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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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PEGGIE GALLAGHER

Peggie Gallagher lives in Sligo. Her work has been published in Force 10, THE SHOp, Cyphers, Southword, Atlanta Review, Envoi, Peregrine, West 47, Poetry Daily and Poetry Ireland.

Hieroglyphs

This morning I woke to find a blue tit

chiselling a seam on the curve of my cheek,

spiky feet prickling the skin of my chin,

his hot-needle beak, like a sewing machine

running laps between my nose

and the swerve of my ear,

then tightening his grip with a tick and a hiss

of his wings, his relentless nib

whipstitches the quick of my lips.  

He continues, in the interest of symmetry,

to drill his fierce little beak round my twin cheek,

finishing with the sting of his initials.

All day my fingers track a faint alphabet,

a vanishing language of claw prints.

©2010 Peggie Gallagher

Author Links

Three poems by Gallagher on the Cavan Poetry Page

Poem by Gallagher in the Atlanta Review

'Ode to the Telephone Pole': poem in Southword 16