Under the gush of shower water your greying skin flails. In your mind you wade back to the brook, the water icy even in summer, your seven siblings balancing on the pebbled belly of the River Fergus, suds in your hair, brothers dunking you under, ice forming in your brain, penetrating your veins, Mother shouting Don’t catch colds. No one but the river ever taught you how to swim. Sometimes a silver fish would scurry by upriver. Everyone would freeze, crane for a glance before it flickered past. Salmon, Father said. Your brothers always poked the verge with sticks, boasted they could catch it. Their brittle frames have since sailed over the shoulders of their sons to the graveyard by the river but you remember them young. Under the gush of shower water your greying scales glisten in autumn sun.
(First published in Crannóg 53)
The Wooden Ladder
My Grandfather was a carpenter. Sometimes he made toys for me with odds and ends from the firebox. Once, he made me a ladder for my dolls; it had three rungs, rigid and rounded. I imagined it was cut from a fancy staircase.
Its two stringers, the length of my arm— the length of his hand, were parallel. I checked. I learnt that word, it means they’re standing right beside each other but even if they go on forever in a straight line, they will never touch.
My doll’s feet didn’t need to touch the rungs for them to leap up the ladder; propped against a shoebox in my playroom. They were steady in my hands like the saw in his when he drove his mark into the wood.
(First published in the Qutub Minar Review Vol. 2)
Moss
for Ellen Hutchins (1785—1815) “send me a moss, anything just to look at” –from Ellen’s last letter before she died
Here; a grey-cushioned Grimmia. Here, a flaccid Brachythecium spine. Thyme-moss, Hart’s-tongue, Sphagnum. And let me take you under the sea; a hive of sweet kelp, bouquet of carrageen bedded in a throw of Dulce. Knotted in sea spaghetti away from your fossilising name. I hope you died looking at your moss, stalks of haircap painting a different set of stars.
(First published in Boyne Berries 27)
When I Visit You Now
There’s a code for the door.
No smell of rollies,
no garden to capture
with a disposable camera.
But your brail-veined arms
stretch out to me in welcome.
You’re a salmon, I think,
head bowed under the weight of scales
and I a poet trawling
natal streams upriver, digging
tiers along the riverbank
as we walk to the dayroom
then back
but you slip
from my grasp,
sinking to the riverbed–
staring at the television.
(First published in the Qutub Minar Review Vol. 2)
Blinded in a winter’s dread no prophet foresaw. Spring’s new life erupted into a chaos of fear. Desolation replaced the warmth of a hug. Children banished from our everyday lives!
Ahh, the blessings — a swift journey home to the unexpected happiness under one roof. Chatter, laughter — a family enduring dark days come what may….
Time, the pickpocket of memories stood still. Watching, new ways of keeping our spirits alive, to be remembered, cherished. Lost moments recaptured before Summer’s end….
An invisible killer started a war, so much pressure on our frontline. But it would be, ‘Love and Stay at Home’ that had their backs.
Death came at a fast pace. Isolation, the enemy of a treasured last goodbye — grief mourned in silent lockdown.
And now, the road to healing shattered hearts and souls begins!
Family Love
Father. Mother.
Daughters. Sons.
Grandchildren.
Love weaves its magical thread
intricately throughout the ages.
Forging unbreakable bonds.
Out from nowhere,
an unnatural enemy wreaked havoc
on the close-knit unit.
They endured great sadness and turmoil.
Separation with no hugs
to warm the blood, tested their strength…
Generations fought for survival
alongside the mightiest warrior of all — Love.
And the family stood firm.
A force to be reckoned with!
Omen
Common sense flees at the first sign of fear, hostage to an ever sense of madness.
Inception of a foreboding story’s journey! I see; the one eyed child dancing on her grave — the ruins of mankind. I hear; the dark one singing an ancient curse — a prayer not heard. I smell; the rotting of bodies — soul thieves wanton destruction. I touch; the soiling of a pure heart — unholy spirits grasp hold. I taste; the drowning miseries in the afterlife — ripen death.
Saving the dead or killing the living? On a night when the full moon is covered by cloud!
You are as naked as a shucked oyster so, my breasts are slashed and raining pearls for you, my suckling child. The universe has too many doors. A terrifying flower unfurled overnight to tell me if they took you away or carted you off to die like pink tender veal. I would be prepared to stand on my own mother’s shoulders to push you back up to the surface, to stop you from drowning— and she would want that— because she too must have discovered this feral wisdom in the bloodied wake of birth. Everything is unfastening around me, voluptuously, in ways I cannot understand yet. For now, I must be patient occupy this hinterland and allow the stars to realign.
The Jesus Woman
After James K Baxter
I saw the Jesus Woman milling around the school gates. She wore grey marl track pants, her hair was scooped up into a pineapple bun. her breath smelt of coffee and ginger biscuits. When babies cried, her breasts leaked milk. When she smiled, birds flitted like glitter among the trees. When she screamed tectonic plates shifted. When she laughed everybody got high.
The Jesus Woman sat in a café and selected her twelve disciples.
One was a schoolgirl panicking in an airport toilet soon to be married in an unfamiliar country. One was a waitress who dropped her stillborn child into a storm drain on Good Friday and ran away. One was a grandmother who couldn’t read or write.
One was a freshly-battered office manager whose husband supported a football team that had just lost 99-0; One was a self-harming solicitor who advised clients in an office festooned with original artwork. There were seven others. But their identities have been suppressed to protect the powerful.
The Jesus Woman said, ‘Ladies, from now on, the rain will wash away our worries’. She did no miracles. She sometimes sold old clothes on eBay.
The first day she was arrested for having a backstreet abortion. The second day she was beaten by villagers for accusing a pillar of the community of rape. The third day she was charged with being a woman and given twenty five years in a Magdalen laundry. The fourth day she was sent to an asylum for admitting she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. The fifth day lasted for four years while she worked as a comfort woman constantly within the grasp of soldiers. The sixth day she told her abusive father,
“I am the light of the world. I am the one who brings into being.”
The seventh day she was set on fire:
the flesh of God was burnt to ash.
On the eighth day the earth stopped turning. All of creation began to cry.
Every night these tears are collected into a bottle for reckoning at the end of days.
Intensive Care
it does me no good to pay attention to the shushing
sound of the ventilator or the incessant twinkle of
machine lights, let me pretend to follow
you (like a scuba diver) gliding through lough waters
the passing of the Bann Foot Ferry above us
chugging its cargo of suited and booted brylcreemed boys
girls with shiny evening bags resting on swing-skirted laps
our bodies are clouds now we are wearing crowns
of marsh thistle we want to stay just here
but currents are carrying us away in their eddies
you reach the shore and stretch out on your back
inviting me to place my head on your belly, the weight
of it makes you smile because this is how it once was
me curled up like a nautilus sleeping in your womb
Fiona Perry is the author of Alchemy from Turas Press (October 2020), a book termed as ‘an intriguing and compelling début collection from a poet who is already strikingly in command of her craft. Mingling daily life with the numinous, these poems reflect on love and loss, on the milestones of lived experience. These poems travel through time and space: from the magic of ancient birds in a New Zealand landscape, to the intensive care ward where a loved one lies dying; from the daily round of household tasks, to the dreamworlds where memory, imagination and reality merge’. Fiona has won the Bath Flash Fiction prize for her story, Sea Change. Her work has been published widely in Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Recent work has appeared in Lighthouse, Not Very Quiet, and The Blue Nib. She contributed poetry to the 2019 Label Lit Project for National Poetry Day, Ireland.
Here you cast your dazzling eye through clouds ruptured on surging waters, where in winds on a mission across skies born of voids words were loaded:
let me out;
crowns of heaving leaves spilled trees, turned them upside down, a splay of tangled guts, and spat out the despair of the years in a season:
let me out;
until the decay of the black spell set in, the mulch of slow rot, a creep of violets unfolded:
oh, take me away
where hushed trees mangled in that storm descend to the bend on the old-winding road and fields and dusk woods and torn mills and canals and Lee waters take on every mood and ripple it back.
Father and Earth
Just like everyone else in this city where grey lines blur sky to pavement, you’re an extension of the rain; the incessant drizzle on these streets seeps through clothes, misting words of weather and when, colour coded alerts, storms between showers.
I’d listened as wind gusted every odd night, worrying for a future I might never see, where nobody wants their children to be, and reasoned water never ceases to be water.
You’d become old; the cough caught you.
I think the sun was setting with no great glow; patter of rain every odd hour, grey skies shortening the day.
Your steps faltered, your pulse soared; rough nights in A&E and finally the quarantine ward.
You gave the staff the brunt of your tongue, There’s nothing wrong with me;
I’ll sign myself out.
You didn’t, though you would have. Tough as mountains, old rock. Stubborn as the wind that roars.
Old mountains in clouds, mist of rain, Earth, floods of pain,
will you name yourself out?
Scramble
Don’t you know that deodorant is toxic she says, fanning the air with her fingers. Puts a song in my head. I turn to the messages on my phone. My doctor. Cholesterol is high. Advise a healthy diet and regular exercise. Are you listening? she says. Throw it in the rubbish. It’ll explode in the dustbin truck. Who cares about the bin-men? she says. What about the bin-women? Well, I haven’t seen any of them, she says. Hell, I’m trying to read. What? Letters from the dead? There’s no chlorofluorocarbons in them anymore. I’m not concerned with holes in the ozone, she retorts.
*
The wind was high, she says. All through the dark hours I listened to its protests unaware she was awake beside me. It happens nearly every night, she says, between storms.
It’s a top down issue, I insist, and besides, we notice the elements now.
Our granddaughter lets out a wail from the other room.
Rings out like an alarm.
Slip into The Sea
Curl under the bridge to sleep awhile, bullet-force rain dancing in gutters; pretend you’re the river, the last mile.
Feel tugs of water in your lungs, a vial prescribed to draw down the shutters; curl under the bridge to sleep a while.
In twilight, between poison and bliss beguile, this rain’s furious prance softens to mutters; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
You’re coming to the end of this trial – I’ll give you the sea, the warm water utters; stay under the bridge to sleep a while.
If you let the sea take you, saltwater will file scabs from your soul and offer to suture; pretend you’re in the river, the last mile.
And if you listen to the waves’ murmuring sail, essence of this transcendent suitor, you’ll break from the bridge to swim a while and find you are beyond the river, the last mile.
In rivers
I see you in rivers,
the swallowing holes and murky beds.
In the water,
dirt blots my eye; I hold my breath,
fly rings dot the surface; a broken bottle’s on the floor.
There’ll be no poppy red, ghastly watercolour spread.
I don’t tread and I don’t flounder for the above,
but sink right in until my breath is algae green.
There’s a moment; in the twilight,
I’m fearful, not knowing what’s to come.
The depth of an empty canvas greets me.
And my dead mother, my brother, you,
whisper at the watery fence.
A ghost life-film runs in my mind.
That’s a fly swatted out.
I struggle with the layers; I hurl against the skin.
There’s nothing I ever gave to sway me from this picture.
What have I ever done of note? Do I want something of note?
Aspiration is for the living; I’m knifing this to death.
There’s the slow river snake,
you whisper, whispering
patchwork reflections on the pool of the water.
Once this was enough; rise and disturb.
Fish playing rings for flies.
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
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
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
it is easy to obsess over small objects paperclips spoons and q-tips when self grooming generates silence — virginal
trumps untamable — the renunciations of dullness do not lead to desire with upturned hands, razors, at rest
it is easiest to use sadness as a utensil to push people away spiders construct traps from their abdomen then devour
daily to recoup, silk protein recycled gouaches in lowlight, design or debris we all think we might be terrible
but we only reveal this before asking someone to love us a kind of undressing — it is easy
to section and peel a tangelo even false origin stories expose shame — a cerebral echo chamber
when self sculpture empties mark the focal point as hinge hemmed, at the center, coral
since microwave romances have deceptive expiration dates
i brush my teeth at his place now, but that’s not the point scuba means self contained underwater breathing apparatus he kisses me urgently mid chew ginger garlic fish sauce
in public, no pressure, no hesitation, and this is mos def not the point chemistry is important since we cannot manufacture it out of raw necessity Drake’s first line in Finesse is I want my babies to have your eyes
despite incoming or ongoing variables what is the function of “x” why tell a stranger or a lover your problems when you can use it as a chance to punish those around you — make haste and hail to the queen of non-sequiturs
on my critical thinking roster i can’t pronounce the name “FNU” in countries where newborns are left post war now privileged strangers greet them as “first name unknown” a haunting aqualung
nerve damage after dead relationships may result in tooth decay when you are tasting: the first taste acclimates the palate, the second establishes a foundation, and the third taste is to make a decision
since you’re an expert of creating a crisis out of empty nostalgia can i get a metaphorical forklift for all my emotional baggage? the accumulation of plaque cannot be resolved by few weeks of flossing
what is lost can be found in the biological studies of an oyster or was it an orchid or was it of a clitoris — quick what’s a common fishing blunder? let me noodle around with this for a while before i get back to you
the anatomy of beaches: 3 on west coast, 14 on east coast your absence has reached comical heights Charlie Chaplin himself would rise from the dead to have a laugh at us
is this my grave or my mother’s womb?
it upsets me when my mother thinks my poetry is silly. the word “silly” comes from the old english word “selig” meaning happy, healthy, and prosperous.
in german, “selig” means to be blessed: but consecrated and made holy with what? when a title, silly, precedes the name of a person, their identity, vigor, and
passion are reduced to the relevancy of a car alarm. i failed to master french and vietnamese. my mother has a myriad of domesticated excuses to not speak
the english language. it complicates the process of checking and rechecking the meaning of words in results to the drowning of palettes in sand
dunes of iodine soaked palm fronds. a car alarm without a car is not just an alarm. as mother calls poetry silly, she shucks and drains the basket of mussels and oysters
in the sink, shucking and draining with such a lonely authority, the way a businesswoman shucks off her nightgown, the way a flaccid regime shucks off
its totalitarian characteristics. my mother is above logic, she cannot be subpoenaed, even under oath in court she will not admit to stating that my poetry is trivial. in the kitchen,
i read her a line from Marcel Proust, happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind but she isn’t listening.
lessons in taxidermy
my armpits have been secreting scaled sadness
for months grommeting new ways to chew
linea alba fat tongue teeth grinder agenda
sleep as prize for insomniacs somnambulists
consolation mantra safe alignments cold mala
beads rotates between index and middle silence
betrays never thought i’d feel this kind of hesitation
my hands on another girl its more than taxing
the way you take control ocean jasper too often
longing arcs expose vagueness seek excitement
in the mundane fingers on pulse fingering
when did withholding become attractive
knuckles hungry for pelvic bone quick terse
confession sharper than indigenous peppermint
are tactile feedbacks are satisfying imps
important lines lost between the years skin folds
if emptiness is a pretense, a breached duality, an unearthing
without dirt rebound is proof of grief interrupted here
taxonomy of queen bees a dozen to please you
Chris Murray 