Poetry Trevor Conway

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Trevor Conway

Trevor is a writer of mainly poetry, fiction and songs, from Sligo, Ireland. He’s published two poetry collections (Evidence of Freewheeling and Breeding Monsters), and is currently writing a fairly experimental novel

The Hunt

In the toilet, I dreamed of my daughter as something other, a starved beast that would hunt me from this room if only she could smell me.

In recent months, her teeth had broken through her gums in readiness for the act, and she had been tiring me, waking at night, so I’d have no fight to give.

Her slow, light, predator steps stopped at the door.

I twisted the key, submitted to her open arms,

the gentlest killing I could ever imagine.

(Trevor Conway)

Labour

I saw green till diggers came and scraped it away, soil and stone revealed, cement swept in thick currents, heavy pipes hoisted down, and stubborn slabs sandwiched all to a subterranean fate.

Walls rose from cinder blocks. The second floor flourished with a deluge of timber, and slanted tiles clung to wood like reptile skin. There were men who threaded wire through holes, upholstering walls with electric current, while others laboured on plain frescoes of damp plaster.

Garden soil was ruffled, rolled, raked and seeded, raked again. Vans arrived, disgorging beds, wardrobes, tables, a well-fed couch.

And one day, when all was quiet, a car’s doors flung open. Children spewed with quick steps and spiky cries that coloured the afternoon. Curious neighbours emerged at windows, reliving a time when their gardens were yet to green.

(Tervor Conway)

After the Pandemic

Those who survived – and there were many –waded deep into plans, having emerged from a kind of hibernation with the veiny marks of face masks traced about their ears.

They still were inclined to keep their distance as they watched the cranes swing back into life and heard the drills and hammers cackling through the morning.

Thieves lamented at being unable to approach without arousing suspicion, and everyone hoped the next pandemic would be a distant problem endured by some other generation.

In quieter moments, when freedom felt normal again and homes were for sovereign thoughts, some reflected on those who hadn’t survived.

(Trevor Conway)

Family Affair

Certain words have been spoken. There is no retreat. We all know that old wounds have been exposed, that they will scar longer and simpler than any word.

Our younger selves have returned in subtle ways, peppering the hail of thoughts, the camouflage of time revealed.

If we were to abandon the quick fastening of misinterpretation, of ego whispering like Iago, there might be hope, softening to understanding.

We are all creatures of imperfection, slower now than we used to be, with grey streaks in our hair, bellies that draw attention to themselves, no longer playing in the back garden.

Fights were lesser things then. Now, their weight is harder to shift.

Sitting on a train that cradles me further from the epicentre, the blur of bushes reminds me of years

(Trevor Conway)