by Fergus Cullen

Ephrata

On a quickly-
cobbled bed
in a fodder-
perfumed shed
by the bad road
out of town,
under star-
swollen sky
and an old ewe’s
knowing eye,
lies a Gali-
lean maiden,
her unready
body laden
with an absent
father’s son.

Rorate

A belly swells. Its freckles spread and widen.
A mud-brown puffball blown beneath a hedgerow
for some weeks nudged by passing sticks and dogs’
inquiring noses ruptures on the quiet.

Press cheek to hill or belly. Feel legs kick
greave-fit, arms barge as if shield-bearing.
Press eye to sagging sky. Its waters brink
on breaking, drop to tap an upturned nose.

Wide eyes reflected in a bulging drop
reflect the drop that bulges on the thorn.
Drop down! Unzip the hill along the hedgerow
to pull out sleeping soldiers by the handful!

Fergus Cullen is an apprentice historian and occasional writer of prose and verse. He lives south of the river. He blogs at https://x.com/FairGoose and https://ferguscullen.blogspot.com/.

by Glenn McPherson

You’re just like your father,
the fireplace in the dimmest part
of the lounge room being the lifeblood
of your first home. Youth’s incinerators
burn and spit and smoke
like the sole doctor in town no-one spoke
to about cancer as long as he was capable
of performing minor surgery.

A month’s wage to install it on stone –
it made a pinging sound, a tinny
pop like car tyres on the dirt road
across Crown Land to our fishing
spot, not far north of the abattoir
that closed years earlier.
Worth every cent, though the Western-Suburb
Council in the dark’ll never know.

Mid-winter, without lights, AFL
abandoned at half-time unlike Candide,
who went on about the garden. You felt a bit
like one of the patriarchs, ready to pack
it in, but half-suspecting (as true believers do)
a late revival.

When the prospective owner knocked ten
grand from the house price, holding up
a light beam to his eyes
so you could witness the termite damage
it seemed like the right price.

Glenn is an Australian writer whose poetry has been published nationally and internationally in leading journals and anthologies. He has been writing poetry most of his life, considering it to be a part of his daily bread.

by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

April Fools’ Sonnet

April 1st

“What fools these mortals be!”—
Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

And he is right, though it’s not clear why.
Because we fall in love and think
All Will Be Well. Because we lie,
swear we’re made of truth, and wink.
Because we laugh & talk too much.
Because we love to eat & drink.
Because we lack the magic touch
to heal the harm we do to others.
Because we become fathers & mothers
and clutch our children desperately.
Because we’re too short-sighted to see
that all will end in disaster,
that life & death can’t be mastered.
Because heaven isn’t true.
Because we’re mortal, me & you.

Saint’s Body

First it must be kept
in parts or wholly,
the heart high-prized in the marketplace,
nail clippings, the blue finger
still wearing its knuckle ring.

Then set it out for adoration
encased in ice or frozen stone,
like soft Snow White laid out by seven lovers
awaiting the imprint
of the Prince’s kiss.

Approach on ragged knees
along the gritty ground.
Blood will flow in sympathy with blood,
new wounds paying
homage to the old.

Touch your hot forehead
against the cool tomb,
lips pressed to the Christ-iron cross,
rosary binding your hands, you stand,
St. Joan amid the blazing branches.

O Eye of every martyr,
bared breast of St. Sebastian,
sleek skin of Bartholomew who did not scream,
how our bodies love your holy bodies,
how we punish them with joy that is not ours.

Angela Alaimo O’Donnell is a professor and poet at Fordham University in New York City and the author of 12 poetry collections, most recently The View from Childhood: New & Selected Poems (Paraclete 2026).