Cut to an ebony dais; the five of us blocked as points on a compass
\nin our new accidental ordinance of importance. <\/p>\n
Beside the undertaker [with folder, pen, pressed shirt, comfortable noose\/
\nmatching tie, the very fine cut of gentleman] we rank as follows: \t<\/p>\n
Sister1-Mother-Me-Brother-Sister2- until back to the undertaker once more.
\nI will certainly eyeball this rotation time and again and again and time <\/p>\n
throughout this awful fact-establishing coffin-selecting inquisition.
\nWe inhabit the clothes we wore when without warning nine hours ago <\/p>\n
my father took it upon himself to die. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m listen-watching this conversation do the rounds while tracing pink flowers
\nat the end of my sleeve, my index finger demanding the threads to lead me back <\/p>\n
towards the lines on his hands before they lost their heat. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a door, another door beyond that to the outside \u2013 and we will have to answer questions correctly Bonus points for remembering when my parents\u2019 young son was exhumed she curls close to the polished table, a loose claim on my hand, and the room is a hurricane with the eye on the move, must the street we grew up on have a possessive case applied and other cash-up-front social oracles announcing arrangements seven local radio plays to get the word out, until we are silenced, unaware of what this day has taken. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n i<\/em><\/p>\n It all came to a halt the day of his accident \u0336 who, in the brightness of that Tralee morning, I was his eight-year-old apprentice, His talk was mechanics, pistons and crankshafts.<\/p>\n Back then, his body held the logic He loved to quiz me. He gave me my own little snippers to strip flex, how to twist my wrist just so, never slash through the wiring. oxygenated and deoxygenated.<\/em><\/p>\n ii<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019d wait at the gate to see him We would have driven that Saturday, <\/p>\n even though it was 300metres at most, iii<\/em><\/p>\n The musician had quoted him in the inlay of his album \u0336 <\/p>\n It\u2019s not the work, it\u2019s the journey that kills you<\/em> <\/p>\n a conversation between two Avenue boys their hop-ball kept to blue-moon phone calls, for my friend Tom, from your friend Christie<\/em><\/p>\n iv<\/em><\/p>\n Their widows exchange messages now.<\/p>\n One heard weeks too late.<\/p>\n She sent white roses.<\/p>\n v<\/em><\/p>\n That day, when we arrived to check the roof tank, I kicked around the delivery slipway, how the blackness would spark drinking was for the dole queue men,<\/p>\n their worn denim jeans, sunken, sallow faces, vi<\/em><\/p>\n I was eight, so rather than witness my father triangulate I watched the Gallowsfield boys tussle over a football, I tracked the woman who cut a quick cross along the dirt track, She could have been any of the Balloonagh girls\u2019 mothers.<\/p>\n vii<\/em><\/p>\n Dawdling in the piles of offcuts and packaging, <\/p>\n I heard my name called his big wave, <\/p>\n his castle king vantage.<\/p>\n Back down he scrambled, Why his job was to keep a ballcock\u2019s eye, We\u2019d plot the course together once more and I begged to stay at home. <\/p>\n I remember he wasn\u2019t happy viii<\/em><\/p>\n I can\u2019t recall the whereabouts of my mother.<\/p>\n Where was Maureen? Sean \u00d3g? <\/p>\n The afternoon shifts <\/p>\n from my spot on the living room carpet<\/p>\n to the phone ringing, <\/p>\n the tearing of a noise from a throat, <\/p>\n an ambulance screaming across Brewery Road, <\/p>\n its urgency sailing up over the graveyard<\/p>\n and in through our open back windows.<\/p>\n ix<\/em><\/p>\n I learned later (I don\u2019t know when) a wooden crate, corrugated iron gate, I wasn\u2019t there when the crate splintered away,<\/p>\n when the furrow of the gate tore the heart I wasn\u2019t there when the stranger tethered his flesh I never saw the signs of his pain on the slipway.<\/p>\n x<\/em><\/p>\n I learned the meaning of words like \u201csevered,\u201d<\/p>\n had trusted my sister\u2019s black biology text book<\/p>\n to explain the function of an \u201cartery\u201d.<\/p>\n He was gone a long time.<\/p>\n My mother would ring from the hospital payphone.<\/p>\n When he came home, he covered his hand in a goatskin glove.<\/p>\n For years, he couldn\u2019t drive, or write, or hold a knife.<\/p>\n I was afraid of the tender rawness,<\/p>\n the lifeless buckle of his third and fourth fingers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At The Funeral Home Cut to an ebony dais; the five of us blocked as points on a compass in our new accidental ordinance of importance. Beside the undertaker [with folder, pen, pressed shirt, comfortable noose\/ matching tie, the very fine cut of gentleman] we rank as follows: Sister1-Mother-Me-Brother-Sister2- until back to the undertaker once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[371,372],"tags":[375],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nwe are trapped in neither here nor there<\/em> where he is dead but not nearly buried <\/p>\n
\nto move to the next round, through a third and final door we have yet to notice. <\/p>\n
\nand resituated, a conversation that almost plunders my mother of her last reserves, <\/p>\n
\nas her elder children outdo each other with feats of memory<\/p>\n
\nwas it ninety five or six, such overladen minutiae, <\/p>\n
\nwhen black and whited into Or Eye Pee Dot Eye Eee, <\/p>\n
\nwe\u2019d give anything to not attend, <\/p>\n
\na whirl in the parish notes for the masses, <\/p>\n
\nassured that there won\u2019t be a sinner in the town<\/p>\nIt\u2019s Not The Work, It\u2019s The Journey That Kills You<\/h5>\n
\n a factory-shut Saturday, machines and men on standby,
\nthe weekday workers nursing sick heads
\n over soccer fixtures, the form of horses,
\nexcept for my father <\/p>\n
\n asked if I\u2019d keep him company on a job.<\/p>\n
\n all terrible fringe and polyester tracksuit. <\/p>\n
\n of a complete circuit. <\/p>\n
\n Name the terminals of a diode?<\/em>
\n Is it anode and cathode, Dad?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n taught me to feel for when the casing gave,<\/p>\n
\n cut only as much as is needed, be careful<\/em>, he said,
\n think of them as veins<\/em> –
\nthe live brown, yellow\/green earthed two tone,
\n single reds and blues, <\/p>\n
\nturn into the Avenue at six,
\nblood blisters under his nails,
\ngrease in the cut valleys of his hands,
\nall delicate strength, precise application,
\nalways a kiss for my mother.<\/p>\n
\nout the Avenue, up the Rock, left after Urban Terrace.
\nHe would have had his tools that day \u0336
\nthe blue steel box from AnCO, his New York hammer,
\ncases of spanners, his various spools of cable,
\ntidy in the boot of his Granada. <\/p>\n
\nwho took the boat at different times,
\n with only one returning, <\/p>\n
\ncassette sleeves, later, a signed Roy Rodgers<\/em>
\non the wall of the small sitting room, <\/p>\n
\nthe factory was deadbolted, all ladders locked inside.<\/p>\n
\nairborne shrapnel rippling out into the derelict green
\nbetween St Brendan\u2019s Park and Connolly,
\nthose spaces that terrified me at night,<\/p>\n
\nwith the blaze
\nof contraband teenage cigarettes.
\nBack then, rebellion was all smoking;<\/p>\n
\ntheir parched mouths shaping around the same few stories
\nof Kilburn high road, the sites and pubs of Derby,
\nover weekday pints in the Pig and Whistle.<\/p>\n
\nhis method of moving from one elevation to another,<\/p>\n
\ntheir dancing feet and sly-dig hands. <\/p>\n
\nhauling the usual two bags of messages from Dunnes or Barry\u2019s shop.<\/p>\n
\ndown from a height, <\/p>\n
\nhe said the tank is slow to fill.<\/em> <\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ll never understand.<\/p>\n
\nbefore my child patience ran out <\/p>\n
\nwith me when he left. <\/p>\n
\nthat he had shinned up one more time,<\/p>\n
\nto the flat roof and the filling tank waiting. <\/p>\n
\nof his wrist and sliced his palm clean.<\/p>\n
\nwith a belt. <\/p>\n