Prarie Poetry Ezine

Prairie Poetry Ezine is one of my favourite poetry sites. Its remit is narrow enough, prairie poetry not sounding exactly universal, however the range they publish each month manages to be surprising and innovative. A classic example of transcending the rules, producing something that speaks to oursiders as well as the initiated.

I love each new edition, and it's well worth looking at! The May edition is up now....my favourites by far are Arrogant Bones by Larry Schug and Jacob Is by Brwyn Harris.

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Irish Cowboys

First Published in Prairie Poetry Ezine

It's a very nostalgiac poem; the games and illusions of childhood and the fascination exerted on us by America - a place that seemed as real as Dublin and as unreal as Narnia, at the same time.

Irish Cowboys


The wild west for us
was never the stone walls
and fragments of land between them
the ragged, wild, bog-spawned
west of Ireland
It was a topography, a dialect, a code
as familiar as our parents
or our national tongue
gleaned from Television, old movies
dog-eared paperbacks.
We were born in Dublin
but we all, each one,
roamed the wild praries
hunting buffalo in our souls
spat tobaccy and smoked Marlborough
walked bowlegged - howdy pardner -
or grim and gimlet-eyed, we eyed the
scorching sun
talking in monosyllabic knowing exchanges
about drought, and cattle dying, and crops failing
thwarted in our childish hearts by
near incessant rain
and insolent verdant green.

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne

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