Edward O’Dwyer

Poetry

 

 

Relieved to be Dead

 

Soon, when it hasn’t been getting any better

for longer than you can take,

the next thing you know

you’ll be here, relieved to be dead.

 

Content finally God’s sewing kit is permanently misplaced

and, this time, he won’t be stitching up

the split in the arsehole of your life’s pants.

 

The noosed rope is a good doctor

that swore against the Hippocratic oath.

 

The black scarf worn to your funeral

suppresses the truth like a politician’s pause

as well as looking decidedly dapper.

 

Attendance is pleasing,

and the morning is filling up with tears,

like love come tangoing into your existence

at exactly the right moment.

 

You’re relieved to be dead,

happy to be here and not be here.

 

You would be the first to sing,

the first to go to the bar

and say What are you having?,

if you could.

 

You’ve said your bitter goodbyes to silence

and to being alone.

You’re emerging now, against all the odds,

as the life of this party.

 

 

 

Urine

 

Mother has realised your room

is still not tidied

after the umpteenth time of asking

and screams down over the volume of the TV

that “you’re in for it now,”

 

and your homework has once again

failed to do itself in the cramped space

and poor light of your bag,

and as the teacher goes around checking it

and will get to you soon enough

you know you’re in for

another trip to see the principal.

 

Years later and there’s an office piss-up tonight,

somebody – you don’t know who – from accounting

leaving the company, and it’s the perfect chance

to get to know Debbie, the new receptionist

who types slowly, makes weak coffee,

takes messages without names,

but has other compensating assets,

and so you’re in, you’re in, oh yes,

 

and you’re in today, years later once more,

retired now but yet you’ve never stopped

being tired, when someone

is knocking on your door

and there are cleaning products for sale

out of catalogues,

 

and not long after that, you’re in

hospital, you’re in a ward

and you’re in a bed, and you’re in a drowsy state

when the doctor arrives,

takes a look at your chart, and lets you know

you’re in real bad shape

and it’s only a matter of time now

 

and then leaves, and you’re in confusion

about your life, the constant stream

of “you’re in” it seems to have been

now you’re looking back,

 

but still you’re in – you just can’t help it –

you’re in, you’re in, oh yes, you’re in,

until the last of it is pissed away,

the final moments shaken off.

 

 

 

The Sundel Bolong

 

He knew the moment he’d set eyes on her

that soon he would be dead,

but cared nothing anymore for survival,

proceeded, then, towards his death,

for the myth of her beauty was not exaggerated,

and he could only forget his own family,

a wife, two girls and a boy,

and follow her,

guided through the unlit night

by the flowing tatters of her white gown,

like pale, beckoning fingers

in the wisps of wind,

luminescent, like her skin,

bleached-white, almost translucent.

He spares no moment’s thought

for her baby birthed in the ground,

for the violent rape that planted the seed,

for the grave she has refused rest in,

for the castration ahead,

for the bloody revenge tableaux he must become.

There are no moments for such thoughts

when death is so near

and her long, black locks of hair are there,

and the ice-fire of her lust

calls out to him with the ferocity of an abyss,

and the sliver of a moon gives its blessing,

and the silence of the night approves each step.

 

 

 

Tuesday

 

You conquered the future

with your unrelenting commitment

to daytime TV and stained dressing gowns,

Wednesday mornings signing on,

a strict late night kebab diet.

 

It had no choice, in the end,

but to surrender,

meet your demands

 

of complete anonymity

and six feet of cold earth

on a Tuesday

when everyone else

who is no-one

couldn’t be there

to pay their disrespects.

 

 

 

Wednesday at Eight

 

I was thinking of secretaries,

the millions of them around the world,

doing their secretary things.

 

Wearing their secretary clothes,

their black thigh-high nylons.

 

Inside their glass boxes,

cleavages beaded with sweat,

twirling phone lines around their fingers.

 

The call waiting on the other line,

the coffee freshly brewed,

the typo at a fingertip.

 

The promotion-sealing hand-job

and the inevitable raise.

 

I might have thought, instead,

of Kavanagh’s other lung.

 

Or of an arbitrary field in Cavan

where, just maybe, a farmer’s soliloquy

presents the question of to till or not to till,

 

but instead it was secretaries I thought of;

the way they take your call,

their pretending to be machines.

 

I thought as well of the robots

that pretend to be secretaries,

saying hold please,

saying your call is important to us.

 

I was thinking of the packed lunch,

the neat stack of magazines,

the gentle hum of conditioned air.

 

Thinking of a dangling high heel,

the yelp of a skirt’s zipper,

the dance of a hundred pages to the floor

 

when a bored voice

came through the receiver:

“How about Wednesday at eight?”

 

A question that all at once, somehow,

was the unedited history of sadness,

 

stops at three different pharmacies

on the way home,

 

and one last note on a post-it.

 

 

 

Edward O'Dwyer (b. Limerick, Ireland, 1984) has had poetry published in journals and anthologies around the world, most recently in Dream of a City (Astrolabe Press, 2014), The Evening Street Review, The Interpreter's House, and forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly and Agenda. He has taken part in Poetry Ireland's Introduction Series, and has been shortlisted for various awards, such as the Hennessy Award and the Desmond O'Grady Prize. He has also been nominated for Pushcart and Forward Prizes. His work features in The Forward Book of Poetry 2015, having been Highly Commended by the Forward Prizes judges. The Rain on Cruise's Street (Salmon Poetry, 2014) is his first full collection of poems.