‘Proposal To Erect Monuments’ by Kevin Higgins

Proposal To Erect Monuments

 
In memory of poet, Frank Yammergob:
a twenty foot likeness entrenched in bronze;
the bits of old burger he kept in his
beard left in for authenticity.

Fastened to the dome of city hall
giving his enemies the finger. Exact
replicas atop every public building he paid
not a cent towards.

One laying permanent claim
to the disabled parking space
he liked nothing more than
to nick. Others

outside offices, factories, schools
in which he never
worked a day in what might
loosely be called his life.

The damage, a fraction of what
his parade of ex-girlfriends cost
the state in psychotherapist’s fees. Not
to speak of government grants to bury

those who shot themselves having read
his thoughts on the necessity of rhyme
in the comments section of
the Connaught Trybewn website. In life,

his one reader was a retired vice-principal
who went about the place wearing most of a sheep;
and told women he sat beside on buses
the way Yammergob’s verses

so perfectly scan calls to mind for him
days when a teacher was free to bring
the strap down on the heaving
buttocks of young girls.

Before political correctness gone bonkers.
When, from every lamp-post, down our street
hung a paedophile.

The words at the base of each effigy,
In His Memory, remind
though, technically, he still breathes,
die he eventually must.

Proposal To Erect Monuments is © KEVIN HIGGINS

  Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published four collections of poems: Kevin’s most recent collection of poetry,The Ghost In The Lobby, was launched at this year’s Cúirt Festival by Mick Wallace TD. His poems also features in the anthology Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and one of his poems is included in the anthology The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014).

Higgins’ poetry was recently the subject of a paper titled ‘The Case of Kevin Higgins: Or The Present State of Irish Poetic Satire’ given by David Wheatley at a symposium on satire at the University of Aberdeen; David Wheatley’s paper can be read in full here. Mentioning The War, a collection of his essays and reviews, was published by Salmon in April, 2012. Kevin’s blog is http://mentioningthewar.blogspot.ie/ and has been described by Dave Lordan as “one of the funniest around” who has also called Kevin “Ireland’s sharpest satirist.”