Poem by Colin Dardis

Kissing an Eel

Boil her lips
and let the flesh congeal,
skim off the skin and see
what a meal this makes.

Physically defective,
kissing an eel.

How does it feel to kiss this eel?
Black and slime,
wet coal,
a clump of turf
soaked by the rains of Ireland;
pressing your tongue into a dark bog land

with your lack of emotion
portrayed in a Tupperware heart.

Colin Dardis is a poet, editor and arts faciltator from Northern Ireland. He edits the online journal FourXFour, and is the founder of Poetry NI. His work has been previously published in numerous anthologies, journals and zines in Ireland, the UK and the USA.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.