Such fantastic last nights! bookshops closing. pubs closing. music pubs and pubs where they don't allow music. hotels going up like fungus from wood on a mountain gone rotten. the city with bones and with no marrow – no flavour, some structure and mummified shape. and they just announced chapters is closing down too. and next year they're closing the cobblestone, northside of smithfield – you walk over streets like a beetle now, past stones in a newly paved garden. you touch things which stood there since england ran ireland and also the 90s when you were a child; when everything built was immortal. bricks get put in places and loose all their context, it's misery. but the closing-down sales have such bargains! and the pubs, such fantastic last nights! Bisque he was seen going out in a kayak by someone at distance. early afternoon and a fine day so far. and this was in dingle – the sight of this one figure had stuck in the mind of the ferryman. too far out, he had felt as the weather turned pages, to get back, and so raised the alarm. and so there were various helicopters – various boats – all stirring the grey chop of water. there were regular places where people wound up – the meat under seashells and bisque. and alerts out – more serious – the dolphin tours marshalled, and this in the days before fungi had died and the tourism gone rare as opals in much out of dingle. the sky was a bruise of red wine on a carpet. and the sea a bruise also, more violent for causing real pain. someone called his father who came to the house. he was there – had come in roaring curses at losing his phone in the ocean. it was raining, he told them – he'd seen the rain blowing. of course he'd not wanted to paddle about in a storm. My life without you breaking the habit of six months of not having cigarettes. you've gone out to dinner. there's nothing to do in the flat. I wander our rooms like a spider on green bedroom carpet. clumsily open a beer in the kitchen and sweep up the glass from the tile before anyone's hurt. my life without you now is something like canned syrup peaches. not alive, or so thought of, though sweeter than things that have grown from trees. I could walk out our door and go anywhere – and you wouldn't know it for hours. I could get in the car and start driving – could go where I want if I want. I am a hawk turning circles of earth like the clock hand which turns round a falconer. you are the falconer – I feel freedom, my wings and a fulcrum, which is also your talon- proof glove.
DS Maolalaí has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)
DIY MFA 