this apple of a woman whose red dress surrounded the flowing flesh of twin hillocks, hung over the ridge of her cheeks to flow down to stocking tops
Hot and juicy, easy-peel woman
They ate at their pleasure wiped her juice from their jaws munched to the skeletal core that framed her bitter pips
swallowed her inside them
where she lay hurt for a day or two
till they spat her out without a backward glance
to take root once more
Him 1
He kissed me tenderly as he stabbed my pulsing neck vicious as he twisted the knife
leaving me wretched in unbearable pain tearing at his face
Him 2
He kissed me tenderly as his pulsing cock stabbed me in a vicious way
leaving me wretched in unbearable pain tearing at his face
After Rembrandt’s Women
Nipples sucked while I work the brush to the canvas the vermilion and ochre matching my puckered skin standing ready for pleasure
Your tongue-tip a missile of heat and wetness while I stroke the viscous oils to the taut canvas stroke after stroke
Painter and painted, one wet the other wetting in colours vivid and rich, beyond life till who is breathing and who is image is a matter of indifference
A faint sigh, a thrill of senses a brush, a stroke, a flick of life across the dusky scene damp fingers dust the likeness pull the flesh towards the centre where it muffles in a heaviness of pure puce and nutmeg folds
The light fades, the colours dry I perforce return to this monochrome thing called life in this harsh planet of defined things but I know whenever my eyes light on this image, I will dive and swell and surge and swim in its rainbow of life till I drown again and again in its silkiness and soft stains and tints and hues and live once again
Published in Rats Ass Review, USA, 2016
Reasons For Starving
Insanity Diabetes Wedding dress Abandonment Anorexic beauty Surgery Prison escape No food Fussy eater Enslavement Size 6 The doctor said to lose weight Martyrdom Spouse Drought Protest Famine Genocide Death War Torture Insanity
There’s An Old Man
… dying at her breast
she doesn’t forbid his last suckle his comfort of flesh, born and dying
His lips relax, his breath ceases she sees his maleness – the young boy knees bloody, hair tousled or eyes alight to his first love his protection of offspring or his anguished awareness he is no longer alpha male
She does not let him lose his pride helps him hold till the end all the power he possesses in mind if not in limb for his presence yet instils stability and safe harbour
let him fear not he is alone when time’s past his power spent, his vacant need exposed to all
Anora Mansour is a graduate of the University of Oxford. She lives between Oxford and Dublin. She has been published in a collection of Jazz Poems, various online sites, and has her own published collection of poetry and blog. She is African-American and Irish.
Oh Night, oh calm and mythical night, Have you not seen the moon? How bright! ‘Tis not the sun but the twilight, To the earth holding tight.
How soothing! Cool and warm in winter’s night, Calling it the noon, ‘‘tis all right’’ See the stars twinkling at height, A moth gently flying around a streetlight.
The trees singing in a soft breeze, And their shadows dancing in sweet harmony, Tomorrow night all trees shall freeze, But tonight listen to the crickets humming their lullaby in melody.
Oh Night, Oh Calm and Mythical Night, Have you not seen the moon? How bright! ‘Tis not the sun but the twilight, To the earth holding tight.
How soothing! Cool and warm in winter’s night, Calling it the noon, ‘‘tis all right’’ See the stars twinkling at height, A moth gently flying around a streetlight.
The trees singing in a soft breeze, And their shadows dancing in sweet harmony, Tomorrow night all trees shall freeze, But tonight listen to the crickets humming their lullaby in melody.
Monster in Your House
Hold on to the curtains tight, Pull down the bruised red blind, Here it comes in the night, You say it is not right. But someone has got the blight, Blue unseeing eyes that turn white, Let enter nor shine no light. Smiling, stuck in oblivion in fright.
Will it all end in demise, Or will you finally escape tonight, You and your child?
Stranded on an island
Stranded on an island
-all alone I was,
Lonely I seemed
-brief would’ve been
Hidden by the mist,
-no one I saw.
Mist so thick
-suffocated I was,
Looking at the skies
-nothing but a blur,
And by the night never-ending
-blinded I was,
When I looked at the sea,
I wished to escape,
For comfort from the rain,
I thought once and again,
When every step would hurt,
When every breath would kill,
Tell me you, who are free,
Would you not make the same mistake I did?
Would you not just jump and swim away?
Follow-up
And when I was too far away,
The fog had lifted,
And the shadows no longer existed,
Had I only, little longer waited,
I’d have seen the weeping willows cry,
A cry full of pain and sorrow,
Because on the island I no longer exist.
Trichotillomania
I took them away one by one It started with one and ended with none They warned me to stop But I listened not I hid that which wasn’t there with pitch black Hoping I won’t get their stare When I looked at the mirror I would see, not those that were missing but those still standing They said that my chances would one day, run out they will never come back I tried over and over Giving it my all But I kept on going And when I’d remove my mask I would see, how much worse I had become.
You sit opposite me, on a broken stool, smiling with your teeth. Rain drips from the ceiling, seeps into table cracks, running onto jeans. You speak in trauma, in childhood, in breathy laughs, in old love. I show my teeth. You take up more space than me. Your voice eats me, drinks me, you put your hand on my knee and kiss me. I don’t talk, I let you talk all the time.
I stand in the kitchen, staring at the window. It has swelling eyes and tangled hair and clothes from yesterday. The colour drains from my cheeks. Washes down the sink. Your voice appears behind me. It’s bigger, bigger than me. Screams over dishes at the bottom of the sink. I show my teeth. You drink me with a straw, eat me raw fill my mouth, hands and stories. I don’t talk, I let you talk all the time.
I sit on your bed in the black. The moon shines in from the window and the bright spills all over me. A crack runs down the middle of things; The bed, the floor, the handle of the door; you slammed it so hard it came free. The colour drains from my cheeks. How did I end up here? How did I end up here? I show my teeth. From the hall you scream, you’re a fucking child. I lie on my back and sleep. I don’t talk, I let you talk all the time.
What Do You Dream of?
You still dream of me, baby? I dream that you are holding a sheet to me, and I cannot breathe. So real, that when I wake I feel as though I have died, I have died. You still dream of me, baby? I dream of arms outstretched, reaching for yours, folded to your chest. In these, I lose all over again. You still dream of me, baby? I dream of every bad thing you said to me. They’re written on my eyelids & they come in screams. Your voice like a mocking angel sings me from sleep. But you still dream of me, baby?
If I Weren’t Afraid
This time, I’ll say yes. I’ll fall back into your arms, crawl beneath the bedsheets, they’ll still be warm. This time, I’ll say yes. I’ll sip the coffee again, watch our films again, won’t be afraid of music anymore. This time, I’ll say yes. I’ll stop the silence, talk for hours, say I love you without it being such a chore. This time, I’ll say yes. I’ll walk back into the room, return my hand into yours & grip it tightly, as if it had never left. This time, I’ll say yes.
Grow
Smear lipstick with glitter & tousle hair strands Show bravery when letting go of roller coaster handlebars & hot palms Bask in the sun’s warmth without burning Receive love & neglect hurting Lick wounds & heal scars Explore the intricacies of bars & the arbitrary folk that fill them on a Monday nights Comfort my tendons as they have tendencies to shuffle & laugh when faced with respect Prepare for the cease of self-discovery And my anguish that shall chase its fingertips Empathise when my skin becomes tenuous Crumples like newspaper Eyes heavy with tales that reside on finger pressed lips In them, remember our time And say that you’re glad You grew up with me.
Holding up signs
Kiss me in the living room lay me on your bed At the end you will cry. Walk me through the garden consume until you’re sick At the end you will cry. Let me take away the sorrow I’ll swallow it whole At the end you will cry. Write my name on the walls love me like a plaything At the end you will cry. Fight me, hurt me Spit me down the sink contort me into a child’s nightmare At the end you will cry.
In a year
Cut cake for lost jobs and mangled hearts for beds that sink in the middle spilt wine and smoking inside for sleeping on the bedroom floor grasping her arm because She didn’t want to be alone she never wants to be alone cheers to new hair & tattoos that profess the emotions I cannot lather on my tongue to sleeping cold next to her blow out candles for one, two, three days spent inside not talking or eating but relentlessly thinking about what she said and how she meant it celebrate a year gone by
Not a cup of tea, a pint or just ‘meet me’ because I want to wait awkward at a counter beside you with the steam spluttering, the espresso machine knocking and our overdressed elbows almost touching.
I want to sit opposite you at a small table that can never be small enough, absorbing the heat of your hidden knees and then eyes when I catch you watching me lick the froth off my lips.
I want us to be both fiddling with our round white cups, thumbing the holes that make the handles, intense with conversation while idling our fingers around and around those curves.
I want to be alone with you in a clamorous place where no one will notice what’s not being said, that’s why I say safely, meet me for coffee, instead of suggesting something else.
Winner of the Poetry Ireland Butlers Café competition 2017
Limbo
You visit my room, punctually as if it’s an appointment and I’m never quite ready after waiting for days. Time isn’t the same here, like being very far away from the earth then landing to find everything’s changed, everyone gone. Anyway, you come to my room and we sit on the single bed which doubles as couch, chair and table, share food off a tray made pretty with a scarf on which I lay saucers holding olive oil, zaatar, bread for dipping and on the one large plate I own, arrange orange segments in a rainbow over pomegranate jewels, and although these are sour and dry to the tongue here, you say you love them, crunch enthusiastically, laugh at anything. We laugh a lot spluttering through the trench between us.
This room is temporary, for six weeks then twelve, then Christmas, and now it’s a year and soon it will be two. Things accumulate. A kettle, an electric steamer, stacks of bowls, cling film. I store food in the chest of drawers, crouch at the mirror and offer you seeds, demonstrate how they open: place between your front teeth, vertically, like this, and pop. Sunflowers. The taste of sun.
Sometimes I don’t leave my room for days, pick from the drawer, dried fruit, crackers, tahini. No one misses me or calls and it’s better inside, alone, than enduring the queue and noise. Then you visit.
It’s been forever since I spoke so struggle with the words, your language, my voice. I apologise, and you laugh because I’m only waking up and this is our appointed time but shrug everyone here is always late, and I explain that this is because we have nothing to wake up for, no time to keep, just cycles of light and dark that creep up on the window punctuated by meals, if you remember to walk down to the feeding area.
We gossip about the other residents, you encourage me to speak with so-and-so, they’re really nice, you think all the people here are nice, now you’ve learnt how to say hello and compliment their beautiful children, wishing us all to be friends and I have to ask are you friends with everyone you know?
Then time is up. So soon? I won’t beg but implore you, stay, another tea, more bread, different fruit, anything but see: you are leaving, because you always leave. You have to be somewhere else. You have somewhere else you can be.
Smiling, kissing your cheeks, one – two – three I lock the door in your face. Space is empty. I take the dishes to the toilet, wash up in the tiny bathroom sink, straighten my covers, put away the tray, hide the mirror behind the scarf and open the window just enough to almost feel that I must be breathing.
My house
This was the last look at the land, here where they stood in the wind and waited, looking down the bog impatient for a plume of steam blooming along the narrow-gauge track,
for the doors to open and shut them in, on the way to the junction with the big city line, they say they’ll be back and don’t know yet it’s a lie,
waiting, pacing, lifting cases, hoarding in their eyes the light off the lake, the way the trees sway, and all the softness of hills, birds and sky,
carrying their cargo inside; the entirety of life, who they are, into the trembling train and away, far across seas, roads and cities, into new lives, old age, and death.
For many, here was the last place they left, waiting on this platform for change to come, some giddy, some grieving, leaving home.
First published The Irish Times New Irish Writing, ed. Ciarán Carty
Line
We have blocked the line with caravans, a Mercedes bus with the door come off and a trailer draped in blanket with a child’s rainbow-coloured tunnel inside it.
A pink plastic house sits on the track and a rotting pile of wood long left to slime, a car parks there on and off.
Further along we sit around the firepit made of a tractor wheel and on nights like the solstice look up at the stars and the rocketing sparks
feeling the ghost of a train roaring right through us.
First published Crannóg, ed. NUIG masters programme
Too little
for Andrew
I say now how I thought about you over the last nineteen years because I did
but I never looked, didn’t ask around the doorways and methadone queues if anyone had seen a bouncy laughing long-haired guy, my friend
didn’t even pick up the phone to my ex, who might have known – though thought of it the odd time holidaying on our old streets see your shadow in a corner or think I do then justify maybe it had been too long since you smiled for that description to still be true –
so when the revelation slaps in the smoking zone behind the band that in fact it’s been ten years and I didn’t even know
you haunt me all weekend with your grin the smile under your hair is crushing the clouds and I swallow down concrete tears slowing past every comatose man with a cup wedged resiliently upright in his hand
but is it because though I did often wonder how and where you were I never actually bothered to find out?
First published The Poet’s Republic, ed. Neil Young
Distancing
My daughter is in a ditch Talking to herself Preparing for war
When friends can come over They’ll climb the ladder I’ve left Stretched up the gable end
Lob the dog’s balls as bombs Defend themselves With this ancient shield
Just unearthed, made years ago For another child She scrapes it clean
Is that OK? she asks Thinking clearly I might Want it for myself
Crouched on a camping mat A silver tongue Lolling from the hedge
My youngest child is kept safe From the road by tiny Leaves like green snowflakes
The trunk of a birch tree Listens to her dark Imagination
She’s at her best In isolation Making all these plans
The following sequence of poems was composed while in isolation, and are reflections on the pandemic and the enormous changes it has wrought in all our lives.
Innocence
Christmas was a focal point Creating the inevitable little excitements. Predictable excesses indulged in at the year’s end.
It goaded us into domestic frenzy Relaxed our personal long term objectives Temporarily. Coaxed us to retail therapy By conducive shopping malls
Our emotions surged On full singing churches, lit candles twinkling lights, shimmering city streets, acknowledging, at least a little, the source of our joy. Happy children and friends uplifted us, gifts brought and given, laden tables respite from care for twelve days and sated- Gratified maybe by our charity to others.
How cocooned we were in our security! Our sense of perennial aegis Who would believe that the world would revert, regress to unimaginable chaos some twelve days later? Descended instantaneously upon us, among us – A nano-microscopic spiked alien dot much smaller than a grain of salt. So we rally organisation to minimise the ensuing assault We also hit out – appropriate blame, responsibility, negligences on our leaders, mentors. But aren’t we all human? And so we futilely hope to rationalise, Impose structure on this impasse Life cannot be structured or rational- Truth is exposed.
Vendetta
Well versed in electronics now As a global village we communicate The logistics of how well-planned by timely Fate At such a very appropriate date By which to have us all trained In alternative ways to relate Which do not need personal interaction As stunningly appropriate.
Impact
Quantum physics now states and proves that human thought can make things move. An empowering theory! – Is fate a self-result, should this sometimes evoke a sense of guilt?
If thoughts can cause a change of state which seems to mean all things relate to causality via place and date.
So – Did Greta Thunberg and protesting teens cause ultimate eco-change by neural means? Or did cohorts of youth, with tears of love on deaf fiscal ears alert God Above?
Then again (in time-lapse) did Dean Koontzs’ book “The eyes of Darkness”, which he undertook to future predict 40 years ago, a now relevant Wuhan tale of woe? There’s much mankind doesn’t really know Should our trust in science make such a show?
Pinnacle
My young grandson sits near a high tower of plastic blocks Self-proud, he shouts “Look Granny, I made that!” then inadvertently kicks it in his excitement of turning to me. Devastated, he groans – “If only I hadn’t kicked it! Then – “it was too high, that last brick”. Hindsight.
It being Covid times now, self-cocooning, I recall this and see the analogy to “the last straw” that breaks the camel’s back. My mind also revisits the “pinnacle” of civilisation our era was on… and I wondered if things could have advanced much further for us 7 billion in the direction we were taking, without catastrophic consequences?
Electronic technology gone quite mad, all sorts of “make life easy” artefacts to be had. Worldwide travel available to all, info beamed straight to our phones, now the master in our homes. Sad to say the way we were headed –disconnected the homeless, dispossessed, millions of refugees, forlorn and stressed, hidden corruption to access unfair gain ignoring the pain Covid puts us on a somewhat even keel again without control of our worldly ways, we realise man has not endless days.
Current Stagnation Vacuum
“Two steps forward, one step back” was a well-worn saying, a much-used hack, but 20th-century progress, on an upward rocket, saw yesterday as history – nothing could stop it.
Bewildered elders watched receding past, vanish at lightening speed – gaped aghast upwardly mobile life flew madly on ground-breaking innovation rendered recent ones gone.
“No going back” seemed the latest phrase the reach now aimed at – in a haze Above the sight of man – but God? Our rockets landed with a downward thud.
So where does it all go from here? Revert to former knowns I fear – Can we return to previous ways? That second idiom is a bi-sense phrase…
Mirror, forge the image I can recognise. Give me mercury streaks for my vinegar’d smile. Show her now, same size as me. Same distance between us two. Virtual, not virtuous when I laugh, she laughs. No space spared by glass and aluminium to conceal. I cut her hair and dyed the root, aged her face with reckless youth seared skin with hot tears, smoked and smudged, double proved. Let sadness land to eat away at firm chin and high cheekbones. Had late nights furrow sockets, spill their leaden shadows. Lay rigid as failed love rubbed out angles, scattered tiny lines on temples. Relaxed as a new love brought expansion, contraction. Skin deep, skin tight, skin-full of experience. It shows on me. People struggle with the truth, age advances by the time we catch them in deceit. But you don’t lie, you reflect the fact while most avert their gaze. With each cycle, each rapid leap from winter to spring as ice thaws and sun warms. We do just fine, you and me. Keep the symmetry compose ourselves. Cast out fear embrace what’s real.
Élevage
I took the wine home post-event the bottle sticky nearly spent. Breathed in the taint of basement mould, of sickly damson decay. Brushed its neck with fingers stained a violent blue tannin gums astringent with the taste of you. Grinding greyish-purple teeth of mottled hue garish lips with smeary lines struck through; All glamour quenched by this cool morning light. You clocked me buffet bound glassy-eyed, chock-full of riddles and sham panache swerved clean east across the room to you flushed with Dutch courage, skittish as a bee in thrall to gummy pollen dab, emboldened by the potent juice. Now I sit in dawn’s pernicious way and rue the deft and steady finger-play the pop and hiss of disgorgement, mired like before in the folds of your acid tongue. Through decisions made, both bad and good how best to describe our painful flow? The racking of my crudest form, the shaping of a once fresh heart, an untapped vintage poured out neat. Strength and essence unproven yet hoping age will finally discern, the faults not to repeat.
An abstract of us
With the light off, I catch your avian eye. In the dark, you steal mere seconds to adjust your giant orbit flicker punctuated by a sigh. But the glare, I see it plain upon your face. Your sharp gaze could cut glass, steel firm despite attempts to weather your resolve. Where you deform by force, I am brittle, break, malleable as stone.
Winter comes to coax us outside, promising relief. Each struck dumb as starlings soar above the trees on Hampstead Heath, a tidal murmuration printed on pink clouds. I want the perfect picture, messing with the shutter speed but their swarming dance becomes a smear across the screen. The magic dissolves. We can’t fake that harmony, make new patterns stick.
I hit delete.
Cipher
Zero is nothing so how can it be the size of a living entity? Zero is empty, a void. Not like a woman. A woman is full to the top. She unifies, is universal. Zero’s a chasm, a woman a peak, a bottomless lake. How then can her body be confined, vacant? Be null. With a numerical value of less than one? A man can not be Zero. Unrestricted by designer template and form. Why, men still measure by girth and chest, over arm and inside leg. Study the small print, locate the rules. You can choose. You can limit, curtail. Strip back the chassis, an aerodynamic engine built for looks not speed. Gorge on tissues sup thin air adjust your figure and mind to the game. Strive for the magic of nothing, exist for the sum of the losses and gains. Whittle, shrink become quiet, still. No elements, substance. Not present. Zero. Make no impact. Become a literal frame. And double it if you prevail. It is the same. If you look at Zero, you see nothing. It will not be easy. A woman can not easily be nothing.
Between your lungs I lie
In the car, after the news, the preceding hour a blurry hue. I think of your heart, your poor scarred lungs hands balled to fists, a child again. As the engine starts Between two lungs begins I hear a song bird soar above and circle back. She brings me the image of you collapsed in my mother’s lap. Those whispered words, gasping for breath. Now my own is short, jagged, almost gone. But not gone like you.
Who else has gone today? I could buy the Examiner but I won’t see your name. I’ll buy milk and bread, remember to collect the kids. In Centra, a boy of 18 or 19 asks, do you need a tissue ma’am? As I throw him Kinder eggs and all of grief’s sweet impulsive trove and cry, the noisy choking kind fumble for my wallet, for the words to say my dad died today. He looks at me across the till, mumbles I’m so sorry for your loss.
Irish people and their death. Chats in the kitchen, solace in the post office queue. Then tomorrow a new list of names to check through. Send our regards, God rest his soul. At least he didn’t suffer, he was a grand ould age. I gulp the air in this land that was not yours. Imagine two lungs pink and membrane soft how your heart cleaved the space between hoping I was still within.
I believe in transformation, pupa-to-winged emergence.
I believe in the power of the pulsating chrysalis the eating of lessons and the uncurling of fetal winters.
I believe in the stillness of calm after storm the redressing of old wounds and the snakeskin-shed of bandages.
I believe anger is grief in new clothes, I believe violence her stillborn child. Wrapped in cloth and carried over our jagged terrain, cradled in the skeletal arms of the dead.
I believe in the fading of scars, the catching of tears in the old jelly jar, and drinking in their medicine.
I believe in transformation. And the movement beyond.
[Justice was first published in the Spring 2020 issue of CURA Magazine]
Death and Waking
Thank you for the reminder.
I suppose I needed it.
Had almost forgotten to
squeeze your hand upon parting.
I won’t ever do it again.
Or at least not when I think of it.
I’ll finish the fight before bed.
Make sure I’m calling my mother.
Sure, sometimes I’ll fall into old ways,
Patterns of habits formed in my sleep.
Sweat rings embroidered into my pillow,
when I was dreaming of life without death.
But I am awake now,
Still drying my clothes from the freezing bath,
Picking icicles out of my hair.
I promise to cherish it here.
The Gendering of Cotacachi
With each fragmented patch of earth, that Andean sun-god catches her step until she is falling against the wayra, toward the mud fence at the foot of her curves; this mountain her homeland.
A mother, that hushed story-teller, whispered to wide-eyed babes, the aged myths of the mountain. Told of how the sleeping volcano appeared to dreaming men as woman, blonde, blue, and pigeon-toed; her deformities aberrant, but captivatingly beautiful.
THE LAST HAIRCUTFor Patricia Connolley Schaefer (1938 - 2016)
I remember folding hair between blades,
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
gray straw
dried as candlewax
I remember trying not to break them
fragile strands I’d known so well
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
dull shears
a dangerous dance
I remember touching your crown
skin-cracked and peeling there
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
like old newspaper clippings
breaking between fingers
I remember smelling your scent
sweet smoke and dryer sheets
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
trimmed pieces
falling like leaves
I remember your gratitude
When the cut was nearly done
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
your kiss on my cheek
your frail embrace
I remember loving you then
Hair wrapped ‘round my finger
cut/comb
cut/comb
cut/comb
not yet foreseeing
this last goodbye
Most paintings portray you as a placid woman bearing a salver, as if you were offering cupcakes, rather than the two breasts that were sheared from your body.
If there is anguish, it’s half-hearted. If there is blood, it’s a thimbleful. Such feeble depictions of brutal revenge.
Some say you were then rolled over broken pottery and scorching coals. Another version sent you to the stake. But does the method really matter? It’s enough to learn you were tortured for saying, “No”.
They held you down for him and raped you for him. They tied your wrists for him and cut off your breasts for him. They stoked the tinder for him and burned you for him.
All the while he kept his gaze on the small fire that you made.
Note | Previously published in Cordite Poetry Review (ed. Curnow, N.), Issue 91, May 2019 (cordite.org.au).
Ursa Major
Ursus arctos horribilis
Bear-woman, this is where the whirlwind stops. Right here, among dark incantation. Look around you, use those grizzly eyes, for soon you’ll turn polar—a bulk of light with clumsy paws. The blood-thud of constellation shall roar inside your ears.
For now, remember the startled face, the swift lift from grass and the bear hug embrace. Remember his hands. Remember why your tail is longer. Your words growl as thunder.
Note | Previously published in Wild, Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, 2014.
Voltage
I met a death collector when night came seeping, his spooklights harried cloud.
Each was ghostbone, a white-hot spindle of flash then roar.
When he touched me, life cleft into after and before.
Gravedigger’s grip of lightning flower now brands my skin for provenance.
One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Then crack of thunder. Then lash of storm.
Note | Previously published in The Stony Thursday Book: A Collection of Contemporary Poetry, (ed. O’Donnell, M.), Limerick City & County Council, Limerick, 2015.
The Chorography of Longing
Rain. The rain at sea. The word, rapture. Moonrise. Starlit. Blue-smoking darkness. Its cargo of mysteries. Phantasm and sprite.
This lonesome apartment. This night-long sleepwalk. How we wake in separate rooms.
This haunt of hinterland. This homesickness. This thudding. Its roaring, rushing sound. The clutch of your hair. My hand reaching out. An echo of satellite song. Of siren speech.
This unbroken code. This all-or-nothing. Our thoughts at half-mast.
Of when to settle. Of when to quit. Of overworld and underworld. Field and fallow. Dog-bark. Bee-hum. Slow work. Each wing-made murmur.
A host of sparrows in the bushes. A qualm infusing this dark hour. The holy well, its heft of coins.
Misfortune instead of miracle. Lost instead of left. Weight of unspoken words. Of windborne memory. Spirit-wild. Soul-storm. Ardent holler. Our bodies break too readily.
Note | ‘Blue-smoking darkness’ is taken from ‘Bavarian gentians’ by DH Lawrence. This poem was previously published in Underneath: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize 2015 Anthology, Axon Elements (International Poetry Studies Institute), University of Canberra, Canberra, 2015.
Síle Na Gig
I wish for you to sow this field of six senses and seven sins.
I am not wanton, but wanting. I call only to you.
Even in stone this body remembers you.
I fidget with supple invitation. There’s nothing more than me and this world inside of me.
Note | Previously published in This Floating World, Five Islands Press, Parkville, 2011.
Chris Murray 