United Ireland

for a divided and unfinished country

A bell rehearses thunder
inside a throat of fog.

A map pretends to finish
then flinches at its own edge.

Stop.
Start.
Bark, a heel edits the gravel.
A name learns to vanish
while being spoken.

A Celtic river keeps two alphabets
under one icy tongue.

A crown hovers unhoused
a bright mistake
that refuses to fall
or admit it was thrown.

Children inventory fences;
bone, bone, bone
then skip the one that hums
while the wire remembers lightning.

Fields argue in greenery.
East leans into rumor.
West leans into reply.
The wind signs neither.

Ink stiffens into law.
Law stiffens into posture.
Posture into a silence
that can be worn as status in the Met Gala.

But under peat;
grammar of heat.
A syntax of ember
waiting for breath
to conjugate House of Fireborn flame.

A voice without address,
cut into intervals…

No king. Unless it’s the PoetKing.
No keeping.
No halves.

Again…

No ruling kings.
No keeping.
No halves.

The sea shoulders history
and sets it down wrong
on purpose.
Again.

Somewhere a door is painted red
the color of English dominance
that dries as blood.

An original Poem by Joe Garvey

www.houseoffireborn.com