St. Ita’s advice to her fosterling, Brendan the Navigator
Listen to a reading of this poem by Cassie:
Suck the salt-tipped stones dry of their callouses; mould their bellies round like the body of the whale you will ride, your island home: permeable ephemeral, the glut of gulls your guide. Burst through pillars of salt— you are no Lot’s wife. Listen to the birds, for they hold wisdom like periwinkles in their mouths. And when you find that Promised Land, lie down, kiss the earth as you would our Saviour’s feet. Delight in the moss beneath your lips. But always remember to love the sea, for without love, we are all adrift.
Only in the US
Listen to a reading of this poem by Cassie:
It’s the third night you won’t sleep. Headlights, an ambulance, a car door the moon even— all these things send your tiny hands fluttering, pummelling polka dots like a legion of butterflies trapped in glass. You whimper. I groan and pick you up for the umpteenth time. Tonight even the white noise machine has lost its clout. I ache for sleep I yearn for sleep what I wouldn’t do for an hour, for twenty minutes if you’d let me but you won’t. So I scroll on my phone. There’s been a school shooting, this time in Tennessee, who knows where it’ll be next month or next week or tomorrow, perhaps. I hold you close: cheek to cheek, chest to chest, breath to breath. Your grandma once asked would I return for good I said no. I never want to watch the school bus pull away and think you may not come home.
The Statue of Liberty bows her great head, September 2020 (A Reminder)
Listen to a reading of this poem by Cassie:
Greed was the granite: to give was to fail and the cult of me ascended above your tired head like Icarus and his lusty wings. Your poor are left to die. Your children lie huddled in ice-cold cages. Your dead are flung in masses as the virus rages, while those yearning to keep your fragile head aloft can’t breathe. This is the land of the free, where the screams of the wretched go unheard and refuse piles in plastic shrines to the god of more. Your rich grow richer, their pockets teeming with hoards stored on some foreign shore. Here, right no longer matters. They will send in their goons and their tear gas, these bald-faced buffoons and the Jim Jones at their helm, their morality homeless, abandoned, cut adrift on some tempest-tost sea. To question is to betray: ‘The state is me,’ he growls, ‘I am the state.’ (Ecstasy as they witness him lift a glass of water using only one hand). ‘My wish is your command.’ And they fawn like blood-sick gnats to a glowing lamp, standing with pistols held high beside every bleach-laced lie and every razed mailbox, exulting the sun king on his golden throne. Democracy has been shown the door.
Author’s Note: This is a found poem and the last word (or two) of each line is from Emma Lazarus’ ‘The New Colossus’, cast on the Statue of Liberty. The line containing ‘can’t breathe’ is a deliberate use of the Black Lives Matter slogan ‘I can’t breathe’ and ‘Here, right no longer matters’ references Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman’s poignant statement ‘Here, right matters.’
Cassie Smith-Christmas is originally from Virginia, USA and lives in Galway, Ireland. Her novel The Huguenot’s Chest was a winner in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2023. She holds a PhD in Celtic and Gàidhlig from the University of Glasgow and her writing has appeared in Southword, Aimsir, Crannóg; Causeway/Cabhsair; Gutter; Tangled Locks; The Milk House; The Wild Word; Poets’ Republic; and Washing Windows IV: 100 Irish Women Write Poetry. She has also been shortlisted in competitions such the Highland Literary Salon’s Northwords competition; the Frances Browne Multilingual Poetry Competition; and The Best in Rural Writing 2023.
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