Grand Parade (SoundEye, 2025)
I don’t know if it’s summer or just plain warm
for walking around in search of dark-bitter
reprieve
pulled the Ace of Pentacles
in Maureen’s
the pledge of a seed
planted in manifest pasture
walking up the Grand Parade to have Mau
grab my arm and pull me into due embrace
since they were just getting breakfast, sloshing
oysters with Dom
I keep saying it’s good to be with everyone
the neighbours are rehearsing a play
I sit on the floor and arrange paperwork
phoning it all back like
I failed to see the love in front of me
fertile and with selenium
wishing I could have bottled
the birdsong of Brace Cove
so much to trap myself in notes also
reeling around the English Market with poets
wishing we were Irish
ordering whisky with Luce
if you ever want to talk, we say
if you ever need whatever
the Beamish flows easily
it is less than five euros. I have yet
to burn my fingers on ice, to go home
into caring situations with dutiful infinite
replenishment of ice
instead I run up Shandon
arriving late for Maggie O’Sullivan, early enough
to catch her words as Eden-variety everafters
flying around our garden of poetry
I was locked from initially, outside
in the street awaiting my call
that poem about a mother opening her belly
that poem
incants a fact, you are present
sometimes being born
you will always be able to talk to me
I weep through the reading, it’s easy
to constellate far away suffering
in greener syntax
just across the sea
to afterwards hug Maggie, thank you
we have no idea how powerful words are
to leap, mutate and glow
in defiance of the law
how hard it was for all of us
just to get here
everything we’ve been through will be again
but I don’t have a generation
we see wagtails on the lawn
sonograms of gathering voice
what is it
to be intimidatingly full of life
Gloria singing of sailing
Carl making faces at the baby
making faces at poetry
as we remember Callie
being smart and funny and so singular
as to outlast all of it
eating dosa while watching
Ellen Dillon’s killer reading
then a cuckoo went off on
someone’s phone, hello pastoral
those oysters were universal
tell me about your shoes
guess I will inherit
my father’s spiral cutlery
all the better to eat what
cannot be stomached
of home-cooked nowheres
rich in cortisol
what I want is raw
and clear
saw a little grey dog
at my feet
during Keith Tuma’s performance
not a real dog, offhand
come to comfort me because
dogs smell cancer
even when someone else’s lives
like a phantom accord on your aura
and in the forever ward of poetry
who will get away with autumn
my life is a spatiotemporal displacement
filtering love’s dimensionality
I want to go back to Dogtown
rose petals steeped in promises
mariaology 