Two POEMS
Michael NAGHTEN SHANKS
THE EGG LADY’S DEATH
She’d call on Sundays—
requesting an egg, maybe milk,
some sugar, always the egg—
never failing to comment
on how we should add a little colour
to the garden: chrysanthemum, iris, rosemary.
The sight of her bathtub
full of eggs, piled up, sucked
at our feet like Lethe’s cold water.
requesting an egg, maybe milk,
some sugar, always the egg—
never failing to comment
on how we should add a little colour
to the garden: chrysanthemum, iris, rosemary.
The sight of her bathtub
full of eggs, piled up, sucked
at our feet like Lethe’s cold water.
WAVES
1.
See: how water pours
from its jug, is
greeted by the soil
of the rubber tree,
then runs over it asymmetrically.
Please, close your eyes.
Listen: wild dialogue.
2.
Some days all the rain stops
when I am looking somewhere else.
It will never rain again, I say.
Some days I sit in the bath
with the water running:
the plug hangs from the tap,
dances in the stream.
Some days I swim across the ocean.
Some days I don’t.
See: how water pours
from its jug, is
greeted by the soil
of the rubber tree,
then runs over it asymmetrically.
Please, close your eyes.
Listen: wild dialogue.
2.
Some days all the rain stops
when I am looking somewhere else.
It will never rain again, I say.
Some days I sit in the bath
with the water running:
the plug hangs from the tap,
dances in the stream.
Some days I swim across the ocean.
Some days I don’t.
Michael NAGHTEN SHANKS is the author of two pamphlets: Year of the Ingénue (Eyewear, 2015) and The Architecture of Red Caviar Sandwiches (If a Leaf Falls Press, forthcoming). His writing has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Architecture Ireland, gorse, Poetry Ireland Review, the Quietus, and The Tangerine amongst others. Named a “Rising Generation” poet by Poetry Ireland, he was shortlisted for the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Irish Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2016. He lives in Dublin.