Solas Nua's Poetry Blast

 
Solas Nua (America's Only Contemporary Irish Arts Organization) has a monthly Poetry Blast.  This month features Irish poetess Siobhan Campbell. 




"Quickthorn"

Don't bring haw into the house at night
or in any month with a red fruit in season
or when starlings bank against the light,
don't bring haw in. Don't give me reason
to think you have hidden haw about you.
Tucked in secret, may its thorn thwart you.
Plucked in blossom, powdered by your thumb,
I will smell it for the hum of haw is long,
its hold is low and lilting. If you bring
haw in, I will know you want me gone
to the fairies and their jilting. I will know
you want me buried in the deep green field
where god knows what is rotting.


"These Women"

These women are no dreamers.
They make happen the full wake,
the kettle hopping, the oven warm.

They take death in hand
And force him to be civil.
In their lighting, the spitting candle calms
And the rosary settles out of irony.

These women are not kind
If you did not iron the sheets you borrowed,
If you bring batch instead of sliced,
What good is that for sandwiches?

These women bar all holds in the
screamed stall of the birthroom.
Instead they ask for the gummed grit
They found for themselves in that
most alone of coupled moments.

These women know how to mash potatoes
so that they charge despair
out of a teenager.

They have followed a father
and a small child on a combine harvester,
not to pick up the pieces of the boy's arm

and bring them to his mother,
but because they felt the call of the back field
like something rotting in the feed shed
before chief rat jumps out.

These women will not pass through
The horse meadow, even on a summer night,
For there they have felt that the world might let us go.

They've seen the consequence of that.
Ironing keeps it at bay
and doing what is right.