Indieoma

Death, Water and Woman


L’Inconnue was not
plucked from the river
by la Brigade Fluviale,
like a freshwater trout.


She was not propped
on a slab in the morgue’s
window to be peered over
by hungry Parisians.


She did not pick woman’s
preferred mode of suicide –
a languid drowning;
men, they say, prefer the rope.


No, her Junoesque vigour
and serene smile give her away:
she was quite well when
her death-mask was shaped.


First published in Mannequin Envy




Galway


While Galway swells both
sides of the stony Corrib,
her macaronic voice echoes
with car-horn, horse hoof and
the tok-tok of harbour boats,
drunk with Spanish sailors.


All the air is fish-reeky where
Nimmo’s Pier points a long
lazy arm to Black Head,
and the suck of the sea
pulls the eye to Salthill,
soaked under April storms.


Skirling origami swans decorate
the Claddagh basin while Galway
settles her night-shawl down,
boats and birds safe at her breast.
And her poets – all of her poets –
are upfront about love.


First published in Galway – City of Strangers ed Michael O’Loughlin




Through the Deep, for Séamus Hosey


Like an island fisherman,
the tarred hump of the currach
lying light under his legs,
you never learnt to swim,
said the sea couldn’t be trusted.


Now you wash and sway
like an unwieldy flotsam,
losing your way through
the fish-shoals, bladderwrack
and hordes of glutinous jellyfish.


The plunge and suck of the sea
heavier than a blue whale
pressing down on your bones,
pulls you through fathoms,
each one the distance between
a fingertip and a fingertip
on your outstretched arms.


First published in The Black Mountain Review; then in Tattoo~Tatú (Arlen House, 2007)





Links to the other Wet and Dry Posts:

Ric – The Award for Least Crap

Farryl – Red

KittyBlanche – Eugene and The Second Coming

Sean – The Wolfman is Soft Inside

Jacki – Wash ‘n’ Dry

Karim – Tarantula Showers