Five Poems by Kate Ennals

 

What Word Would You Choose to Be?

  

 

I’d want a word with body, cute with curlicues

A word to curl your tongue, alert, inveigle you

 

in close. A word with a whisper of intrigue

onomatopoeic. I could be a call of nature

a reverberation, a craw in the back of the throat

or be meaningful like the bleat of a new-born

kittens tied up in a sack of stones.

 

I’d like to sound like a badge of courage

Or a shout for change. The Scream, maybe?

But I want my word to make you laugh

signal cunning. I’d want to be a clever sound

packed with guile, colour, a flash of solar

a ray of lunar, scarlet with a green feather boa

Be burlesque like a Reubens character.

 

Eureka! If I could pick a word to be…

The word I’d choose is ‘fleshy.’

 

 

On the Day of my Death

(after Pier Paulo Passolini)

On the day of my death

When my eyes do not open

Cash tills will ring still in supermarkets

A million babies will cry

Church bells will toll across the land

Trump will tweet and dogs will bark

Guns will be fired

Parliamentarians will stand up and make speeches

I know In the USA, Iraq, Israel and Iran

School children will stand to attention

Protesters will lie down in the road

Students will drown sorrow in bars

Men will dress in a blue suit and tie

Traffic will tail back in a snarl

 

On the day my eyes remain shut

Seven billion people will be silent

For at least one minute

Possibly not at the same time.

 

 

Taking Stock

 

After a devastating election

in which Labour lost to Boris and Brexit

I was persuaded

 

That to beat the Tories

you must out manoeuvre

them at their own endeavours.

 

So, I decide to invest

Surf the Internet

Put my pennies in Canadian maple trees

 

The Futures of no Meat,

exotic spices

green businesses

 

Up here, my eyes pop to see

how people thrive.

 

No poor people live on streets

it’s all figures, graphs and acronyms

 

troughs and peaks that look like ski runs

fine lines of blue, red and green,

windfalls, stocks, shares. Dreams

 

in thrall to gold,

thrill and risk

They bet on product

blind to consequence

 

cause boom and bust

lost jobs,

queues at food banks

 

bleached coral

blackened forests

 

In fur hats, with fat wallets

they slalom across the blue skies

of endless futures, snow blind. 

 

 

The Mona Lisa Smile

 

The charcoal portrait

sketched in Montmartre

Montmartre, Paris

Paris, France

is of a woman

a middle-aged woman

propped against a window

spattered with rain

spiked with Montbretia

Montbretia and sorrow

Sorrow of late afternoon

a middle-aged woman

a black flower in her hair

a Mona Lisa smile

in the blush of her skin

her eyes well-spaced

looking for other

looking for else

a middle-aged woman

in a charcoal portrait

sketched in Montmartre

Montmartre, Pairs

a portrait of a woman

propped against a window

spattered with rain. 

 

 

Un Mute

 

Behind the only man, sprawls a sprig of shamrock

It hangs, limp, down a metal filing cabinet.

He doesn’t say where he is. He is gaunt

bespectacled. He places a hand to his neck

inside his checked shirt, looks down, focused

on himself, he writes, seemingly oblivious

 

Next to him is Smiling Gilly from Peckham. On the wall

behind her stretches a coat of arms, with green

embroidery on red background. It is next to a brass

framed mirror which reflects the open of a window

filled with London shine. Six twisted African statues

writhe on her mantle, contorted, twisted.

 

Barbara sits at a wide, neat desk in Belfast

in a red bricked terrace, window dripping with rain.

Victorian shutters frame her position.

Her elegant hands run astray, fiddle with pencils

Scribble, distracted. I see her remember

to look up which she does, staging diligence.

 

In a skylight lit, unadorned kitchen in Dublin

presses of pale grey ash scaffold a dark head of hair

a long, charcoal face. A pursed mouth

spouts words in silence. She talks hands, picking

and scattering points. We watch her in silence

for a minute. Then Gilly says, ‘you need to unmute’.

Kate Ennals is a prize-winning poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, Crossways, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, The Ogham Stone, plus many more). In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection, Threads, was published in April 2018. Her third collection, Elsewhere, in November 21. 

Kate Ennals

Board member of Irish PEN/PEN na h'Éireann

 You can purchase a copy of Elsewhere here

Published collections: 

At the Edge, Lapwing

Threads, Lapwing

Elsewhere, Vole Imprint - November 21

 

Coming collections:

Practically Perfect in Every Way, Salmon Spring 23