Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries
Telephonophobia
I sprint three stairs
at a time, dying to hear
who’s on the line.
I lift the receiver to my trained
ear, my lips purse tiny airholes.
He said he was a doctor
about to visit our school
needed to conduct the first
examination. Are you alone?
I’m alone, I say, thinking of the lollipops dazzling
at my local GP, me perched on my mother’s knee,
sucking up the glorious attention.
He doesn’t ask me about my asthma, my eye infections,
wants to know my name, my age, my measurements.
I tell him I’m the tallest in my class, run the fastest.
But then he asks, how big are your breasts?
Do you wear a bra yet? I stare down at the horses galloping across
the chest of my favourite pyjamas, their manes buffeting my heartbeat.
Do you have hair yet, between your legs? What does it look like?
I wear mucky jeans running through the fields
to my calf in the shed, her sandpaper tongue
slurping on my small hands.
Do you ever touch yourself? Go to the bathroom, I’ll wait.
I was there for the birth, her mother’s eyes stunned,
her body curdled. Shock of hooves squeezed through
vulva folds. Head pierced the sac before the body emerged
flopped to the ground. And mother, licked her alive.
I Lose My Mother
in the card shop
of Wilton Shopping Centre.
Ask her not to budge
while I run to the post office.
She never forgot
birthdays, anniversaries,
these days we help her
remember another present:
2 Minecraft t-shirts,
1 Baby Yoda key ring,
3 packs of Pokémon cards.
I said 5 minutes but take 9
because my mother has a sweet
tooth and loves lemon meringue pies
and their egg-white swirls look extra
puffy at the cake shop.
Slices of my heart climb
into my ears, popping like sparklers.
I scan the card rows:
GET WELL SOON
WITH SYMPATHY
SORRY YOU’RE LEAVING.
She is gone.
I go back to letting go
of her hand when I was 6, she was busy
chattering to the man in the butcher shop
(now a GameStop),
when my eyes fell in love
with the red guitar
in the window of the toy shop
(now an E-Cig shop),
gold lightning bolts bursting across its frame.
Her face when she found me —
eyes wet-cross and cry-laughing, kneeling
and squeezing, don’t ever run off on me!
I race to the exit, stopping at each shop
on my left, on my right. 11 shops and 2 cafés
there she is leaning on her walker, reaching out
to touch the fabric of a lacy summer dress.
I stand at the shop door, watch her
cup the hem, examine the slip,
roll her thumb over the pearl-like buttons.
Unhooking the dress from the hanger she turns
flashes her high cheekbones,
Ah, there you are, I’ve found you
the perfect present.
Lisp
The nuns summoned an elocutionist
to assess my mother’s vocal affliction.
No malocclusion, overbite or improper
jaw. He asked if she was a thumb sucker,
examined her ears for glue, dictated tricksy
twisters like Mississippi, assassin, statistician.
For months, she spit-fired sounds into a mirror,
did what she was told: ‘If you can’t say it well,
say nothing.’ The specialist concluded
she had an unpredictable tongue —
a systematic thrust toward her front teeth.
Now, she’s too tired to speak, her senses scolded
by cerebral insults. Sometimes she stares straight
through me like she’s looking for somebody else.
At night I lie beside her, wait for her to wake.
Kneel on the crash mats, pray for her
to say sixty-six over and over.
____
Róisín Leggett Bohan, a Cork writer, was the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award Runner-Up and an Aesthetica Creative Writing Award finalist in 2024. Her work features in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Stinging Fly, Magma, and The Pomegranate London. She has several poems in Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland (Dedalus Press, 2025). Her poem ‘We Carried May’ was nationally showcased by Poetry Ireland for Poetry Day 2025, and forthcoming work will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 in the summer of 2025. Supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary, she is finalising her debut collection.