SAMANTHA TERRELL - POET / EIC, SHINE Poetry Series
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Feb 28~ EDWARD LEE

2/28/2025

 
Happy Friday, poetry lovers. Today at SHINE online, we have new poetry by  accomplished Irish writer, Edward Lee. Be sure to check out his Bio below, to learn all about his publications. Thank you, Edward, for sharing your poetry with SHINE!

Who?

There is nothing
in me, a man,
that entitles me
to decide the workings
of you, a woman,
and your body.

Nor is there any entitlement
the other way,
or any way,
for that matter.

And yet there seems
to be confusion
as to the rights
and wrongs
of undeserved opinions.

Who wrote these dyslexic rules
and burnt them into law?
And who allowed them
to do so, as though voices
can never be raised
in anything but rage?

Who?

Hard

Some lives
are nothing more
than ways to harden
a soul for death
and what may
come after.

How hard must death be
for lives so hard
that many choose
to depart before their time,
their blood the last thing they give
to an indifferent world?


To Get Away and Return (Mid-Life)

With a crooked stare
you set sail
for home,
across a sea
without water,
an ocean without a map,
until you reached
your destination,
a few mere feet
from the beginning
that you left, and yet
years having passed.

Picture
Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including in The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib, and Poetry Wales. His poetry collections include A Foetal Heart, Bones Speaking With Hard Tongues, To Touch The Sky And Never Know The Ground Again, and The Heart As Dust Lost In The Wind. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and
Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website is:
https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com


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    SHINE - International Poetry Series

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    Click here for submissions and more
    From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is SHINE's honor to provide a home for their words with the online Spotlight series as well as SHINE Quarterly. Click on the logo above to learn more. And...keep writing, keep shining!
    In poetry,
    Samantha Terrell, EIC
    SYLVIA PLATH
    Stars Over the Dordogne

    Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
    Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
    Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
    The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
    They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.
    Nor do they send up fires where they fall
    Or any signal of distress or anxiousness.
    They are eaten immediately by the pines.

    Where I am at home, only the sparsest stars
    Arrive at twilight, and then after some effort.
    And they are wan, dulled by much travelling.
    The smaller and more timid never arrive at all
    But stay, sitting far out, in their own dust.
    They are orphans. I cannot see them. They are lost.
    But tonight they have discovered this river with no trouble,
    They are scrubbed and self-assured as the great planets.

    The Big Dipper is my only familiar.
    I miss Orion and Cassiopeia's Chair. Maybe they are
    Hanging shyly under the studded horizon
    Like a child's too-simple mathematical problem.
    Infinite number seems to be the issue up there.
    Or else they are present, and their disguise so bright
    I am overlooking them by looking too hard.
    Perhaps it is the season that is not right.

    And what if the sky here is no different,
    And it is my eyes that have been sharpening themselves?
    Such a luxury of stars would embarrass me.
    The few I am used to are plain and durable;
    I think they would not wish for this dressy backcloth
    Or much company, or the mildness of the south.
    They are too puritan and solitary for that--
    When one of them falls it leaves a space,

    A sense of absence in its old shining place.
    And where I lie now, back to my own dark star,
    I see those constellations in my head,
    Unwarmed by the sweet air of this peach orchard.
    There is too much ease here; these stars treat me too well.
    On this hill, with its view of lit castles, each swung bell
    Is accounting for its cow. I shut my eyes
    And drink the small night chill like news of home.

    ~~~

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