The boiling dawn peaks
are sieved through the shutters
of our sleep.
Nestles in the folds of strangled bedsheets,
a morning purge.
Blades of light, leaves of sunshine
bristle at the edges of the window frames –
starlight bleached out as time creeps
ever backward until
the night re-awakens.
Look out over the seams of terracotta
roofing – clean and precise –
puzzled and burned into neat form.
Our bodies encloaked in
a mantle of sea-air, sour and
insistent as it stirs from its
deep cradling motion.
From here,
the view is unhorizoned, cracked open
into our cupped mouths,
breathed in as sublime terror.
The brackish taste of mortality
wafted in on the brightening currents.
Eóin Flannery is a writer and critic based in Limerick, Ireland, where he is Associate Professor of English Literature at Mary Immaculate College. His poetry has appeared in The Honest Ulsterman; The Storms; The Belfast Review; Rochford Street Review; Rust & Moth; Juniper; The Tiger Moth Review and many other international publications. He is working on a collection of poems entitled, Unshadowing.
More work by Eoin Flannery
Tel: 028 7126 6946
Email: hueditor@theverbal.co
Verbal, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry/Londonderry, BT48 6PU
companyCopyright © 2026 Honest Ulsterman