Month: June 2024

Was it too much?
Do I disgrace this life?

There is no wick to me
No salt
No gash
No spittle
Or poitín.

I am timeblind
Desireless
A dishrag
Boil me.

Limpet
invalide.
Smash me
off the rock
where I am
clinging
and

Crush Me.

To Purity.
To Smithereens.

Go Ahead
slap me
on the wall.
I am limewash.
Astringent.
Chalky.

A bleached
beacon
blinding the fishermen
come to shore.

A beached
cetacean
a cadaver cathedral.

Another mammal
stranded
inches from their
world.

I dare not bleed,
I have no stigmata.
I will not wander
I won’t climb a hill to die on.

Immaculate I am
I am flax linen
Stitched into
the fascia beneath my skin.

There is no undressing.

No tip of the phallus on my tongue
No hook of fingers between lips
My nipple is not bitten by lover
or son

I do not knit geansaís or booties.

I am a white spider.
All eight limbs
spin the good name
of my family.

I am their daughter of sin.
I am their mother of mercy
Jesus Christ did forgive me.

Now that there’s nothing left
but
the lace
and
the laundry.

All the world is crabs on the flagstone of my threshold
and the crushing of shells.
Some beggars do come to the door
looking for fights to keep them warm.
Some peddle their woes for wisdom
One pulls the loose thread of me
until I am unravelled and nearly no more.

The magpies saunter the road
and tut pity
offer to lay their bindles
live in my skull
keep me company
I am too sorry to be filled with their trinkets
there’s no glint in my eye.

I am visited by a man about to die
He tells me of the devil who appears as a redeyed swine
to men who played cards too seriously
down in the valley
long before my time.
He leaves to be with his wife,
and walks to a lonely home tonight.

From the doorway I am keening
that such beauty could find me
alone
that I could be sought
to be blessed
by the dying.

In the morning I am a haysack of irritation
and churlish want of soothing
I am stretched between
a red welt of weeping
and a meloncholic photophobia
bedridden
and angry.

Neantóg, little grandmother
scold me
and cross my arms with lashes
tell me I am a child and it’s not for me to know
or decide.
Let me tremble on the sting of your smarting touch.
Say ‘give up this nonsense!’
of my own tight and selfish sorrow
the red eyes and streaming nostrils.
Tell me’ Give over this woe betide
You’ve had enough.’

I can’t help but pray all day
I waddle through stuffy rooms
bleeting like a ewe
tutting like a raven
convulsing like a lamb
trapped in the placenta.
Numb until I am sleepless in an empty fuss
and I am pulled to the window as the moon sets red.

Angels scythe through the cobalt night like daggers
and cut me with their wings in bed
take me apart in limbs and quarters
carry me to the coalshed
and tarnish me so I can feel starlight in the mica
and remember heaven.

They thread me by the hands
a crucifix on a silver string
and dance me down the valley.
I shake on the rosary
and bless the earth with rubies
of blood
and tears of ammonite.

In the cage of my ribs
the angels set a fire
Owl beats a bellows
to the smoke hole of my hollow
will
and the ghosts of tiny animals
gather kindling
stuffing me with moss
and the curled spines of ferns.

The angels clap their wings
as I ignite.
The dolmen yawns
and old ghosts waltz home,
and bid us all goodnight.
As ancient songs and future tellings
reel and begin to turn.

For luck or labour,
I caught heaven’s fever
and the earth
that bound me tight
promised me no saviour
for whom to yearn

but at least in her combustion
has graced me with

the audacity

to burn.