First collection to be published this year

My first collection, You've been great, will be published this May by Smith/Doorstop which publishes the poetry magazine The North as well as books and pamphlets. The collection of 20 poems was one of four winners of the 2007 competition run by The Poetry Business which is associated with Smith/Doorstop. Also winning and having their collections published are Julia Deakin, Yvonne Green and Ann Pilling.

Aftershock

Bricks scattered like toys after playing,
a pig rooting in a flowerbed,
the cot, the couch, the fireplace buried,
masks hiding the mouths and noses
of men who lift stone from bone,
children sifting ashes for what is broken,
tumbling already out of memory.

What survives: cup, comb, picture frame,
bunting got ready for a festival,
crops waiting in accusing ripeness,
a girl who startles birds to flight and laughs.

Published, 2003, in The Rialto, Issue 54.

That's it

The nurse hoisted him into the car,
shoved the wheelchair into the boot,
pecked him and said goodbye and meant it.
He was a shell, not full of years but emptied of them.
As his daughter drove past the gagged
windows of the old tobacco factory
towards the bright ribs of the new stadium
he spotted a girl walking, eighteen or nineteen,
white trousers stretched tight.
Great big arse, he thought.
He managed a twitch. His daughter said,
What you thinking about Dad? He said,
That's it, great big arse.
That was it all right. She did not ask again.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

Chatting her up

A boy and girl drag themselves to the back of the bus.
He mumbles the slurred syllables of methadone.
He intends to impress his dark haired, dark eyed girl
who folds her hands like a nun and contemplates the windscreen wipers
while he displays for her admiration
the tapestry of his suicide attempts.

He took the sharpest kitchen knife to bed
mother in an oooh of horror found him too soon.
On the empty stairs of the flats at two a.m.
he slung a rope across a bannister and would have launched himself
but for a man from God-knows-where hunting down a deal.
I would jump from the balcony he says but with my luck
they'd have built a fucking swimming pool there before I hit the street.

She giggles, then sits in silence
watching the rain smack against the windows
thinking perhaps of sipping multicoloured cocktails
by hot Spanish poolsides in the healing sun.

Published, 2003, in Ambit, Issue 172.

The undertaker's assistant

The undertaker's assistant puts her finger
to the tip of a tilted coffin
to guide the inexperienced pallbearers.

She stands at the ready in black livery,
perky buttocks in clinging trousers,
jacket pushed out by cocky breasts.

But what makes me stare is that black ribbon
looped around her saucy pigtail.

Published, 2002, in ROPES (Review of Postgraduate Studies), Issue 10, NUI Galway. (ROPES does not have its own website).

The calf-man

Three or four times a year a van drove into the yard,
the calf-man climbed out and unlocked the doors
to show to my father, who feigned scepticism,
two or three calves, blinking, lying in straw;
they gawped from the dark of the calf-smelling van;
the calf-man poked them with his stick to get them up.
My father's resistance always unravelled in the end
and the two men prodded a gangly calf to a shed;
then the calf-man came into the kitchen to be paid
towering, reeking of cattle, his dung-stained coat
buttoned tight, his cap scarcely covering his great skull.

He refused tea while my father wrote out the cheque;
they argued a little over the luck money
before he left, the van moving up the hill
past the elm trees, to try his chances in Malone's
and only then, if he thought he had got a bargain
would my father look at us and grin shyly
while outside the calf lifted her head and bellowed loss.

Published, 2002, in The Rialto, Issue 51.

Last dance

A knot loosening in his brain
has closed the book of expectation.

He shuffles for miles in purple tracksuit bottoms,
mumbles the thing again and again.

What comes out of his mouth defies meaning
what matter now are words already spoken.

The suits have gone to the charity shop
but for one that will do later.

The job was good, they let her keep his car
it sits in the driveway looking big.

He dines on scrambled eggs and meat cut up small,
the same for her, she can't be bothered.

The bedroom-slipper shimmy the nightly dance
she catches him on the street trotting home to mother

and partners him back to the room
the smell of cigarettes and disinfectant.

While she sleeps he shuttles between lock and lock
muttering the thing is, some step to be taken, but what?

Published, 2002, in The Interpreter's House, Issue 20.