Hand me the map, you say as you reach for the glove compartment. Construction, and we take a detour home. And because I am too slow for your patience, you push my palm back. What you don’t know: I will break our engagement. How you left your dating profile logged on before bed, as if […]
Poetry
Tuathal (Counter-Clockwise)
Cuirim eochair i bpoll an téitheora agus casaim an chomhla ar tuathal — siar, siar, go dtí go gcloisim sileadh an uisce ag glugarnach as i mbraonta tiubha, an t-aer a bhí srianta scaoilte arís. Le clic and trice-tic, filleann cuisle an phíopa, ag tarraingt teas ar ais trí córas soithíoch an tí, trí fhéitheacha […]
Five Poems
San Pellegrino I sit here facing a glass of water. I have a family: a son, baby daughter. Life’s harder. Harder, and sadder. My father has stage IV lung cancer. He’s dying, only faster. Fall, and he might meet his maker by winter. O let this cup pass, my Father. I sit here facing a […]
She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea*: Meditations on Dunoon’s Victorian Pier
1 I am bound, rooted, salt-stung, tree-limbed, iron bolted. I live with my memories – echoes of footsteps arriving, departing; ghost boats at my thighs. Every timber part of me swims with zooplankton. My only neighbour is my reflection. The sky is sailing around me. Fenders of rock elm protect me. My mouth is a […]
A Mariner
You were a mariner. I lived by the water. You struck new sand for your master and led me to the land where night tulips grow. With your fish-hook you gouged out my throat and surged through me under inky-green skies. You bound me to these tenebrous sands and with ease set your sail for […]
Three Poems
Young Poets In the minx browns of Great Eastern Street, a throbbing cab waits in the pouring rain while a building implores, “Let’s Adore and Endure Each Other.” In the gallery’s late Vorticism, critics’ pens reel in and sour on treasonous reviews. A hood of superior aerodynamic absolutes. We drink at The Gun, spot Tracy […]
Two Poems
Cut to an Echo Indistinct, night wearies itself into day. And dawn comes to with an early bruise lacking yellow. A bird falters to redden its song, a snag of notes that can’t lift. The scalded teapot brews darkly and intensely hot. There is nothing to be done. Not now. The kitchen and its workable […]
Four Poems
Agapanthus I can’t say that the day smiled on us, or that anything smiled, As we dared the wet earth in our wet digging clothes. The late Mrs. Cockburn was in no mood to chat. It was she, After all, who was being evicted by a cruel remote-control: A letter sent from Toronto that saw […]
Three Poems
Night Drive That narcotic quality. The paradox of headlights on the hedgerow. Bach’s violins; then the Carpenters, again. We’ve only just begun… Ten and two at ten to two. The slow thunk Of catseyes as you overtake. Going nowhere you know where you’re going. Monotony is the warm fizz in your back. Brake lights for […]
Today
Today Was a suicided priest book of condolences opened in my way day. Everyone with an angle day. Today was a pus pimpled teenage boy taking his money shot at my tits day, with a handful of coins he owed me day, and said a fuck off or fucked me off day, and the sky […]
Farriery
He bastes his favourite tree at night with headlights. The leaves lap up the Toyota beams. It will flower soon just for him. His stallion will be garlanded early. Bridled with blossom of chestnut, fragrant with sweet scent. The horse’s mane matches his lover’s in length and russet hue. He stares with pursed lips from […]
The Extras
We practise our smiles under white diffusers larger than sunbeds. We are the extras, paid in plastic trays of bread and moist sandwich fillings, flagons of instant coffee and saccharined juice. We do as we’re told, laugh towards a glass eye, capturing our imperfect dentistry. We are en masse, this pack of us, hungry to […]
Two Poems
Look-a-Like It’s been months since I’ve heard from you and I’m beginning to forget which side on the continent you decide to dress each morning. Last time I saw you there was still hair on your head but I suppose you’re old now and nothing lasts forever. I think about if I saw you again, […]
Two Poems
A New Bicycle Suddenly, in Houston, Texas, which is a three-hour-flight from home, I was buying a new bicycle from a salesman in a pale pink tie. I’d not been up on a bike for twenty-something years, and I had no plans of doing anything to change that but then there I was handing over […]
The Taxidermist’s Wife
Soft thuds of Colombian butterflies in their glass displays. I dreamed they came to life again. If Louis were here, he’d groan: “Go back to sleep,” and then blow out the candle. But he’s far out at sea. I dreamed shells woke on the window sill, trembling with their inner oceans; a scraping from inside […]
Four Poems
The Garden After Andrew Marvell It was a time of laurels, a fearless time. I broke away to write – bed in the woods, on the river a moon of ice. Nights unsealed, and the knot of sleep slipped, a beat into waking. You came and took me like a child by the hand to […]
Two Poems
The Birth of the Syllable You said I should write about the fact that I’m coming to the end of a Maya 52-year cycle. I’m not connected by blood or memory to that story-drenched culture but it does populate me at the idea level, like spray at the top of a fizzy drink. Over more […]