Canary in a nursing home
Suddenly, as if he had droppedfrom the stave
of a tree,this bright
mellifluous notenow balances on a scale
of perches. He is a blitheuntameable thing,
this thing he cannot name,dancing
at the back of his mindlike narcissi
or flittinglike the arrhythmia
of his heart.At times the music
holds him stilland a jonquil light
beams through two pinholesin his brain
singingof a caged soul.
The white room
The room she gives meis at the top of a rickety stairand an arthritic floorboard awayfrom her own.
I must not sleep with her son,not under this roof.My fiancé has his childhood roomwhile I am entombed
inside these white wallswhere a former girlfriendasphyxiated in her sleepon her own vomit.
Is this my penancefor marrying her son?I must not show her my tears.I must arrange my face,
smile as I say my goodnightseven as I need the haemal warmthof his skin, the thrum of his heartin my ear.
When the door closesit seals me off as completelyas an air-lock in a prison wing.Sleep is a gentle mistake
that I make without knowing.I dream of my motherresting on the foot of my bedbefore I am wrenched from sleep.
In a heartbeat the lightreveals the printof someoneon my quilt
and a flicker in the curtainlike a heart's missed beats:the moth frantic, nettedbetween two worlds.
Reality
Imagine dayand night
the sky inverted,its dome pushed out
and the Southern Crossfrosting the earth.
Our heaven would begreen as this sea,
our moonthe dangling filament
of an angler fish,our sun
a lost cargoof bullion.
And treadingon angels,
the stars in our hair,we would still
pump shitinto our air.
Louise McKenna's first manuscript, A Lesson in Being Mortal, was published by Wakefield Press in 2010. Since then she has had work published in journals such as paper wasp and Poetrix. Louise is at present co-editing the next Friendly Street Poets anthology, due to be published by Wakefield Press in 2012.