The thin, dry skin of your lip
comes away on the tip
of your cigarette, the jarred bank of firewater
bracketed upside-down behind the bar counter veers
left, vrooms right, sobering only to mirror
your slumped state. Fall asunder or mend, the world
isn’t for impressing. The crash-and-burn cave
of your heart, the rave talk, the two-timing
and the ten-timing, all turn out one confabulation.
With just this scene to settle by: a light breeze
trembling every leaflet, a stray cat curled in a vestibule
of sunlight, the ears of wild barley open to
a blackbird mimicking the chug and rattle of a tractor
taking the crooked laneway out and down the road.
Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children's writer from Loughrea. His tenth collection of poems, Keepsake, was published by Dedalus Press in 2024. He is the recipient of the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award, the Dermot Healy Poetry Prize, and The Eilis Dillon Award. His best-selling memoir, The Hurley Maker's Son, appeared in 2016.
More work by Patrick Deeley
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