Five Poems by Paul Connolly

 

Fight

 

 

A lawnmower ignition’s stutter and stall 

wheeled suitcase drag inside 

the bay tree, a what the fuck moment  

brings him to the window. Silence and then 

a ratty shatter out of the leaves 

and two pigeons exchange haymaker 

wingbeats with a familiar laughing thrum. 

One falls down and backwards,  

it gyres on a wing stretched behind it  

on the path, holds a low hawk-hover 

as the other nods and breasts towards it, 

then, magazine in a gale, it thrashes off  

and over the wall. The victor struts  

lunatic figures of eight, bobs,  

flits beyond the bay tree,  

strides with pompous certainty towards 

a near collision with the shed, and then 

with everything forgotten save pumping 

ever-renewed through eye and gut  

the welter and clamp of here and now,  

it turns again and whips away.

 

 

Shepherds 

 

 

Not sure as I can do it, John. My flaws, 

I pull 'em round me, arms in winter, hides, warm 

as brothels, campfire, pissing down my leg, home 

with all the easeful touch and wine. Your call  

 

would cull me of my place, every choking rasp, 

short words, fat hands, friends bruised, and missus, each  

sounds like him! chuckled or spat, that marks my reach, 

crafts who is me, in whores, more drink, sinuous paths  

 

knotted in and out, and bumping through the fold,  

me, I say, I’m here too, thanks. Your words harrow 

and burn those gawpers dumb. They'll earn tomorrow, 

maybe. Fine. Here's my all. Better make bold. 

 

 

 

Between Places

 

 

Behold, the between-places places. There, 

in ballast screes, barbed-wire nestled, in wedges 

of intersecting railway line, plots of nowhere 

centre on Safestore like villages 

around a church. Yet they're forever edges 

 

even when we are inside them, ossuaries 

jam-packed with industrialisation's bits. 

Planning permission for Carpetright can't appease 

and domesticate these Lares. Kwikfit's 

scorched tyre offerings bless and fragrance this 

 

scapegoat ground. Night Watchmen turn perhaps to Crewe 

and pray for places where Platonic forms 

abort and scattered rents of things play peekaboo   

with memory. Stripped banality makes norms 

go loose. Who knows what rites the guards perform? 

 

 

Prefab

 

 

She’s warm, whiskey ripe, snugly boxed  

by friends and friendly laughter. She 

bathes herself in context, more free 

for their completion. Aftershocks, 
new waves of judder, glee reprised, 

 

shake her spine. She sucks back her lips, clears 
tooth foams with her tongue, laughs again, flicks  

mirth-flailed bangs back and slowly sips 

the burnt-earth whiskey and subsides. Tears, 
hair, whiskey slick, glass, all shrink 
 
her inwards. Why is it always 
in joy-soaked times, with Jake's warm hand 
on her breast, in those none-withstand 
sweetest of judderings. on days 
like this, when all accords, unplanned, 
 
it comes again, that quenchless minute? 
The bell went. They were out of bounds, 
behind the prefab. Gill ran round, 
lined up. She stayed, abashed by sin. It 
was drowning, sound and sense were drowned 
 
in a throb of nothing, slight warms 
of urine down her legs. Ashamed 
she prayed for death till she was saved.  
Mr Brooks found her. Untrue to form, 
he didn’t scold and didn’t name 
 
the strange transgression. But she wept 
at the ground, couldn’t look back, renew 
that nought the asphalt path led to 
around the bend, whose image crept 

around her, never dreamt, but viewed 

 

askance in later days and here, 

as boundaries loosen, and she strays 

behind the whiskey, far away 
behind the prefab, friendless, clear 
away, like last night, when she lay 
 
clenching Jake's hair and her shivers seized 

up: the half-glimpsed ceiling had become 
the wall that everyone will run 
around with her for fun then leave  
her there, like Gill did, Gill, who’s gone.

 

Felled Trunk

 

 

A warm rain sickens her stroll  

with sweat. December wind chill 

side-lashes her face intermittently.  

 
A tree trunk’s cross section,  

four feet high, juts onto the footpath 

without immediate explanation  

beside a high brickwork enclosure 

near the golf club. 

 

The face is rot-black, moist and silken,  

but striated, reefed with fungi, duned  

where clumsy hewing has raised new fiefdoms  

on continental plates of century whose groans 

and cracks, to shed, swell, ward off or weather 

through massiveness, and so remain, are silent.   

 

 

 

Paul Connolly - Shortlisted twice for the Bridport poetry prize, longlisted for the Orwell Prize in the blog category and for the Bridport novel prize, Paul Connolly’s poems have appeared in Agenda, The Warwick Review, Poetry Salzburg, Stand Magazine, The Reader, Scintilla, Chiron Review (USA), Dawntreader, Takahē (New Zealand), Dream Catcher, Orbis, The Journal, FourXFour, The Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, Envoi, Obsessed with Pipework, The Bombay Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Southlight, Foxtrot Uniform, Guttural, The High Window, Nine Muses, Eunoia Review (Singapore), The Honest Ulsterman, Canada Quarterly, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Littoral Magazine, Northampton Poetry Review, London Grip, and Quadrant (Australia). Shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize, he was highly commended in the Sentinel Quarterly and third in the Magna Carta Competitions.