If you were able
you’d go upstairs with me.
Dream your hips poised mum
jug-like
dipped towards the sun.
In some afternoon’s shuttered light
we’re choosing fabrics to be hung.
Your style,
your certainty, tugs the rope
of a French church bell.
You’re young again, words held
on winding steps in France.
In this dream I have, as then,
you’re sure-footed.
There’s ceramic grace in your descent
confident
decanting scant, satisfied goodbyes,
cascading floors,
myriad lives.
The wind snaps my back door shut
as I move about the kitchen.
I look over to where you’ve been.
Take in the disappointment of your seat.
Taxi
The driver’s words are tumours
fat and fibrous, with teeth
sure I’ve seen ‘em blacks fightin in our streets.
his mouth is a gargoyle spout
ink-snaked neck
moss on rivered stone
young voluptuous women
blown across his bones
Tell ya girl, soon Cork won’t be our own
Soon Cork won’t be our own.
Down the bend of the road, he shrinks to small talk
his trip up North
not noticing the cold tap run inside my tone.
Got the cataracts done
Got a deal
Living in a fog, and me behind the wheel!
Fright to god I didn’t get killed.
His eyes are clean; they’re clean
but there’s no light in them
they belong to a child
unsurprised by what’s been done to him.
By the time I leave,
I’m wishing him well.
Remembering again
what it means
this being human
Safer Distances
I’ve seen my city’s private parts, advertised on plywood signs
in block-lettered chalk
Adult Only Store Used-up girls inside, starting life in another country but still
I know them from somewhere
I’ve eyed the types, those grey-skinned soggy men, sunken-eyed from watching
body-parts unfurling
The ships that line our docks are tough but grieve to watch the washed-up
purchased lives they’ve lost
Born without footing across slime and muck, slipping up and down inside
our harbour walls
Freezing to death in backs of trucks, not surfacing long enough to breathe
and float and see
black- water swirling menses, spitting ragged blankets up, onto concrete blocks,
no longer fit to warm them
until summer dries them out, maybe days from now, maybe never, maybe lost
in the hacks and splutters
The muttered lines about safer distances between us, between me and these girls
on scratchy screens
inside stores I’ll never enter
Riverrun
after James Joyce
Riverrun
past Eve and Adam
Drip and bubble
on his tongue
River wash through
stone and gravel
Hot traintracks
His schoolbag
Oh River Run
Thank him for the gift
he gave me
to celebrate my newborn son
River protect
the London boy
who praised me
For just
being there
River run
through his black hair
His wings so small
so tightly clipped
Riverrun a song of loss
Forever present on our lips
Riverrun
past Eve and Adam
Thalweg
Land bend
Delta
Flood
Once
upon a time
we left him stranded
but the current’s changing
A change has come
Riverrun, from where
he kissed him
in some
Underpass
Overpass
Armpit
Ledge
Behind a wall
Wedge of stone
River how you’ve
always known
to carry Adam
Carry Eve
Carry every love you see
River run, past Eve and Adam
Past songline
Fault line
Border
Blood
Past tall orders
Boys
born in armour
Tense
Protective
On the run
Riverrun
through tidal waves
Mudflats
Basins
Wider plains
River find the mouths you need
Inside us
Make them speak
of ripples
Oxbows
Currents
Streams
Forever carving
Changing shape
Oh river run
and river make
Build new mountains
His life’s at stake
None of this is helping
None of this is helping
I hate feeling wanting to hit something not you
something thick and unsuspecting a giant block of ice maybe
maximum impact
Your words are GRATING and I hate bloody zoom
pressing small hard LUMPS under my skin Declaring the ugliness
of life,
My life how I’m living it Telling me how many mothers
are raped
Speaking to their pain, explain invisibilised deaths at sea.
You turn words into verbs even your words have energy
I can’t summon.
You explain the wrongness of charity Only solidarity,
connectedness
but I don’t feel it with you hard blow to the ego
to feel rage and your language, your speaking to, Honouring,
framing, your sensitive lens
None of it is helpful; I’m not at all helped.
Your naming of friends, Libya Syria Ghana,
Reminds me how I’ve never met them. My life is angled away
from, what you call
the Global South
I’m left in no doubt I’m not good. I am not good.
Not like you, whose mascara is too
thick to look nice, your hair still wet and dripping
There is no time, no time, no time your hair still wet and dripping
I want everything to be better the privilege that’s
mine is layered and sickening.
But none of this, nothing about this, or you, is helping.
© Jennifer Horgan
Chris Murray 