John W. Sexton

John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and identifies with the Munster Aisling poetry tradition. His work spans vision poetry, contemporary fabulism and tangential surrealism. He is the author of eight poetry collections, the most recent being: The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry 2013), Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018), Visions at Templeglantine (Revival Press 2020) and The Nothingness Kit (Beir Bua 2022). A chapbook of his surrealist poetry, Inverted Night, came out from SurVision in April 2019.
Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston, he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. 
He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl was awarded the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007 for best single poem. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. 
His next full collection, The World Under the World, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.

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I am in the garden playing with Feathered Horse. We are upin the plum tree, but there are no plums yet. There are no leaves yet either. We are balanced perfectly in the sky and can seethe sky all around us. I have climbed higher than dad told meI am allowed to, and am level with the roofs of the neighbouringhouses. From up here the roofs seem to be slipping against the sky,and when I lean back it looks like the houses are moving. Thisis exactly the place for Feather Horse. From here he can see America.Someone is angry down in the garden. It’s mum. She’s shouting for me to come down at once. I climb down slowly, but she waitswhere she is until my feet are on the ground. She tells me that ifI climb the tree again then I will have to come in. I take FeatheredHorse to the verge of the grass where there’s a jagged line of rocksand stones, thrown there from when dad was digging through the lawn to make the garden path. A small ladybird is flitting in front of my face. It’s too early for ladybirds so I know it must bethe ghostbaby. The ghostbaby flies straight into one of my eyes,then out again. Then into the other eye. Now it’s inside my head.I can hear her talking. She wants to play, so I put Feathered Horseback inside my pocket. Over one of the stones a small snail is steadilymoving out in the open. The ghostbaby sees everything as I see it now,because she’s seeing through my eyes. The snail’s two hornsare out as it moves, so I clap my hands in front of it and immediately it pulls in its horns. Its head is sort of roundish now, but even that is beginning to flatten. Pick it up gently, says the ghostbaby, and don’tbreak it. As I lift the snail if retreats completely into its shell. I amsurprised at how it can squish itself into that small space. Its shellis a deep yellow, and there is a brown band turning in a twisty circleall the way from the outside to the centre. I know from schoolthat this band is called a spiral. A spiral is in on its out, and out on its in.The inside of the shell is a spiral too, says the ghostbaby. I don’t understand the first bit, but I say, “I wish I lived in a house like that.”It’s not a house, says the ghostbaby, it’s a passageway. I place the snailcarefully into the shadow of a rock. “Where does it go to?” I ask. She answers with just one word: Places. “If I could fit inside that shell,could I go to places too?” Yes, she says. Then she leaves through my eyesand is gone. I look around and mum has come back into the garden.“Who are you talking to?” she asks. “I’m just playing,” I say.Mum looks at me with a strange boss-eyed stare, then looks all across the garden in the same way. She says nothing else, just goes back indoors.

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I call to Liam’s house. I start to tell him all about the planet Mercury. At first he’s not really listening much, I can tell, but when I say that it’s so close to the sun that it has completely melted and is covered in an ocean of molten metal, he suddenly brightens up. “Patrick Collins has some,” he says. “Has some what?” I ask, a bitannoyed that he’s obviously not really been listening to a single word. “Mercury. But don’t tell anyone. If his mum or the teachers find out, they’ll just take it from him.” I remember then, that when I was looking in the encyclopaedia I saw that there was also a metal called mercury. But I wasn’t really interested in that, so I hadn’t read that part. “It’s a metal that doesn’t stay still,” says Liam. “It’s a liquid,except it’s cold. But I suppose it’s the same stuff that the planet is made from, and that’s how it got its name. Let’s call on him, and he can show you. But don’t mention it in front of his mum.” I am suddenly very excited. I want to see this stuff straight away. We call around to see Patrick. His mum is the manageress of a Launderette, so they live in a flat over the premises. Whenever Patrick’s mum speaks she either folds her arms or else she stands with her hands on her hips. Mum always says that when Mrs Collins talks to you with her hands on her hips, then you can be sure there’s trouble coming. We walk into the launderette and Mrs Collins spots us coming through the glass panel of her little box-shapedoffice. She comes out and folds her arms. We ask her if we can see Patrick. She opens a door right at the very back of the narrow launderette and shouts up the stairs to say that someone is here to see him. Then she tells us to go up. The stairs smell like the inside of a tumble dryer, and the air is warm. Patrick is in his room, wearing a blazingly white Iron Man T-shirt. On the front of the T-shirt Iron Man is snapping a heavy chain between his iron-gloved hands. Liam closes the bedroom door and says, “Sexton wants to see the mercury.” Patrick looks at me between slit eyes. I’ve seen this look before. It’s a bit like when his mother speaks to you with her hands on her hips. So I blurt out as fast as I can, “I’ve beenreading about the planet Mercury, and it’s made out of liquid metal.”Suddenly, Patrick’s eyes open wide. “I never thought of that,” he says.“That must be why they have the same name. I’ll show it to you,but don’t tell your mum or dad that I have it. Or any grownups either, or any teachers. Or anyone.” Then he looks at Liam between slit eyes.Patrick takes out a fountain pen from a drawer and unscrews the nib.Then he removes the cartridge and squeezes it over a small table.A dull silver liquid slips from the cartridge. It pools onto the table top and quickly pulls itself into a ball. Patrick slices at the ball with the nib of the fountain pen and divides it into two, then three, then five. Then he nudges all the spheres of mercury together, and they heal immediately into a single, metallic ball. “This is a liquid that never gets wet. If it was a river, you’d float on it.” Then he sucks the mercury back into the ink cartridge, reassembling the pen. The door opens and his mum comes in, her arms folding.

John W. Sexton

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