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Circus
There’s
so much emphasis on the individual we forget how much a single person is actually a double. For a start, we are symmetrical:
2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 lips with two halves in each one. Our 32 teeth can be divided in two so many ways they deserve a poem
of their own. And, taking a bird’s eye view—2 hemispheres in the brain. The story goes all the way down: 2 shoulders,
2 arms, 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, 2 testicles, 2 ovaries, 2 bums, each one divided in two, 2 knees, 2 legs, 2 feet. We are actually
really 2 people in one. And what do we do? We pair up. We get married, shackled, shack up. Why we do this I do not know. We
are already getting quite enough action being 2 people in one but whatever. We have to have an outside person too, who is
also more 2 persons than one. It gets complex. Now you have a 2 X 4. Kids arrive. Each kid adds 2 to the mix. Sometimes there’s
twins. Pretty soon you have chaos masquerading as a family. I’m thinking of Ben Franklin. Now Ben was the 15th child
out of a total of 17 born to his mother. This figure may or may not include 2 children who died. The numbers are staggering.
I’m thinking of Mrs. Franklin. This is a woman or, to my way of thinking, practically 2 women, who had 17 or 19 children
proceed through her, i.e., 34 or 38, in addition to providing accommodation for the regular visits of Mr. Franklin. This is
not a woman. This is a pomegranate. This is the fabled village it takes to raise a child. Mrs. Franklin herself was the green
on which the townspeople cavorted. Is it any wonder we thought of mitosis and meiosis and all that. It’s written all over us. How do you end something like
this? It never ends.
Figures
I used to be 4 years younger than my husband then
he left me with 2 children & I got 7 years older very quick. Two years went by. I was 11 years older then. He stayed the
same age, always 30, possibly even younger. In no time, I was 20 years older than him & hurtling towards old age. Even
the children began to age. They were small & wrinkled, older than their own father. His skin was baby-smooth, his brown
hair rising like a stack above their wilting heads—or like a vividly brushed dun & purple mountain range ringing
the horizon in the pan of which, somewhere, they tottered
In the Woods
Last
night I mailed a lot of heart-stamps to a lot of trees. It's sober in the forest—almost a stage set—nothing but
huge, upwardly mobile trunks. It's like standing at arm's length among an at-ease army of headless & footless chests.
With silence like a system of cups—like large acorn lids or coconut shells or even bodhráns—catching the large
thump-thump (like the inside of a wardrobe) of the little red heart stamps knocking into the chests of the trees. And
I standing, breathing, tacks clamped between my lips.
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
My mother
sits inside me like a frog. We are watching a movie. It is The Wind That Shakes The Barley. At first I think my mother
will like it but then I realize she will not. It is dark in the movie theatre, so dark it seems empty. I am crouched down
in my seat & my mother is crouched down in me. On the screen terrible things are happening. Micheál is battered to a pulp
for saying his name in Irish. His insides are smeared all over him. The Black & Tans jump their rifle butts into men’s
faces breaking their noses & teeth. They are panic turned lethal. An octopus of shout. They hack off a girl’s hair
taking great swipes of her scalp. The Black & Tan captain draws Teddy’s fingernails out with a rusty pliers. The
Black & Tans kill the boys. The boys kill the Black & Tans. Then the boys kill each other. The old story we all
know we know it so well. Though it is not spoken about. It is like heavy metals in our bones. We are made of its secrets.
My mother is stirring inside me, anxious to eat.
Copyright
© Mairéad Byrne,
2007.
These
prose poems are taken from Talk Poetry (2007), Miami University Press, Oxford, Ohio, USA.
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