The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: How Bright the Wings Drive Us

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The Deep End

               By Morag Anderson

Flaccid light and piss-reek
seep in from the communal hall.
It takes both cold hands to form a grip,
turn the key, unlock the door.

The kids still asleep in a pleat
of thin limbs under sheets and coats,
and a lanced heart nailed to the wall.

I take the pack of sausages
from the waistband of my skirt,
bend carefully to pick apart

damp knots in oversized boots
but still dislodge the bloodied wad
of my makeshift sanitary-pad.

I slide down the wall, pull my knees
to the ladder of my ribs, and bleed.

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Before Waking

               By Maeve McKenna

Mid-March, stunned by another 6 am,
I have been awake, in parts, two hours.
Flecks of dust settle on the window pane.

A fox across the open field, one I announced
as having claimed us, now seems unfamiliar;
chameleon of rusted amber, then furious red.

These are the loneliest minutes of my life. I am
happy here, most mornings, watching dew dissipate,
fearless dandelions slipping their wet shields,

grass-frost, its white innocence warming to silver,
then vanishing. And her, our vixen, scavenging
the dark length of night, stalking death by paw,

unaware of preened coats panting at the lair,
newborn cubs blinded, unhearing. Her breath
pins a trail of fog I follow with my eyes; shafted

light sculpting shadows. Then, a sudden
spiral, a staggering at my wrist.
I make sense with what I have left, until I can’t.

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Swag

       After Brigit Pegeen Kelly

               By Audrey Molloy

In a batik purse encrusted with mirrors
is a drawstring bag of fine kid-leather
and, in the bag, a nugget of stolen time.

It is tarnished black despite the lack of oxygen
but a brisk rub on the hem of your dress reveals
a gleam like a trout in a wind-brushed lough.

No one knows who took it, but suspects are many:
the first-time mother in the milk-stained blouse
who sleeps only fitfully between feeds;

or the part-time telephonist, squeezing the outer skin
from the pale green innards of defrosted peas;
or a surgeon; or someone from long ago.

The purse has been ported on longboat and curragh,
High Nellie bicycle, barrow and cart,
through drought, inundations and mud.

It has even been carried by swarms of blue bees,
dangling its long, swinging strap in the semblance
of a bright green snake. Oh, that’s all been written before.

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Forest Dwellers

               By Barbara DeCoursey Roy

Dainty dogwood, wistful redbud, wild phlox, blue
as your teenage daughter’s hair, a fat clump of May
apples border this thin slice of earth. Second growth
a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand small pieces.

A hundred different wildflowers on as many acres,
every extra hour of daylight a promise writ yellow,
the primeval alchemy of fungus and root, the last
redoubt of innocence, witness to its undoing.

Cue the supernumeraries: raccoon with sly smile,
furtive fox, his tail a red banner, opossum with her
opalescent skin, owl and hawk. Who thrive in nest
and den, with teeth and talon, not questioning

their true nature, playing their part, tending the tinder,
heeding the shriek, the howl, the mating call.
Our next of kin, in darkest wood, thieves
and murderers all.

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