Four Superb Poems by Sean McNulty

AT THE EAST LAKE WHERE I’M OFTEN DRUNK, THOROUGHLY

Make a run for cherry blossom season
once all the books are closed.
Tourists on campus marvel at bubblegum webs
while military drills ring out in the courtyards,
the future of the nation at work while
others play basketball.

Walk past the disreputable DVD stall
where I found last week Deep Throat
(dubbed in Mandarin and German
and not a single subtitle)
And over there the restaurant of the elites
where I once ate sweet pork
with the college president
who all the local gangsters
answer to.

A student waves to me, that blond one
who never comes to class,
and who gifted me once with a sword
from the Wudang Mountains;
what a cynical arrangement it is that he might just pass.
Stop at my daily seller to find his freezer empty,
warm tinnies only
but the kind man smiles, goes to his van
and personal icebox
and out come five frozen bottles
 – unevenly labelled Tsingtao;
I cheer at the frosted green glass,
knowing full and well
how untrustworthy the contents.

(Henhao.)    (Xiexie.)

Outside campus where little roads bend
and curl around the East Lake,
sun-blasted worms fail to wriggle beneath me
and an accidental loon moans high above
somewhere in the trees – nature
is constrained here.
And strangers are the birds.

Hold a bottle up to the forehead for coolness and walk
to the little bridge by the water where I sit
and get plastered
most if not every day since we parted.
Alone with the bobbing and fluttering of beetles
and hornets and other multi-coloured
heat-seeking missiles
and the shouts of a fisherman on the lake
who I don’t think is drowning
entirely,
I begin to settle, submerged,
faraway and at home.

It’s true I never stopped being a stranger
like that loon in the trees
not even at dinner with your mother when she smiled
and though I didn’t quite understand
everything she said,
there was clearly pride in the way she looked
at you, her only daughter.
Oh, if you could see me now...
here, at the East Lake:
you would see it is me,
that loon in the trees,
and well-known stranger in town –
friend to the beetles and the hornets
and hopefully soon
among all the fishermen
unwilling to drown.


Donghu Road, Wuhan University, May 2010




WORD MINIMISED


for days
        minimal
words
        and a cup
in the window
        with word
minimised
        for days
too close
        to the ashtray
everything
        is resistance
maximised
        out the window
where birds
        are minimised
for days
        and words
maximised
        in the ashtray
everything
    in existence
minimised
    and maximised
while the cup
    stays
in the window

WHISTLING, BADLY

To oust contempt from its long-held seat in being,
I sit on this rock in the hills and try badly to whistle.
The inability to produce song from my lips is
the grievance fuel and firm indigence
of my life.

But now on this rock I listen to the wind
whistling rather pathetically too----
a smooth and voiceless W-H-O-O-O.
Far more preferable is this soft breath blowing
to a screeching ballyhoo.

How can one’s heart stay hateful
when the wind whistles
like a bigger boob than you?




AND LAST OF ALL, THE HAMPER

Kenneth takes the hamper after all;
it’s worth the whole year and more,
the last hamper of them all,
full of mince pies and truffle spread
and little German buns with amaretto
and ginger
and a whole turkey;
and you can hear someone whisper
Couldn’t have gone to a nicer man, but still...
In the corner, Cleo has his head down
to avoid the Santa-hatted hoors
and Holly Johnson impressions.

Ah, mahogany caves don’t come any shadier
than these ones with their glorious secrets
that refuse to be inexpressible
and tell their all on demoralised tabletops
over and over; and over and over
we say good-bye and -health and -riddance
and promise to share phone numbers
while the filters float like boats below us
along the Red TK rivulet
to the isle of soggy beermat
where all our victories and losses
are remembered in the blue biro
someone’s left behind.

And down back, for the last time
Georgie’s singing Last Christmas
and the howls you hear up the front
when he knocks that bloody tree over
and over and over; next year,
he’ll have to knock his bloody own over
and as we head to the door
(raise your prize if you got one)
the final clown’s on the floor
being helped up by the woman
from the bookies he secretly loves;
he’s the last of the clowns we’ll see
on these floors; next year,
there’ll be steadier feet
and the uproar gone forever.

So take one last look at Cleo
with his head down over there
and those Santa-hatted hoors
and your man who never paid his bill.
At least Kenneth got the hamper
The last one of them all
Couldn’t have gone to a nicer man, but still...

Sean McNulty has published fiction with Richmond Review, Androgyny Magazine and Epoque Press.  In 2018, he was a winner in the Irish Novel Fair.  He lives in Dublin.