—For Leonardo
Here: the night’s hot breath—
its own startling fright of silence,
or, in other words:
the lack of your voice in blackness.
Your sound in deep sleep—
there are photographs.
Look: how the light drowns itself—
deep-shaded, darkening, the centre of dusk:
sundown, the suburbs,
wild vicissitudes.
Night—
like a beloved lamp,
smashed utterly, shaded over.
By Lorcán Black
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Lorcán Black is an Irish poet. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Rush, Progenitor, Grim & Gilded, Poet Lore,Stirring: A Literary Collection, Snapdragon, New Writing Scotland, The Los Angeles Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Stinging Fly, and Assaracus amongst numerous others. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and has been longlisted for the Two Sylvias Prize, a De Groot Foundation grant and his fiction has been shortlisted for The Paris Literary Prize and the Black Spring Press Prize. His first collection, Rituals, was published by April Gloaming Publishing in 2019.