new from above/ground press: TERMINALS, by Nathanael O'Reilly

TERMINALS
Nathanael O'Reilly
$5

Equinox

When you sit by the fireplace alone
reading Yeats, stare into the black night,
remember the summer evening when you
placed your right hand on my forearm out-
side the cinema, removed your mask,
declared your love, kissed me in the shadows.
Parked taxi-drivers watched like sentinels
as we caressed, kissed in orange lamplight.
Parakeets tucked heads under their wings,
settled down for the night in the cool air.
A brushtail possum scampered over a fence,
up a tree trunk to the shelter of leaves.
A rummaging in a bin, perhaps a rat,
disturbed our carefully cultivated poise.
We held each other beneath southern stars,
embraced the autumnal equinox.
I remember your sharp white teeth,
distant heels ticking across pavements,
trying to slow down, savour every last
second of our spontaneous self-indulgence.
We did not foresee our undoing
years later in a disintegrating foreign city.
We had no idea how we would feel
in the future, didn’t think about the hour
of passion as existing beyond the now.
As you sit by the fire in your snug house
stare into the black night outside and wonder
if my arms are lovelier than aloneness.

Note: A terminal utilizing the end-words from Denise O’Hagan’s “A World in Waiting.”

Note on the Form
The terminal form was invented by the Australian poet John Tranter (1943-2023). The final word of each line in a source poem is used as the end-word for each line of a new poem. For more on the terminal form and Tranter’s work, see Brian Henry’s article, “John Tranter’s New Form(alism): The Terminal,” Antipodes, volume 18, issue 1 (June 2004), pages 36-43.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet residing in Texas. His collections include Separation Blues: Poems 1994-2024 (Flying Islands Books, 2024), Dublin Wandering (Recent Work Press, 2024), Landmarks (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Downingfield Press, 2024), Boulevard (Downingfield Press, 2024), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), and Preparations for Departure (University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017). His work appears in journals and anthologies published in fifteen countries, including Anthropocene, Cordite, The Honest Ulsterman, Mascara, Meanjin, New World Writing Quarterly, Rabbit, Southword, Trasna and Westerly. He is poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

This is O’Reilly’s third above/ground press title, after Dear Nostalgia (2023) and Blue (2020).

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