Matthew Byrne
Shannon Boat Trip
by Matthew Byrne
I
On the first day the air was thick cloth
and the waves were shedding themselves
strange moths hung on the boat like scales
or blinked in and out of the river light.
I felt their presence around me,
older than the kings of Connaught.
When we passed through a half built town
that looked like an empty film set,
I saw the torn webs between the jetty rails,
packed and twitching.
II
After an evening of laughing
we were restaurant fed and full of wine
so we retired back to our cabins.
Tired of irregular pleasantries
and eager to keep them fresh,
we had dined well.
I evendared to tell my father what I never tell him,
suitably hidden in a joke.
We had said enough to bring sadness
so we kept to ourselves and slept it off.
III
I woke to the sound of claws at around five
when the morning aches
and lay there trying to dream them away,
but they persisted. So I gathered my sleep up
and climbed the steps to the deck.
Through the translucent glass of the deck door
I saw our refuse bag speared by a gang of birds,
a mixture of rooks and seagulls.
One huge bird with a curved beak
scattered champagne corks,
cake wrappers, cigarette butts.
IV
Now that I have sickness in my thoughts
this memory defends itself;
the rough, plaster walls of Shannon View,
our family house.
As a child I drew my right hand across it
with my eyes closed
and I remember its rasping touch,
assuredly real.
It has become a tough, plastic memory
of action and light.
V
We moored a night near Lough Ree
and passed Shannon View the next day
having asked my Grandmother
to meet us at the quay.
She waited smiling and wringing her hands
by the marina her father used to own.
For a moment she almost jumped aboard,
like she might have done decades ago
and we shouted no at that sketch of a girl.
I watched her through my binoculars watching us.
illustrations by David Hanes (1987 - )
Mosquito
by Matthew Byrne
Once powerful infant in standing water
blind wire of reflexes.
When you cracked through pupa and flew,
found your way in this pheromone gloom,
was it the walrus breath heaving
round the dark, drunken room
that lured you? Or from fog to fog
you found my drinking, smoking body?
When the light comes, you splatter red
like the others on the white wall.
Sharp calligraphy of a hit,
take my blood, make it insect.
Moth Poem
by Matthew Byrne
The unthinkable happens -
winter soil frames the flesh,
sinews caramelise around
clean, placed plastic saints
or the fettered ink of photographs -
flames given to the wind.
Blood beats in night wings,
shuttering in rooms of citrus light -
urgent or unfinished utterances
in dreams to the left behind.
Poem For Uchechi
by Matthew Byrne
We were woken by the shackles
of rain on the hutong slates,
twisted together in the pinched heat.
I went to the door and opened it
into the wet mouth of the night
and shivered. You came slowly
around me like a water drop
and I looked into your night eyes
as we found rhythm in the rain,
twirling to some imagined beat.
The next day, I hooked myself
back onto the spinning wheel
that pulls us out of our beds
and into our clothes
until you reminded me, lazily,
that leaden afternoon, plunged me
back under those crackling hutong slates,
dancing together to the rain.
Shock
by Matthew Byrne
When a window is left open in the summer
because the air is thin honey
the admirer might forget to close it
and the room will take in night.
After a long evening the door will open
and the confection of past hours
will gush down the landing,
the slow smell of flowers and fading heat.
The breath of what's left in the room
gets shocked into moths at a light switch,
their location is a lottery,
they are randomly made out of night.
Macclesfield Hospital
by Matthew Byrne
My younger brother fell in the grass
as we played, and rose
with a thick gash across his knee-cap,
we followed him dirge-like
back to the house.
We took him to hospital
to get it stitched, his screams
pitched like sonar depending
on where the needle was.
They kept him over night.
This place has seen all
of our childish misfortunes
but it is also the place
where my older brother died.
As we left we heard whooping
from a room that sounded like
celebration, my father said
it's where they tell you
the bad news,
it was the sound of men
so distraught that they barked.
Later, in the soft glow
of the dash board dials
my father quietly wept
while he drove.
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