Amber
It’s my story, too.
Old sap
surrounding something vague,
possibly precious.
Her Tattoo
- based on a true story
A hand’s span beneath her belly button
it read:
EAT ME
with an arrow for clarity.
By her ninth month
it was billboard big and blurred.
Folding back the clinic sheet
the intern saw it
above the baby’s crown.
Schism
How glad the fissiparous paramecium!
When she cracks she fashions full families
out of her fractures.
When she tears herself apart
she produces a happy proliferation
of her own point of view.
How sad for us
having risen above her,
to have pulled ourselves together
to stand so alone.
Irish is Dying
Irish is dying,
so Pat and I, roots deep in the peat,
are off to community college to save it.
We learn
there are consonants, slender and broad.
Slender as in si, pronounced she.
Broad, as in gaoth, pronounced gway.
Nouns are declining around us
and nothing is as it seems.
Teach looks easy, until it turns into tschalk.
Shibh, impossible to puzzle out,
turns out to be shiv, something I’m ready to use.
We learn
to say “Is anyone at all satisfied?”
and “He is happy, but she is not happy.”
both of which we commit to memory,
knowing they’ll be useful in Dublin or Belfast.
We learn
there are very few speakers of Irish left in Ireland
and none at all at community college.
Small Poems de Terre 