D S Maolalai Other untold stories

Other untold stories

my mother's favourite uncle: hard wood as black piano keys with one foreshortened finger of which he nibbled the knuckle continuously, the remainder torn off, forgotten in an accident of childhood and unsurprising agriculture.

my mother's favourite uncle, born in Free State Clonakilty and spent 40 years moving uncomfortably between there and a New York brownstone near Frank McCourt.

stored his longhand poetry in various hardback notebooks and had a poetic long relationship with a hardened former nun who he said refused to marry him because he'd wanted it done by a priest.

when I knew him I was 8 years old, and he 8 years short of being the oldest man living in Ireland but still lived on his own in a house in Clonakilty brewing sweet blackberry bramble wine with the flavour of suspicious religions.

and he died in that house shortly after, alone full of untold other stories,

surrounded by hardback notebooks and the windblown cigarette ash of apple-orchards.

DS Maolalai

DS Maolalai has released two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (2019). His third collection, Noble Rot, was released in May of this year.