Gorseland
(After Ann Tuohy)
Before fair day she’d
scrub his pants and geansaí
on the washboard
with carbolic soap
pray he’d get a good price
for the sheep, enough to buy shoes
to stop the children’s feet
blistering.
She loved the honey’d smell
of laundered sheets left
to sun-dry on tufts of furze
was grateful for her humble home
on mountainous land where only
sheep would grow.
Under her bed
she kept a tea-chest
a treasure trove of linen and lace
relics of her time in America
before she was matched
to her husband – high-necked blouses
swooshing skirts, dancing shoes,
dainty as a dolls.
Every now and then she’d
lay them out on the bed
revive each garment
then fold, tuck it back in place.
Perfume her tea-chest
with fresh mothballs.
*
Mystery
She’s a mystery to him
like the bermuda triangle,
the immaculate conception
aliens.
The time she fritters
on the phone, at the hairdressers
haemorrhaging money,
her monthly moods.
She’s the wrecking ball of
a man’s freedom, her duster, hoover
bulldozing the peaceful enjoyment
of his tv. An inferno
filling him with an insatiable thirst.
For the slightest transgession
he’ll pay. Freezing him with bitter
eyes, he’ll face her gargoyle grimace,
and in her voice,
that sounds like breaking glass,
he’ll hear his mother.
*
Biography
Faye Boland is winner of the Hanna Greally International Literary Award 2017 and was shortlisted in 2013 for the Poetry on the Lake XIII International Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in Three Drops From a Cauldron, Skylight 47, The Yellow Nib, The California Quarterly, The Galway Review, Literature Today, The Shop, Revival, Crannóg, Orbis, Wordlegs, Ropes, Headstuff, Silver Apples, Creature Features, The Blue Max Review, Speaking for Sceine Chapbooks, Vols I and II and ‘Visions: An Anthology of Emerging Kerry Writers’.
Brilliant poems, great literature Faye, absolutely love them, well done, keep writing, the world needs this type of writing
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