By: John Francis Istel
The Canfea circle consists of 11 stones, 9 of which are still upright, just outside the village of Ardgroom, on the Beara Peninsula in the west of Ireland.
Stele 1
Your palm is not your
palm but many palms
I’ve felt so many hands I
feel like the prince of the family
Stele 2
Stand on one leg you try so
long why dontcha, love?
Know just I’ve seen some number of kings
go and comets so I crave the guts
to spit teeth and lay down tender
Stele 3
Not from these parts I’m not
buried me self bottom
of a well dark with ocean
salting me, salting and slapping
Stele 4
Sarcastic you say?
maybe you shouldn’t mind
yards of Jesuits pissing on you
Stele 5
My mother hill moans
calls and quakes and calls
there’s not but a soul, not a thief
minding on who’ll fetch me
Stele 6
I once leapt over icy
glacier fields through a land glad
made by somersaulting half moons
racing to the sea ready
to splash in the temperature of the times
Stele 7
Drop me lay me down
let me for heaven’s sakes lie
by my two brothers’ bones
Stele 8
Why don’t you notice my arms wide
yea outstretched, yes you, yes
why not bend to give me a wiggle
up or a little heave to me uproot?
Don’t go. Stand with me into the dark
Stele 9 Sure I can await a wee longer my ears open to the burps of the earth the thunder which as I recall will surely shake me loose to tip softly away from this hill of my dead brothers. See it see it? Look closer. Closer there past the point past the edge in the sea there past the edge before what comes next before there–my place of final rest.
John Francis Istel's poetry has appeared in New Letters, Off the Coast, Up the Staircase (Pushcart Prize nominee, 2015), Claudius Speaks, Peacock Journal, and many others. He has published stories in such publications as Weave, WordRiot, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Brooklyn Free Press, Rappahannock Review, Helen: A Literary Magazine, and Belmont Story Review. For many years, he worked as an arts editor and has written about the arts for The Atlantic, Elle, The Village Voice, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA from New York University, where he also taught; lives in Brooklyn, where he curates The Word Cabaret, a reading series in Red Hook; and teaches on Manhattan's Lower East Side at New Design High School. "This poem began three years ago at a writing retreat and workshop with the inspiring Irish poet Leanne O’Sullivan at Anam Cara on the Beara Peninsula in the west of Ireland. One afternoon, we visited the Canfea Stone Circle in Ardgroom, among other ancient Celtic sites. Imagine a mini-Stonehenge on a high windswept hill overlooking the Atlantic. The steles that make up the circle seemed so forlorn, stuck in this spot for millenia. A lot of writers may begin with a visual image, but most of my poetry and many of my short stories grow from snatches of dialogue, voices that start speaking to me. Often I just channel or dictate what I hear. So on my visit to the stone circle, I wandered around, bent my head and put an ear against each stele, and listened to hear what they had to say."