Old Shanghai was dying, losing between three and six streets a day. The modern city was strangling it among its many skyscrapers. Soon, in a few years at most, it will have disappeared. Yet, through ... [+]
Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. He is the author of two chapbooks and three poetry collections. Winner of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award and twice winner of Irish Times' New Irish Writing, his numerous publication credits include Poetry Ireland Review and Westerly. "The Heron" is in Short Circuit #09, Short Édition's quarterly review.
I look out the car window across night fields squinting; I can see lives I never lived I drive on, into the village, into the rain a traffic light turns red; I see Picasso-people walking in the raindrops running down the window the crescent moon is thin a fingernail clipping pointless, almost; there are no stars a canal-bank heron becomes illuminated by the headlights as I pass; I wonder why it is not afraid