DS Maolalai


Throwing rainbows

water on rocks doesn't
ring with the same
rising note as wine does
in the bell of the wine glasses
mouth. remembering leitrim – 
a cut wooden platform
in the hills of drumkeeran
and the dog in a panic
at the sound. holding 
your hand in the spray
as it rose, like the skirt
of a sundress in bunched 
fists with knuckles 
which brush past the skin 
of a hip, shining like sunrise
to touch instead of light
throwing rainbows. I'm alone
in the office writing poems 
out, thinking of memories.
I pour another glass and it isn't
like being there either – going up
to the hills because you had a uti, 
and we couldn't think of what else 
to do. the glass fills – the note
rises – it's awful. I need
a flat note to feel right. 
 


Low import levels.

checking the newspapers;
covid is rising 
again, and fascism  
again in America
the UK
and elsewhere. 
I turn off my phone,
confident
of low import
levels to Ireland. sure, 
they may send us
our culture – we watch
the same movies
and read the same books,
but everything else
must be fine.



A spoonful of sugar.

and how nice it is – 
sun in the springtime,
rending the air nicely blue,
with each step you take
rapping solid on concrete
like a politely raised canvasser 
at a bedsit hall door.

you are walking slowly 
down (and ever so happily)
streets, and downward
and down toward the lakeshore.
look glum at the shadow 
cast by the CN tower,
and wearing that shirt 
that you like. wondering, 
as if you'd planned to cut a silhouette,
at how much better you would look 
if you were smoking.

boats bob and mumble
out the hand-open lakeshore
and also look good in the sun.
they shine with a whiteness 
which lies about their use, 
much like someone coming out of their house 
for the first time since August,
pale as a piled spoon of sugar,
a little nervous that people
who've been looking good all winter long
won't suddenly see the use in them anymore,
shrugging on leather jackets
and putting the best work in their hair,
you'd almost think they didn't know
that nobody cares how you look
as long as you can go,

as long as you can get them somewhere,
out along the lake
and around the islands' edges
for a glass of wine and some sandwiches
in a spot where there's nowhere you can look at 
in any direction around
without seeing calm water from skyline to sky
even though you know 
there's land not far off
in any direction
anyway.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has nominated eleven times for Best of the Net, eight for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022)

 
 

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