Creative Corona: Day 13

Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Partings are considered in these  two poems.  Some tough love from Molly Twomey, a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing, and something a little more tender from Maeve Bancroft, who was conferred with a PhD in Creative Writing (Fiction)  earlier this year. 

 

Dearly Departed

Babe, since you’ll kill yourself if I leave, 

could you rip out your veins?

I need a new ring.

 

Throw your body into the Lee,

so I can sail on your back under Mary Elm’s bridge.

Pretend I’m in Venice and its thirty degrees. 

 

Can I keep your Nike sweater, the grey one,

it looks so good on me. What about your red

blood cells? You know I’m anaemic.

 

I’ll sip them in a martini,

your eyeballs floating like two salty olives.

At your funeral, 

 

do you want me to sing?

The Pretty Reckless or Taylor Swift.

I’ll pretend to be you, clinging

 

to a bottle of gin, dribbling,

I’m sorry, I love you, don’t leave,

as if this isn’t the fourth time

 

you’ve stopped me with a butter knife,

the empty packet of your mother’s pills,

claiming you don’t need therapy,

 

and didn’t mean to sleep with her.

It was just a symptom of this weeks

disorder on DiagnoseMe.ie.

 

Listen, I am going shopping for a veil,

a little black dress, I’ve left a knife, a rope,

a litre of petrol and a lighter in the shed.

 

Molly Twomey

 

Departure

 You tie your shoelaces at a quarter to eight

Head bowed, I see the ragged morning

Light strike your hair (turning grey) as night

Rolls to day. You turn to leave – Cedar aftershave lingering.

 

I touch the soft hollow of your pillow, discarded glasses,

Coffee cup warm your breath trapped within.

Tender words float upon fond glances.

The door swings shut. My blood runs thin.

 

Too soon, the cup will be chill as stone

And your hair will stop turning under a blanket

Where day and night and light are one

And we’ll always be apart.

 

I slide across and lay my head

On the beloved’s side of the bed.

 

Maeve Bancroft

TOMORROW:  “Old Love”  by Billy O’Callaghan