Glen Wilson lives and works in Portadown, Co Armagh. He has been widely published, having work in The Honest Ulsterman, Foliate Oak, Iota, Southword and The Incubator Journal, amongst others. In 2014 he won the Poetry Space competition and was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize.  He has just won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. 

Currently Glen is working on his first collection of poetry.  For more of him, check out Twitter, @glenhswilson, or Facebook, glenhswilson@facebook.com.

Heyoka                                                                         

I am all shadow to your light,
pity when you want pride,
I point out the moon at night
infer that’s all that goes inside.
I hold you to your oaths,
make it clear one of us must be wrong,
under star spangled truths.
The fires rise in only one song,
it must be beat out of rhythm,
scatter eagles to tell of the devastation.
I’m the pebble in your moccasin
drink, this is the taste of reservation,
You came from afar to ask your questions
don’t be surprised by our revelations.

Impact Crater

My dressing room is cold
but it is a clear night, the moon
is waxing and Orion is tracking
the earth for love.

Dad used to point out Rigel
and Betelgeuse, tell me how far
the light had travelled to get here,
how they were just two of millions.

He never saw me like this,
making crude orbits over dim lights,
thoughts that held more dark than
shadows where chairs scraped to align.

The last time I saw him I watched
his thoughts supernova then collapse,
his eyes flashed a human red, a rupture
in the Circle of Willis and then gone.

There is a name illuminated crimson
and men are enthralled by its repetition,
I step out onto the stage, a meteor
burnt down to space dust by the fall.

Wake

Asleep is all he is, gently rocked by the waves,
seaweed for a comfort blanket, dreaming
of Odysseus or Iron Man or Superman,
some uniformed hero coming to the rescue.

He is waiting for the sun to rise upon the beach,
so he can take bucket and spade and find out
what gifts the tide has brought in. To play
and bury his father in sand and take a picture.

His mother has his towel ready to wrap him
in, drying off the day as the sun goes down.
Already drifting he feels strong arms
lift him up and take him back home.