change the need for more change the need.

Well, here I am descending into The Natural State for the first time in my midlife.

As this airbus’s aerodynamics propel me further from birth and closer to Nipaluna, I shut my eyes to visualise the finer details of forest floors and canopies. I start to breathe from my diaphragm one more.

MICHAEL J LEACH

©Mark Ulyseas

THINGS THAT SHINE

PETER A WITT Peter A Witt is a Texas poet and a retired university professor. Peter’s poetry deals with personal experiences, both real and imagined. He is a twice published Best of the Net nominee. His poetry has been published on various sites including Inspired, Open Skies Quarterly, Medusa’s Kitchen, Active Muse, New Verse News, and Blue Bird Word. When not writing poetry, Peter is an avid birder and wildlife photographer.

Things that Shine A newly polished dining room floor, gleaming like the surface of a frozen, sunlit lake.

The moon at midnight, hanging in the dark like a solitary pearl on velvet. A clean glass pane just after the storm, clear and flashing like a newly cut diamond.

A new pair of patent leather shoes, bright as a mirror catching the morning light.

A cat’s eyes in the dark, glowing like twin emeralds trapped in the shadows.

A woman’s eyes holding her newborn, beaming like a sudden burst of starlight in a quiet room.

THINGS THAT SHINE

The Blur of an Aging Mind Time is like the wind. It passes by, sometimes a whisper, too often a gale. But then, for an hour or a few days, all is calm, focused, nothing blowing around. Sun warms my face, and life moves on.

As my days grow toward the end, I look back with wonder. Sometimes I clearly see the puppy that nipped my four-year-old ankles; other times, I try to remember if I ever had a dog at all. Yesterday, I remembered the words my mother said after a boy beat me up at school. Today, I cannot see her face, remember her words, the school, or why this scar runs from my elbow to my hand. Time is like the wind, sometimes part of a sudden storm, often a soft caress, like a lover’s lips brushing my neck, leaving only a blur.

PETER A WITT

Ode to a Teacup with a Crack O fragile vessel of memory, with your rim once stained by the red lips of ladies and your presence the battleground of an old argument, a husband counting your numbers, a wife counting your stories. You, the fine bone china, the Wedgwood, who suffered the quiet tragedy of a careless wash when the guests had gone and the kitchen belonged only to my mother. For the crime of a hairline crack, you were exiled to the dark geography at the back of the display cupboard. How she shielded you from the man who saw no poetry in tea, who measured the worth of a shelf only in shot glasses.

But oh, the sweet resurrection when the guns were packed and the husband went hunting. Out you came from oblivion, the center of a quiet, rebellious feast of scones and clotted cream. With trembling, deliberate grace, she poured the amber warmth, handling your glued spine like a sacred relic that must not shatter. In those stolen hours, a smile would claim her cheeks, and you, finally chosen, rejoiced in the dark cupboard of the world just to be held by someone who cared.

THREE POEMS

SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR Scott Thomas Outlar originally hails from just outside Atlanta, Georgia. He now resides and writes in Frederick, Maryland. His work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019-2023 Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. Selections of his poetry have been translated and published in 15 languages.

Of Soft Lashings and the Burden of Baptism ripples, foam, light dark water

only the shaman would dare shove their head (or anyone else’s) under at this hour buzzing lamp for six seasons earning the prowess to sing again the word was replete with splinters

some skin the teeth some cut the heart some slash the cheek just enough to evoke response now it comes with feathers laced in the prospect of gold

THREE POEMS

It Is Akin to a Bleeding Sieve, Let Us Be Honest Fashion arrangements bend into absolute oblivion

take it from the top blowing the lid kissing smoke, eyes enlarged they say to write about what you know

so it’s all wounded ego and taste of chemical afterburn and how to bring on a buzz in a way that builds exponentially toward a powerful crescendo funny bone, hurt pride bruised lips, aching innuendo the swollen agenda heatseeking, swamp in sight

crash course, lessons not subtle served with wicked coils serpent fangs, I always suspected it was one moment bleeding into the next with grace even when the shift feels pulsed beyond core beliefs

SCOTT THOMAS OUTLAR

Of Tattooed Angels and Alien Ascendence I sit by the fountain waiting on midnight a spider webbing to my left from bench to crape myrtle there was something about the season pulled the energetic prism into contortions …

and halos land by forecast just as predicted in dreams and visions they seek revenge a death cu(l)t by tooth and nail

they want a true blood eager for the womb’s release a uterine moon vibe hold to your breath the space is warm a glowing orb released to the stars

you came by chance to render all these scars

2010 - 2025 - 16th A n n i v e r s a r y

P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth September 2026

Cover artwork ‘Beneath the Surface’ by Irish artist Emma Barone © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING September 2026 Celebrating 16th Anniversary