Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries
And tumbled through the door when I
let him in. His rust coat moved like a
windy sea. I turned on the porch light: it
didn’t make any difference. “You’re dead,”
I said to him; he cocked his head to the
leash on a chair. Of course, he would
want to go walking now, wouldn’t he?
I got a jacket and wrapped up,
it was getting cold. My flashlight
striped out on to a darkness never seen.
I hooked the leash to his collar. He twisted
and barked, his mouth made dazzling
winks of sunlight. He was such a clever
little dog: I couldn’t figure out how he did it.
____
Cormac Culkeen lives in Galway and completed an MA in Writing at the University of Galway in 2023. His poetry has been published in Skylight 47, Causeway, Apricot Press, Bindweed, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Ropes Literary Journal, Orphic Review, the Honest Ulsterman, the Galway Review, Southlight and Power Cut magazine. His debut poetry collection, The Boy with the Radio, was published in 2022. He is one of the founding editors of Ragaire literary magazine, a Galway based literary journal dedicated to publishing international writers and writers based in the West of Ireland.