Days of a shivering sun
(i.m. David McWilliams)
I have shaken in those same streets
among a throng cowering at the bandstand
as down the hill something erupts
a puff of black smoke as if from the chimney
above a camp crematorium,
those same roads where you noticed him, nose pressed
to shop windows, skin as pale as death
and I have known a similar prejudice
what it’s like to be overlooked
to be invisible and leave no trace
as the vain elbow through their race
chasing other dreams and snatching at wealth
for all they’re worth, while just like you
I’m content to observe, make brief comments
about how glory is disbursed
of, by, to and among the least worthy
with glassy eyes that do not care
and untwitching noses that do not smell
the tartness of blood-sticky streets
where sandwich-board men holler about hell
and the evils of the casino
that stands a Reichstag stately pleasure dome
burning with harsh voices that wail
about injustice even while they inflict
greater crimes on the innocent,
their hearts are caves of ice, their skulls winecups
of the godless hoards, the type of brutes
blind enough to follow the first howling
dog with leg cocked at a lamppost
where only drunkards’ urine and rats run
they can get you so down you bow
your head, fail to notice the lovely sun
roughs in the streets or yes-gofers
in grey suits in grey buildings issuing
spiteful decrees like bureaucrats
that stymied our moments of glory
through pettiness and passing spite,
but you were beyond all that, going home
to watch white horses jump the spray
along the strand where dark basalt columns
mingle with tufts of seaweed grass
and pass precious time in the company
of the only hearts that matter,
so I salute you and thank you for songs
that make heavy moments lighter,
for reminding us when all’s said and done
best forgotten times and filthy streets
are mere totems of where we’ve risen from,
immaculate days lie ahead.
the day before
The day before I was due to go away
I visited you in your house,
tea and biscuits by an open fire,
your mother slipping into the other room
as we snogged on the sofa.
We called at your aunt’s
to see her new baby. I learnt
your uncle had just started a business
in a converted church.
In the backseat at the marina
we made out some more
as the lough’s waves slapped on the shore.
On the radio, songs of inspiration:
When the Going Gets Tough from Billy Ocean.
When I left you home, I told you
what I had to do the next day.
We promised to write. (For a while, you did,
how you liked how I slipped the hand
even if, after a few weeks apart,
it became Dear John).
And I drove away, rattling over the cattle grid
listening to Captain of her Heart
and Manic Monday wondering
should I go or would I stay?
CONSENT
It is march in Tyrone,
bluebells burgeoning, larches
swaying above St Patrick’s chair,
shamrocks greening by the bullán.
I thought of Singing School
and The Strand at Lough Beg
as we drove by Lough More
and you spoke of Rattle and Hum,
Bono slagging armchair patriots
after Enniskillen that shocked
you into sense, knowing who to revere.
Those around us here,
now, young and dumb enough
to idolise or wear
their balaclavas as badges
of dishonour, whatever their colours.
I mull over what happened to Lyra
and to my tutor’s wife,
starting her car to go to work,
who didn’t even know her neighbour
was a cop or, until it was too late,
that the volunteer went to the wrong address.
And the hate that took her legs
was the same as that in Carrickfergus
where Glenn criticised
racketeering. The dew of my libations
is for people like him,
the shards of his ribs
bleeding out, agonised,
alone by the bed
where they left his dog
like The Godfather’s horse’s head.
It’s too much of an inconvenient bore
for many to think about the skelfed seats
and foam-pocked red cushions
of Darkley and Tannaghmore.
No Troy-like cures
this long after we were supposed
to have respite, when our guardians of peace
are too neutered to chase escooters.
The well’s rags have rotted away,
the plaster St Patrick has toppled;
there’s a dog walker who is aware
it wasn’t giants or enraged sidhe
but winter floods that flattened
burn-side hazel and birch
and last year’s storm that brought down
so many spruce here in Favour,
but there’s still demons in Augher
this Lughnasa to coerce to Altadaven.
Rockefeller made me a junkie
‘The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets…
I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.’
(John D Rockefeller)
old John D wanted workers not thinkers
he and his rich mates wanted cheap labor
he donated to medical schools – the catch
being he would dictate what they could teach
promoting his petroleum-based pills
over alternatives – holistic, herbal –
spawned over a century of disdaining
complementary techniques
it’s why I can hear the laugh in the GP’s
voice on the phone when I mention I see
hypnotherapy stopped me being anxious,
kinesiology fixed my reflux
when I was down they gave me diazepam
without saying what it does to the system
when will they accept the curveball thrown,
causing my spiral towards methadone
when they cut welfare I tried cold turkey
couldn’t shake the monkey, stuck as a junkie
desperate, get fentanyl, crack cocaine,
anything off the street, heroin –
when I am beaten, bloody in the gutter
who’s counting dividends?
Take away the fourth wall
see the bedroom scene
double bed centre stage
pre-divan spindly legs
toddlers push pillows aside
bounce bounce bounce
arms out straight
swinging for propulsion
launching somersaulting
so high heads tucked
most of the time
landing squat
at the edge
but the carpet
cushions any falls
as spindly legs splay
get replaced by stacks
of family bibles
which one day
contain fresh names
of gleeful toddlers
long after that room
has been demolished
Aftermath
I’m a mess.
But you had to insist.
Even though you were told.
You knew.
That’s why your subterfuge.
But still you persisted.
And here we are.
You harassed and bullied.
And you roped others in.
So that when I resisted
it was them as well as you.
And made me look stupid.
As always, victim-blaming.
As always, self-blaming.
this city
The poet rages the room,
smashes chair over table
screaming, My work’s not systemic
or formal like Lowell,
that same bland, gloomy hand
they all affect
however pseudo-confessional,
that multi-dimensional
lack of meaning,
I don’t scrawl like an academic,
I write like a human being.
Feel the sun blaze,
skin tingling as it reddens,
cheeks itching as they dry,
ignore the heady aroma of magnolia
and rose pungent on the breeze
from railed in street greenery.
Sense the moon rising above
the horizon, eeking its way from one sky
to another, delving into darkness
as surely as this city turns us into savages:
the way the lover rages,
kneeling on the sidewalk,
weeping over the bloodied limbs
and exposed viscera of the only soul
that made inhabitance bearable.
One needy conceit rages,
objectifying, denying an other,
oblivious to the reality
every herd doesn’t just murmurate
or scatter like magnetized irondust,
but throbs with a multitude of hearts
that spew adoration and harm as readily
and promiscuously, as delicately
and beautifully as bile
seeping onto pavements.
So, this city swarms
with such exigencies
nightmares generate.
You Know It’s Me
Sunshine through grubby trailer windows…
A moment ago I was at the gas station,
they have a good vegan range. Everyone knows
me, the wild-haired cat-lady,
the old one there with accusing baggy eyes
even remembers… why I take
a cab to the clinic twice a week at four
to queue up for the methadone that keeps
me level, why I lie awake when it’s dark,
sometimes siesta through afternoon heat
when the distant industrial estate
is clattering. All the world is busy
living and getting, consuming, taking.
I panic and rush to the doctor’s. Infrequent
sessions with a shrink to regain focus.
Sunday mornings the catholics parade
for service, I watch them go and return
from slippy deck steps, feel shutters
crash in my head, calloused like the hands
that kneaded me when I was playdough.
Crashing down, galvanized steel
locking away the past. Steel, like gates
all around you. I visited once,
threw up in the parking lot.
I don’t need to see you, I know you’re there.
I know your stomach knots
to see me, but you’ll never admit it.
You shuffle between gray block rooms,
lie, fantasizing, sometimes about me,
as I lie next to a treated plywood wall,
sometimes fantasizing about you.
Through so many years –
letters, then emails, now texts.
Rare voicecalls. We have little to say:
you don’t want to divulge the threats
you face every day; I don’t want to confess
the emptiness of my existence.
There was no doubting the evidence,
I understand why you have to be where you are,
don’t excuse what you did or why.
But sometimes there is something
that is stronger than sense.
That’s why I tolerate this incarnation.
That’s why I contend with
sunshine through grubby trailer windows…
I know you know,
you know I know…
I know it’s you;
you know it’s me.
Niall McGrath is a twice Pushcart Prize nominated writer in the 2020s, most recently for 2026, from County Antrim, N Ireland. He has had work in Tears In The Fence, The South Carolina Review, Ashville Poetry Review, Poetry Scotland, French Literary Review, Antigonish Review, Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Scotland, New Statesman and Quadrant (Australia) among other journals. He is Assistant Editor of Northern Ireland’s premier journal of the arts and culture, Fortnight. Recent selections include oral tradition (Alien Buddha, USA, 2024) and Shed (Lapwing, UK, 2021).