Pink Is A Sister Sick
with sweetness. Bright;
blinds beautiful men, robs
them of their enamel, but
they never protest.
Fat lashes fan those
flushed cheeks, like
blood blushing milk,
bones so high and hollow
beneath. Pink licks the dark,
but refuses to wear it.
I went panning for
black diamonds in her hair
in our girlhood, and found
nothing but dirty pebbles
and rust for treasure; I
couldn’t love her. She’s
a predator with doll parts,
a perfect Pinocchio gone
rogue and hungry
for boyprey.
I’ve got a perverted
prayer that in time, she’ll
dissolve into herself;
melt at midday,
nothing more
than a
discarded boiled sweet.
Equilibrium
I’m strutting stratospheric,
embellished and splendid
in my NHS wedding dress.
My mother was here before me,
her father before her, his uncle
before that — lucky, lucky me
— our platinum gilted heirloom hops generations and genders,
our gene pool a puddle of madness
thickened with blood and tear-streaked shrieking saliva.
I’m in my unsilent season,
souped up and bursting,
far too sexy
to sedate. This is my circus
and I am the airborne acrobat
defying my earthly anchors
until they come for me,
saturnine.
Anthem
New York’s summer breath
climbs heavy through the window
and the restless worm wrestles
through apple rot.
Narcissus’ trumpets
wither in astonished atrophy,
recoiling into the earth
as the amnion ruptures,
a parting of seas in the
holiest of churches –
between
the wide open legs
of an obedient woman,
held to ransom by
blanched agony, lips
anaemic, lily white.
Skull shards shift tectonic
and give passage
to the crowning;
the searing stretch of emergence,
the ripping of the mantle,
the sting of the slap –
and it breathes.
The bed sheets are soiled
with immigrant blood
the colour of November poppies,
and writhing in it,
the jaundiced newborn skin
of an epoch in waiting:
a God complex
with baby sized fists
clutching nuclear warheads.
Going Dutch
I cut my teeth on you;
let enamel tear
through the warm pink tissue
of adolescence.
I bared my legs, but
bent them inward,
dressed them in angles
in case you found them
too soft, too fleshy.
You didn’t (they weren’t).
I kept my hair down
so subtle shadows fell
where cheekbones might be,
stolen symmetry, in case
you realised I wasn’t
pretty enough. You didn’t (I was).
We’d play pool –
I never won (I never cared) –
and eat chips on the way home;
you paid your way and
I paid mine, and I never needed
to wear my coat (I did), until
that one night when
you didn’t walk me home,
the night I fell asleep and
you cut your teeth on me,
the ones you lied through (you did),
and I paid in full.
I’d Be Queen of Myself (if I weren’t anti-monarchy)
She said
I seemed brighter and
I was that day,
that week,
but my brightness
had a lid on it
because I couldn’t let it
spill –
unless I was alone
and then
I could sing
and sing
and grin
at the windows
and the cutlery
and laugh at the shape
of the front door
all angular and rigid
and trapped by lines
– not like me –
I was bright that day,
that week,
in cahoots with the sun
(she told me so
and she’s a puppeteer) and I’m
dancing jigs
in the frozen aisle and
I’d be the Queen
of myself (if I wasn’t
anti-monarchy).
But I’ll settle
for this power,
this rising gift,
this momentary lapse
when the numbing fog
clears and life is
so vivid,
and it’s right
under my nose,
the promise of it,
and I forget
that it can’t last
– it won’t last –
until it slips
through the membrane
of my skin and I watch
it leave, I watch
the lights dim, I watch
the numbing fog
and the way it trundles
in again, bearing
the weight
of things
I
can’t
carry.
Pink is a Sister Sick & other poems are © Seanín Hughes
Nebulae & Salt at Dodging The Rain |
Susan Millar DuMars has published four poetry collections with Salmon Poetry, the most recent of which, Bone Fire, appeared in April, 2016. She also published a book of short stories, Lights in the Distance, with Doire Press in 2010. Her work has appeared in publications in the US and Europe and in several anthologies, including The Best of Irish Poetry 2010. She has read from her work in the US, Europe and Australia. Born in Philadelphia, Susan lives in Galway, Ireland, where she and her husband Kevin Higgins have coordinated the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. She is the editor of the 2013 anthology Over the Edge: The First Ten Years.
The Infinite Body Of Sensation; visual poetry by Salma Caller
Elaine Cosgrove was born in Sligo, Ireland in 1985. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly Magazine, The Penny Dreadful, The Bohemyth, and New Binary Press. Elaine was selected for the 2017 Fifty Best New British & Irish Poets Anthology (Eyewear Publishing), and longlisted for the 2016 London Magazine Poetry Prize. Transmissions, her debut collection of poetry will be published by Dedalus Press Autumn 2017.
My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am a neo surrealist poet in Brooklyn, NY. My poetry has appeared in Erbacce, Uut Poetry and Burning House Press.Last year I published an ebook called Immaculate Days. I am also on twitter:
Chris Murray 