So, the above title belongs to a subscription-only article based on an essay about the unavoidable mentioning of my whole cardiac debacle in the context of Her Red Songs (my new book). I am not mad about talking about it, to the extent that a few people knew anything at all, it seems. However, these things impact our creative lives, and they leave their mark not alone on the body, but on the book. It has left its mark on my book, from title change, dedication, the creation of the index to the final poems chosen. That is why I wrote the essay, it is unavoidable.
If you can’t access the above subscription article, I put an earlier version of the above essay in my Internet Archive account here, https://archive.org/details/on-her-red-songs
And for those people who like things that cannot be found elsewhere, there are three well-read electronic chapbooks at a similar address here,
Tree is real silver
I.
Birds tremble there
alighting — (lighting)
its stained glass recedes
and within each
bright ening
light ening
shape
the song of a bird
embeds a garnet—
Each red-feathered song
pewtering
silver
-ground
on lazuli
II.
I see their (a)
-lighting. They
leaf the tree
in the absence of bud,
greening the tree
Envoi: May
Birds embed their gems secretly,
beneath leaf
Copyright 2022 Chris Murray
First published Poetry Ireland Review N°138, "An Eavan Boland Special Issue" Editor, Nessa O'Mahony.
Journals, and:bibliography, and: publication notes https://textworksite.com/journals-bibliography-publication-notes/
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)
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.
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
Melded into the metal door at the back of the old Alhambra, Sheltered by a short canopy that still boasts the glory of its stained green glass, Maurice tries to move his frozen arm. All feeling fails him, as he pumps the fingers of his right hand. The thumping heart rhythms in his ears boom like a bodhran beat. He is all sensation and no sensation. Thoughts dart around like the discarded wrappers that visit him briefly, before being whirled away. Beyond his own breath and the coursing of blood and the cyclonic breeze, he hears nothing. The fevered morning footfall on the Main Street is as unaware of Maurice as Maurice is of them.
The Pint
The persuasiveness of the cold, wet amber Pushes the last wisp of resolve firmly to one side, Revealing all the old desire.
Sixteen years, aging and maturing In a vinaigrette of 12 step hope and his mother’s prayers Hasn’t quenched the fire
Bad days and holy days and Saturdays All steered well, but not today Today he is too tired
Eyes off the road, off the goal, on the pint, Resting in the familiar flow, the gentle tide That is going to lift him higher.
Suitcase
“Suit yourself” His face, a pale, damp mask of resignation, turns to nod towards the door. “You whore….And take your damn dog with you! Aye, and all your traps… your blasted cuckoo clock and lamps, And all the stuff that drives me quare!”
Riled again, he strides the stairs, two steps at a time And pitches all his grasp can hold, regardless. “Bitch” he mutters as they tumble down; a scarf, a quilt, a dressing gown…
“Take them all” He sighs; his anger finally spent. He feels the silence creeping all around him. Sleep will fill the hollow soon, then dawn will wake the memory of her leaving, Taking one small case, nine years ago.
Autopilot Porridge
Putting the funk in function, you stumble around the room Odd socks on hardened feet, turned out to meet the world; hopefully. Hopeful of forgiveness? Or maybe just fatigue… A deep tiredness that will overlook your transgressions from the night before. Wretchedness that will acknowledge wretchedness, like some second cousin; similar but different. Hopeful that our 35-year dance will allow you to make your porridge in peace… and move on.
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)
Christine Murray lives in Dublin with her two children Tadhg and Anna. Her poetry has been widely published, both in print and online, in chapbooks, anthologies, and journals. She founded and edits Poethead; A Poetry Site that is dedicated to platforming work by women poets, their translators, and editors. She is an active member of Fired! Irish Women Poets and the Canon which seeks to celebrate and draw awareness to the rich cultural heritage of Irish women poets through awareness-raising and reading. She currently curates the Fired! archive at RASCAL (Research And Special Collections Available Locally- Queen’s University, Belfast). Christine Murray’s latest poetry collection “Gold Friend” is forthcoming in Autumn 2020 with Turas Press, Dublin.
I have kept this brand of violence in my heart, A broken strange sort of shard, That is unrelentingly hard, That is as pale as western sunlight, Covered by western clouds. Painting your house, In strange colours For my eyes to digest – Quiet memories, Of your strangely coloured pain.
It was silent, this pain. But it breathed lullabies and simple lies into my defensive warring mind. When your strangely coloured pain, entered me, and it tasted strange, I decided then to again, and again, and again create words to voice the silence that took the power of your pen. Because I could not paint the colours of your strangely coloured pain – I had no conscious way, then. Because silence has no colour, And no recourse but to regain, its strange brand of violence, that shakes colour from the world, and the voice from your pen.
What a surprise it was, years later, to see the Eastern sky burst to life, when I was too old for circumstance to matter.
Moment of Infinity.
The scent of us is wasted on cheap sheets. Across the pulling of my waist I can feel the wasting of our heat. Glints of rain scatter across my nearly shuttered eyes, I want to stay awake to soothe you, and find myself surrendering to the scent and feel of you instead. You soothe me, instead. There’s a melody you’re humming, or maybe it’s me, your feet tap, while I sing, and hold the back of your neck in the palm of my hand as the air between us tingles.
The blending of us, is so many colours.
These moments are like lullabies that soothe something sore. Something I closed a door on. These moments, where our hearts beat and dimples show, then recede, as something a little more serious begins to appear. Heartbeats fall, dropping slowly in the night air, air that can’t even touch us here.
You know, I loved being cold around you.
I could feel a warmth that had nothing to do with temperature – it had weight and mass, and beauty to it. It was this heat in some small way, That was our moment of infinity.
For Us, Fragile Things.
I still hold the anger sometimes, just below my ribs. It seeps there, like liquid bone, and runs up. It coats my shoulder blades and I –
I hunch under its weight, and wish I could drag it out. But it seems fused to my midsection, this mistake that seemed to be the ultimate misdirection. You.
I’m reminded of smoking with you – on summer days that were too hot, the smoke hit my tongue where your tongue could not.
When solid things seemed to shift and sway, My heart became untethered, As yours flew away. And there we left each other – In that desert we called Together.
It was Silly things – or maybe not. Eating dinner without me, Not pulling out the other side of the table – More interest in video games … – but then, I don’t blame you. I willingly gave up the keys to my life. I closed the lock and shut the door, in case any monsters wandered in, that might hurt this fragile thing.
This fragile thing.
It took a long time to realise that love is only fragile, when ego matters more.
I’m glad I lost myself in you.
I know now that this fragile thing, Can survive anything.
You were not the ultimate misdirection, But the key to the strength That I find now in my liquid bone covered midsection, That sings in frequent, relentless connection, about the wonders of misdirections, For us Fragile Things, Whose lungs learned to sing About all these silly things.
It’s Enough.
The car is rumbling stuttering, hopping to the finish line on the byline of our conversations where so much sits and waits in the sidelines, the drums are on again, it only took telling me there was something called ‘ghost notes’ to get me to agree I had a headache after we walked the hills, and the kids asked me ‘When will you marry daddy?’ I laughed, with joy Because it meant something then.
I didn’t know that you were so bad with empty spaces, when I loved them. It hurt more than anything to know that there were parts of you that were Average. And parts of me that were too, And parts of me and you and both of us that decided average was enough, and I wonder what it means when you get just tired enough to drop your dreams, and explain it in the eternally bland “It’s just tough” That’s why, when your sister texted me, after we had broken up, I responded with, ‘It’s enough.”
Chris Murray 