THE SPANISH-ITALIAN BORDER
THE
SPANISHITALIAN BORDER
Róisín Tierney
2014
Published by Arc Publications Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright © Róisín Tierny 2014 Design by Tony Ward Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow. 978 1908376 34 3 pbk 978 1908376 35 0 hbk Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Poetry Ireland Review, The Sunday Tribune (New Irish Writers), Magma, Arabesque Review, Horizon Review, The London Magazine, Moonstone, The Wolf, The Virago Book of Christmas, Moosehead Anthology X: Future Welcome, In The Criminal’s Cabinet, (nth position.com), The Lampeter Review, The Writers’ Hub and Poems for a Better Future (Oxfam). Several of these poems have also been published in the following pamphlets and pamphlet anthologies: Gobby Deegan’s Riposte (Donut Press, 2004), Ask for It by Name (Unfold Press, 2008), The Art of Wiring (Ondt & Gracehoper, 2011) and Dream Endings (Rack Press, 2011). Cover: Photograph of Chorrojumo, by José García Ayola, © Museo Casa de los Tiros, Granada, Spain. This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.
Editor for the UK and Ireland: John W. Clarke
for Christopher
Contents I Chosen / 11 The Sacred and the Profane / 12 Waters / 13 The Blush / 15 Swanky / 16 Trajectory / 17 Feet / 19 The Only Hue / 20 The Liminal / 22 Invierno / 24 Song / 25 Gone / 26 On Watching Ray Mears’ Extreme Survival Guide / 28 Half-Mile Down / 29 Hunt / 31 Global / 32 Crush / 33 As is the Archaeopteryx / 34 Oouf! / 35 The Pact / 36 Untitled / 37 Museum Interview / 38 Nebamun’s Servant Rebukes Him / 39 Song of the Temple Maiden / 40 Héloise Learns to Modify Her Desire / 42 Lucid Interval / 43 Dog-Days / 44 Anna / 45
II The Spanish-Italian Border / 49 Learning the Language / 50 Mariposa de Noche / 51 Recipe for the Sky / 53 In an Empty Alcove in the Prado / 54 El Rey de Jamรณn / 56 The Panzemashorn / 58 Gothic / 60 La Vida Gitana / 62 Cathy / 63 Cult / 64 Stink / 65 London Hospital for Tropical Diseases, 2003 / 66 The Suicides / 67 Diogenes Syndrome / 68 Vera / 69 Asylum / 70 Lluvias / 71 Musca Domestica / 72 Death-Mask / 73 Dream Endings / 74 Notes / 75 Biographical Note / 77
Hunt Say, as the springbok twists, say as it turns in contradictory prongs above the veld, say as it turns and twists, say as the sun burns the black earth and turns it into dust, say as the hooves electrify the air and tap the dust upwards in spiral twists, so turns the earth, so turns the yellow sun, so hefts the huntsman his blue‑barreled gun and twists to catch the springbok in its sights and lifts the gun to meet the leaping deer which warps the air, which twines its double stripes into a helix, a paroxysm, delight, that swerves to catch the bullet with its heart, shatter the sky, and tear the world apart.
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Global In Wicklow, the midwinter sun lies so low in the sky that we have to wear our designer wrap-around shades, the better to squint into the glare of it, the better to slink a sideways look at that which is so fierce it graces everything. We are Marsh Arabs now, we up with our tents, we follow the sun, trailing our books and clothes, we ululate, we sing. Maimonedes no longer spins his golden astrolabe. Our star is lonely, she is off her rails. She drops down towards us, yet she freezes us. Our shoes and books and things may yet pile up into a frozen heap, a pilgrim’s mound of leavings, outside a temple or a mosque, after the panic, after the stampede.
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Crush The Galapagos Islands have never been connected to a continent. All life flew, swam or was blown there.
I, a Blue-footed Booby with an elaborate courtship ritual, hop from foot to foot with the shame of it. My little head tilts with a charmless honk, as I coyly offer one blue foot after the other. And as the world lists from side to side, matching for a while my goosey tilt, I come straight about one thing (watching your swaying image from my birdlike trance of infatuation): it isn’t your fine feathers that have brought me to this near extinction, this dwindling state, but the wide heart of you sailing out over the Galapagos skies.
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As is the Archaeopteryx Beaded with sweat, I meet your eyes and contemplate your true beginnings, when you clambered from the primal soup, with your light covering of primitive fluff, your vacant face and upward stare, those feather-barbs drooping where your wings had sat, your bewildered cry. As surely as any German quarryman cracks stone from stone in Solnhofen, your nature’s split right from the off: that sulphurous whiff, those red lagoons which surface only in your dreams, your tendency towards fight or flight when under pressure. Perhaps an intermediate species, we are still becoming something – what? I don’t know, but an angel would have cried to smile like you do, and today swallows swoop in Bavaria as Archaeopteryx never could. And look, as if by chance, looking at us – that robin’s lizard glance.
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