GO TO MLC HOMEPAGE

Sean Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition

now open!

ONLINE BOOKSTORE FEATURED TITLES

Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

Create your badge

NOEL KING

NOEL KING was born and lives in Tralee, Ireland. His poems have been published in over thirty countries in journals such as: A Bard Hair Day, Canopy, Cork Literary Review, Cyphers, Eclipse, Fife Lines, Image Nation, Kotaz, Merseyside Arts Journal, Moonstone, New England Review, New Orphic Review, Orbis, Perimeter, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Pulsar, still, Studies, The Poet Tree, Ropes, THE SHOp, The Stinging Fly, Studies, The Sunday Tribune, The Word and Zygote. His debut collection, Prophesying the Past, appears from Salmon in 2010.

Oilcloths and Loincloths

To beef up their sex-life, Billy Shears
bought a loincloth in a seedy joint
in the East End of London, where he went
to work ‘the lump’, never being unfaithful
to Margie at home in the West.

She, brushes breadcrumbs from
the oilcloth on her grandmother’s oak
heirloom table and flicks them
off a tea-towel outside for the birds;
goes to mass, dreams about his weight
on top of her, and when he comes home,
appearing in the bedroom in the loincloth, she blushes,
blesses herself, wonders if she’ll have to tell it in confession.

©2009 Noel King

Author Links

Irish Writers Online bio

'Black and Tan', a poem by Noel King

Three poems by King at Cavan Poetry Page (scroll down)

BACK TO TOP