The Icelanders have a word that means just that. A murky day that you know is better enjoyed from the comfort of a window seat; soft mizzle cleansing leaves shiny and bright.
When webs become crystal dreamcatchers, or perfect drops form on the telephone lines and slide slowly down like the oil on the wire of the indoor rain lamp,
with Venus in pink marble, her flowing robe revealing perfect curves against the plastic plants. Outside the blackbird puffs himself,
feathers rippling. He dances on the lawn. Drizzle doesn’t bring the worms up but his fancy seven step has the desired effect and he pecks and pecks and pecks;
like the drinking woodpecker did, long ago, on the dentist’s counter, see-sawing, a globe of red liquid dancing, as I looked passed it and through the window,
longing to be outside in the rain.
Spring Bank Holiday
We travelled far from city noise to wide skies, woods, wetland and a lapping lough-shore. Lego birds had been the bribe.
Leaving Minecraft in the boot we time-travelled, from plastic blocks to the kiln, where men had fired clay bricks. Further back, in the Crannog’s rustic roundhouse, we stroked hand-daubed clay walls.
Posed for pictures with brick birds but spent more time feeding the living, adding new naming words, researching migration paths, becoming birders. Pinched your mouth on finding a yolk-stained shell outside the coop.
Drifting off homeward bound with Shovelers, Shelducks, Redshanks flying around your head, Best day out, EVER, you said.
Until the next one…
Dreamchild
These Strangford wetlands and fields, inlets, islets and islands, one for each day of the year, are your haven; curlew’s perfect landscape of mottled wheat and barley camouflage, speckled pointed eggs.
Quaver call carried on the breeze floats through open sash as I drift off to dreamland. Ash thin, plane-grey legs vapour-trailing a cloudless sky over a moonlit low-tide lough,
transforming into my daughter. Feathers curl into auburn hair, down-curved beak becomes a bow poised to shoot fox mid-flight. Quiver strapped breast. She soars towards Scrabo Tower.
Dreamchild returns to loughshore. Wades at water’s edge, where along Monaghan bank, I’m walking with a thatched batch of uni stats. She does not speak, roots under rocks shyly searching for shellfish.
Six Curlews arrive to join her. She shrinks, cane legs and crescent beak reform, feathers return as she outstretches both wings. Seven whistlers take flight. Please – please come home.
Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She came to writing late in life, after finishing her Open University BA(Hons) degree with a creative writing module in 2015. Mainly a writer of poetry, she has had work published in journals and anthologies in the UK, Ireland, and America. In 2018, Hedgehog Poetry Press launched their Stickleback series with her micro-collection Circling the Sun, which is about some of the early women pilots. Gaynor has just released her chapbook Memory Forest, also from Hedgehog Press. That is a thematically tight collection about burial rituals and last wishes. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her debut full collection, after receiving an Arts Council NI grant in 2019, which allowed her writing time and mentoring and editing services.Gaynor is a member of Holywood Writers’ Group, The Irish Writers Centre, and Women Aloud NI. She also volunteers for EastSide Arts during their summer festival and the CS Lewis Festival in November. Gaynor is a keen amateur photographer and has had some of her photography published in journals and anthologies.
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
Riverrunafter James JoyceRiverrun
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
I am tired of you being you tired of the slit-eye side scan tired of the frivolous flip of your bone, tired of your toy dog dead head bob.
If I dare to step on your shadow you gobble my frame with vacant glare torch my aura with ethanol as I utter a word you suck your teeth, shrivel me to a tick.
Moontime, I dream you are a thread severed from my web knotted in nothingness choked in your own foam long leather tongue cracked with lesions speechless.
Mornings I recoil snared in seamless servility too tired to rebel, I yield.
Published Ropes NUIG Literary Journal 2019
The County Show
Days before the show –August fifteenth– you gathered your gifted greens in the cool of our bicycle shed scaffolds selected for delicate dressing.
Apples grafted from pears your secret craft of trapping sweetness, straw strewn beneath trees softened the fall of ‘Lady Sudeleys’ ‘Beauty of Baths’, and ‘Golden Delicious’ poised on enamel blue-rimmed dishes.
Our insides tingled with longing not for the radishes in wooden punnets, hairy marrows, cauliflower, and bleeding beets. Foods that we would never dare to eat! Not for the onion sets, shallots, and swedes, seed potatoes, round and kidney-shaped, but all for the festival spell of Show Day.
Clad in our Sunday very best we feasted on candy cotton and sugar pink sticks, rode carnival chair o’ planes to the sky tip met the whole of locality and prided that again, Dad, you took glory in every category.
(published Clare Champion 2019)
Shock Absorber
To be calm is brutal, when chaos annex the heart. and drones of doom stuff the head.
I doze in a bone-coloured bubble, suspended on the brim of trouble. tumble and rise like a drunken vagrant stunned in my store of remorse.
I wake with thistles in my throat, pinched lids sting from fret froth sizzles in my innards neck nape drizzles with sweat.
All this veiled strain, like an oil slick on a swan’s plumage, I need rescue to contain pain, absorb the shock of this damage
Defiance
Those who knew what lies she lugged to morning mass lauded her resolve.
Through a decade of nuptial rupture she prayed in a stained glass pool of innocent light solid as a glacier.
Deceit defied absence, captured her face clad in blessed blue. She did daily devotion, paraded centre aisle, sacred host exposed, at the shrine of the holy family.
One Easter Sunday he waltzed back and sat beside her in the pew beneath the resurrection.
Driving To The Dementia Convention
Driving to the dementia convention May morning in Connemara cotton wool clouds compete with sunshine sprinkles I embrace the optic banquet of roadside mixed greens copses crawling with shimmer ivy and holly leaves glazed porridge white hawthorn flower dressing the hedgerows lusciousness luring me deeper into trance of the majestic mountain way wrapped in awe I spot tall yellow irises signpost of the marshes changing blue forget-me-nots splashed on hillsides colonising clusters of mauve rhododendrons brilliant five-lobed bellflowers suck toxic layers, space invading.
Destination reached, I peel myself from the scene to hear your pleas, locked in mind marshes thought-streams swamped.
Don’t shut me out, find my roots feel my loss. I am alive, forget-me-not.
Anne Donnellan was brought up outside Ennis and has been living and working in Galway since 1980. She attends the Kevin Higgins poetry workshops. Anne has been published in the NUIG ROPES Literary Journal, A New Ulster, The Linnet’s Wings, The Bangor Literary Journal, Clare Champion, and the Galway City Tribune. She was a featured reader at the March “Over The Edge: Open Reading” in Galway City Library.
I’m of the age now That’s how my GP put it as he half muttered something about female hormones leaving my body I imagined them packing their bags happily, looking forward to exploring better terrain, cooler plains. They don’t leave quietly there is a deep boom sounding in me loud enough to raise heckles on the borders.
Their retreating noise cuts the eardrum on the edge of sleep, an orchestra at the foot of the bed, the deep breath of an oboe, the high pitch squeal of a flute, F sharp, slices at the slope of dreams. Tinnitus has become a schizophrenic bed partner.
They leave banging their suitcases off every corner of me. In tones that plumb the length of my brickwork until they lean into every crack—
send me sideways, startle testosterone just enough for chin hairs and a wasp-like sting full moon.
Then there’s the faux senility the walking-into-many-rooms-for-no-reason, the constant reminders you’ve forgotten something and the paranoia;
An innocent email from my husband with the title Plant woman near Boyle Was the start of some elaborate murder plot and not simply the nomenclature Ms. Moss a horticulturist and what does he want with her
only to study her petunias
I’m of the age I have no choice I must go with it shrug into this hill shoulder the northwest winds slide in millimetres each day towards the sunset.
Planting
In the beginning there was bog, acres and acres, flat as lake water after rain, brackish after the cutaway. The log fuff, the spit-depth footed to rough heaps, tiny tepees peaked the horizon like sound waves.
Then it became the soil of planting, acidic, damp. A graveyard earth.
The first time I dug the soil it was to bury Margaret the matriarchal duck. I covered her in black plastic painted with a white capital M like a mini silage wrap.
The next time I dug the soil it was to bury Charlotte, an early variety of potato which stopped too soon because of blight. It was a battle on the half acre.
When I dug again I buried Arran Edward John has set me right “Plant the local variety” he cooed in his soft boggy accent. The blight-resistant crop would only need — to be placed upwards to face the glut of rain — “just butter and salt”. Edward John’s refrain
It was the 30th of June. The long blade of summer was shortening. Rain grazed the road to Knockbrack I watched from the brow of the hill. I couldn’t face the smell of freshly dug earth that day.
That year as well as Edward John I lost six ducks, five hens and a drake named George. I vowed never to name another living thing. Because in the end, despite the good advice, the bog is only suitable to ripen blueberries, or to turn the heather rusty like a lit match, or to swallow you up, drag you down among the flint and bones of those who come before you.
Bushed
The bramble is unforgiving once you take those sweet black fruits it spends the rest of the year making sure it strangles everything in the garden between barbed fingers.
It holds my orchard hostage John O Gold and Discovery shake their crop to spoil for blackbirds. My plums can’t talk, the raspberries stop walking and the red currants offer their berries to any willing creature, except us.
I make blackberry jam. Boil it until it screams, slather its thick black curd on home-made scones, savour each delicious mouthful.
The Writing Desk
You waited for two months after he had died to tackle the dodgy foot on his writing desk. You’d have to clear it out first, go through all the papers and then when that was done you’d turn it upside down stick the foot on hard.
But you only got as far as his poetry pages and pages, ancient at the edges, journals and books, staples rusted.
You sat and you read, until all day had passed with you curled on the bed cradling the years of words now made silent.
The writing desk sits in the corner. The foot still wobbles.
Space Taxi
Soon I’ll be able to hail an Uber to Mars well not hail exactly I will inform my driver I’m waiting on the corner at Kiltyteige beside the tall, green house.
I’ll be there early before the postman does his rounds watching the heron fly over and the grey wagtail dance in the river.
Then Uber can deliver me to the launch pad Just off the bog road in Boyle— As good a place as any well known for its UFO’s— By then we’ll all be flying everywhere anyway one more lift-off will hardly be noticed.
Maybe someone out footing turf will remark on the plumes of smoke coughing across the fields towards them wonder why the sloes have fallen off the blackthorn or the fallow deer are galloping their way.
But they’ll get used to the daily flights And laugh like the rest of us at the irony of no bus route to Boyle but a shuttle to Mars.
When I’m strapped in sucking my Simpkins Travel Sweets hurtling towards the blue sky Mrs. Higgins will lean across and ask Why are the windows so small? or Do you think there’ll be tea? And I will smile and nod and grit my teeth as the capsule separates with one neat shudder and outside cuts from blue to nothingness with stars.
Soon there will be queues on the bog road to Boyle for the SpaceX Express to Mars. And the English couple in Cloonloo will sell their farm fresh eggs and raw honey. Mrs. Tansey from Bristle will tout her boxty, and young Walsh will sell space rock with Knockatelly running through it in red, sugar leading.
By then I’ll have forgotten all about my trip to Mars and my re-entry with a splash at the mouth of the Garavogue and waiting in the Northwest rain for the train to Ballymote because I couldn’t get a bus from Sligo back to the corner in Kiltyteige
Eavan Boland (1944-2020) peer-reviewed the Fired! Pledge and the Preamble to the Pledge.
The RASCAL database at Queen’s University, Belfast, has hosted Fired! Irish Poets since early February 2019. Fired! Irish Poets was established in the summer of 2017 to address issues of marginalisation and the neglect of Irish women poets in both the contemporary and historical Irish poetry canon.
The RASCAL Database is an electronic gateway to research resources relating to Ireland. The site can be used to search or browse information about a wide range of research and special collections held in libraries, museums, and archives in Ireland and abroad. The Fired! archive held in the RASCAL database includes digital resources centered in the development of Fired! including an archive of the original website, The Fired! Pledge, Bibliography, Critical Works Cited, group foundational documents, and external links to media-related materials and other electronic archival resources (the Internet Archive holds documentation related to Fired!). The authors included in the database are Anne Enright, Deirdre Falvey, Sinead Gleeson, Laura Loftus, Alex Pryce, Lucy Collins, Moyra Donaldson, Kathy D’Arcy, Walt Hunter, Terese Svoboda, and Mary ODonnell, among others.
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.
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
Can a dropped ice cream be a joyful sight? A slight of thought, akin to road kill: a dead badger is still a badger that was once alive.
Can a spark of juvenile pride (the curl tightly looped to touch the forehead of the whipped pile) be saved from extinction
once it lies, semi-freddo on the pavement? Losing shape and form and purpose – a small death or not one at all.
(Published by Banshee)
Notions of Sex
I have conversations in my head with my ex about how I don’t even want sex anymore that I could have it if I wanted it/ that men still look at me/ I see them looking at me it’s not a competition/ I say/ but if it was I would be winning/ I feel my body born anew without touch/ I can’t even imagine being touched/ my skin is ashy with resistance/ my hair is falling out/ I’m hungry all the time but I have no appetite/ I think about the trees I’m planting/ even though I am leaving soon/ will anyone water them?/ I admire the dirt under my fingernails/the rose thorn scratches up my knees even my sweat smells different/ ferrous/ as if I am rusting/ I find old nails in the soil unbent/ I hammer them into the dry stone wall / and tie the pear tree to the wallit/ it needs support though it is too young for fruit/ I leave orange peels on the window sill and / feel embarrassed by my nipples as I drink my coffee/ I think at this point I should talk about masturbation/ but I don’t feel like it/ there is a rotten mattress abandoned on my street/ I look to see if anything is hidden in the springs/ there is nothing/ across the wall is the river/ a shag swims past/ later it will dry its wings on a rock/ the tide comes in and goes out faster than I can look out the window/ I miss the turn/ in the woods I feel the trees around me like bodies/ I have read that there is a chemical peace from trees/ I imagine we are sardines together/ me and the firs/ upright/ refusing to lie down on the needly soft ground/ there is a greenhouse on the path/ the glass is all broken/ the pleasure of smashing windows comes back to me/ on building sites as a child/ one after another/ the softness/ the trajectory followed through/ we hold up a hose to a pile of sand/ pretend it’s a penis and piss holes like in snow/ a man in shorts waves to me from his bike/ compliments my dog/ no one catcalls anymore/ I was followed once/ in a small town/ I was about twelve/ it got dark but I got away/ you don’t forget the feeling of someone watching you round a corner/ is it better not to be watched at all?/ there are new blinds on the windows/ now the locals know whether I’m in or not/ I’m told you’re not a local until you get a set of binoculars/my eyesight has returned/ I forgot my glasses one day and never used them again/ I rub myself with oils/ take tablets to reduce my heat/ my face burns with irritation/ people think I’m angry/ they’re only half wrong/ but I’ve learned to smile in a better way/ let it rise to my eyes/ bare my teeth/ I reel away from hugs/ I don’t want to hold hands/ I sit on the steps in the garden/ sunny stones warm me/ I lie down. (Published by Hotel)
Old Lives
Perhaps if things hadn’t turned out The way they did, and I hadn’t left Eight years before, jumping in beside Daddy in the car, placing the flower My boyfriend had given me on the dashboard Perhaps if the waves had been more violent on The Irish Sea that crossing, if perhaps I had taken that as a sign and turned back Commandeering the wheel Pushing the captain aside Get out Of my way and sailed back to Scotland Taken up a job in an allotment Worked things out with the Greek Then ditched him later for a tall Scottish Fella called something like Reuben or Robin who played in a folk band Perhaps I would have been happier
Perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten that stomach ulcer And Daddy wouldn’t have confused His cancer for a matching ulcer They’d just cut it out in time and We could have gone to the Venice Biennale That year, like we talked about Me laughing at his conservative tastes How he figured craft was of utmost importance Not this conceptual drivel Cast a cold eye On life, On Death Horsemen pass by! He’d chant as we walked along canals Missing the dog at home That would not jump in a river And stove its head in the next summer Perhaps we would all finally learn How to get along at Christmas To sit down and eat in peace without Someone breaking a glass or shouting About the unfairness of it all And I’d go back to Glasgow to my empty flat Get my cat back from the catsitter Open the window and Drink a glass of cheap French brandy To bring in the New Year. (Published by Hotel)
Incredible Things Do Happen
A tiny person at Edith Piaf’s grave turned to my parents and told them I am her sister. Her bones were birdy, twisted and brittle, like those left on the number 171, stripped of flesh, in a small cardboard box. Her body doubled in on itself forehead reaching closer to the concrete of the tomb, her stick the only thing contriving to separate the two. Perhaps it was a lie. Whoever this woman was, she’s in the Repertoire now, joining the Kennedys playing baseball in their garden in Cape Cod, an immigration inspector who flipped my mother’s passport photo off with her long acrylic nails and the young man who presented my aunt with a huge bunch of flowers in Neary’s, apropos of nothing. (Published by Butcher’s Dog)
Chris Murray 