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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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ERIC PAUL SHAFFER

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of five books of poetry, including Lahaina Noon; Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen; Portable Planet; RattleSnake Rider and Kindling: Poems from Two Poets. His poetry appears in nearly three hundred local, national and international reviews and in the anthologies The Soul Unearthed, 100 Poets Against the War, and Earth’s Body. Shaffer received the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, a 2006 Ka Palapala Po'okela Book Award for Lahaina Noon, and the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Burn & Learn, his first novel, was published by Leaping Dog Press in 2009. He teaches at Honolulu Community College.

Nobody's Birthday Wish

I was born on the nonth of Nomonth,

in Nocity, Nonation, here on Noworld,

to no purpose.  Today's my nobirthday,

and I have only one nowish: Let us all see

we're all the same, nothing from nothing,

no favors placed near any paper plate, all

truly equal and worthy, worth exactly,

unequivocally, nothing, all of us, surely,

born of a vast waste of waves, a party

of particles scattered through blank, icy

emptiness, absolute zero in a universe

prodigiously produced from nothing

that from nowhere suddenly and para-

doxically popped, an explosion expanding

the empty black balloon of existence till

nothing, at last, pins the tail on entropy.

Blindfolded and spun, I hold in my hand

a point on whose head no angels dance.

Dark stars are the candles on my nocake.

I have one chance to make my nowish.

I'll take a deep breath.  Everybody sing.

©2012 Eric Paul Shaffer

Author Links

Lahaina Noon at Leaping Dog Press

'On the Verge of the Usual Mistake': poem by Shaffer at Terrain.org

Poem by Shaffer in Slate