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By Jay Rafferty
(Twitter: @Atlas_snow
Instagram: @SimplyRedInTheHead)
I.
When I was little there was a bathroom in a house by the sea.
It’s probably still there. When you lay in the tub there was nothing
in sight that would betray the last century had happened. No shining
modern designs, no high-pressure faucet or light ringed mirror.
The water was always lukewarm and heavy. All that could be
heard in that room through the cracks in the skylight pane
was the gluttonous black sea, gorging itself on the shale cliffs.
II.
Saw some sheep, dead and stacked in a horsebox today
like people frozen, limbs straight and taut, in a lorry back
left too long unattended. Life never leaving, life left in metal
boxes. Livestock lost in iron coffins, stretch hearses, the Cóiste
Bodhar by another name, sans the careful coachman. But theirs?
Just as thoughtless with a head on his shoulders.
III.
Dreamt the other night of the sun spinning between wisps of white
cloud and grey smoke, a raving celestial dreidel in irregular, infinite,
laboured orbits and of foals whining in my head like the children
of Fatima singing. Knocked the wind out of me. Could barely speak,
could barely breathe, struggling against my flesh, trying, failing,
knowing I’d be misheard or gasping for, grasping for life’s coattails.
IV.
Of the dozen piglets born to the sow in the third pig house maybe
half survived long enough to suckle from their penned in mother.
The unlucky few met fate well before the frying pan. Fright, stillbirth,
crushed under the mother’s hoof or blubber and her not maternal enough to
notice, let alone grieve. She nursed what was left and they, for that kindness,
steered clear of her hind legs. Three piglets made it to adulthood and the abattoir.
V.
It’s a bitterly cold All Souls’ night. We forgot to leave
a lit candle out to bring the lost home again. In the main hall,
near the front room there’s something like rose or lavender
water perspiring in the air. A fog but thinner. A permeable vale
an empty pale scent that reminds me of nothing but a home
in vigil or a marble form, lounging, wilting, petrified, dead.
About the Author:
Jay Rafferty is a redhead, an uncle and an eejit. He is the Poetry Editor for Sage Cigarettes Magazine and a guest lecturer on Contemporary Poetry and Irish Literature. His debut poetry chapbook, Holy Things, was published in March by The Broken Spine and his follow-up chapbook, Strange Magic, came out in June of 2022 with Alien Buddha Press.
You can read his work in several journals including Wine Cellar Press, HOWL New Irish Writing and Daily Drunk Magazine. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff.
You can find him on Twitter @Atlas_snow and Instagram @SimplyRedInTheHead.