Poems of the week: Moraíto Chico and Bolt the Door

Moraíto Chico
They are folding the chairs
In Plaça Catalunya,
Sunday has burned hard,
Families are walking towards metro stations,
Edging up through the little squares,
Past the snack vendors closing their stalls;
Moraíto has played his final note,
His guitar is giving the cold shoulder
And the repeating fire flares
Where his ghost passes in Jerez.

Moraíto Chico (Manuel Moreno Junquera), guitarrista, 1956-2011

Patrick Kehoe’s collections include The Cask of Moonlight (Dedalus, 2014), Its Words You Want (Salmon, 2011) and Places to Sleep (Salmon Poetry, 2018). He wrote the lyrics for Sonny Condell’s songs as featured on the album Seize the Day (2017).

Bolt the Door
The face that looks from the mirror
has the long-boned jaw of my forebears.

Browser: Revisiting the tragedy of Notre-Dame

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On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons

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The Impossible Dream: placing the Steorn story in the context of the Celtic Tiger

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André Leon Talley: How Anna Wintour threw her right-hand man ‘under the bus’

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How age gives them access. They gaze,
their eyes black with apprehension.

Where shall we go, they are saying,
when the hearth of your flesh grows cold?

Bare hills look out in answer,
and the clean empty skies of the morning.

Kerry Hardie has published several collections with Gallery Press, including The Ash and The Oak and the Wild Cherry Tree, Only This Room and Selected Poems.