Poems and Poetry Films

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

By Lani O’Hanlon

That was the year we drove

into the commune in Cornwall.

“Jesus Jim,” mam said,

“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,

tents, row after row, flaps open,

long-haired men and women

curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves

wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,

to open the door, drop out and away

from my sister’s aggressive thighs,

Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market

I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,

bought a headband, an afghan coat,

a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

Source: Poetry (March 2018)

A Copper Basin in Florence

By Lani O’Hanlon

The owner smiles as if she knows me

and pulls out a chair. Beside the doorway

a copper basin lies on its side. Nana Ross had one

just like it, in the kitchen, behind the grocery shop.

As a child I imagined my soul was that colour

and sanctifying grace was red, dripping

rosary-like, a kind of divine sweat that smelled

of frankincense, myrrh, milk and straw.

By age nine I had committed a mortal sin,

let Nicki Walshe touch me there and didn’t tell,

made a bad confession, took communion

paper thin and white on my black-spotted tongue.

Nana sprinkled us with holy water,

gave me a blessed rosary from Lourdes,

all blue and purple it was, but I lost it

like I lost the library book, sins mounting up;

the row over contraception with a priest

in the confessional box in Stillorgan.

Sister Anne, white musty face, those thin lips

“How dare you, a girl, question holy men.”

Lying bare-breasted in the long grass with Ciarán,

drinking Guinness followed by Harvey Wallbangers,

vomiting it all up on Pearse Street,

a guy from Tuam holding my forehead.

Walking away from my father’s house, my marriage,

my job, to dance barefoot in a circle of women

who prayed with wrists, hips, feet and drums,

bellies painted gold, Magdalene red.

In the Duomo di Firenze the air stinks of old blood,

paintings heavy with pigment and suffering.

I rinse my mouth with the Signora’s wine

and that copper basin is only a basin, a thing.

Going to the Well https://vimeo.com/285004860?share=copy

Published in Staying Human, Bloodaxe.

BUDDHA BOWL

I found the potter in Whiting Bay with a red bucket

and a shovel for clay washed up by the storm.

In her studio on the cliff above Ardmore, near the wild garlic path to the well,

Mary used a dishwashing brush to work

the slurry of clay and water through a sieve.

When the gorse was Easter gold,

and the chocolate coloured clay was ready,

she cut a piece with cat-gut and weighed it

in an old fashioned scales from Quaine’s shop.

She stood at the table, feet warm

in lime green socks and purple Birkenstocks,

a paint splashed apron to protect her clothes,

a turquoise bandana around her head.

Her hands, tanned and stained, kneaded

and folded, shaping the clay into a cube,

pliable and ready for throwing.

The dance began;

foot pushing down on the pedal,

hands centring the lump, finding the base, the depth,

fingertips pulling up the walls,

head nodding in time to the wheel.

She used callipers to measure the width; nine inches,

a wet piece of chamois cloth to round off the rim,

an old credit card to straighten the edge,

a bamboo tool from Malawi to level the bottom.

‘Clay fired in a kiln,’ she said, ‘transforms into pottery.’

When the Buddha bowl was ready.

She took a fine paintbrush dipped in blue then turquoise,

tip tipping the brush along the outside and the inside,

Mary handed me the bowl and I took it home.

Most mornings I light a candle and place it in the centre,

flame flickers across and through clay. Each dot a pinprick of sky.

To Lose Humanity

‘Sister,’ saith the gray swan, ‘Sister, I am weary,’

The Children of Lir, Katharine Tynan

A healer told you that a swan feather can cure

anguish. The Remedy

made from the feather

summons Fionnuala Lir

who knows what it is to lose

humanity, become swan – exiled

to a lake with her brothers.

Though the end of that myth

never rang true. No, the children

were not rescued by a priest’s bell.

They are banished over and over.

So you make pilgrimage

to a lake in the North.

Ice feathers trees, holly and brambles.

No longer a myth

because here is the lake, here are the swans.

One swan diving for food in the black water,

her fluffy bottom in the air

like a ballet tutu

and you recall dancing to Feed the Birds,

the children’s feet

shushing

across the wood.

You search for the feather

in a world of ice. Icicles hang

like knives in the trees,

you study them, take photos,

ignore the singing

between bone and flesh.

Where is our motherland?

The children cry.

You open your mouth

but there is only this honking sound.

Note: By the end of 2022, a record 43.3 million children lived in forced displacement, according to UNICEF estimates, many of them for their entire childhood.

Source Poetry Ireland Review 142 Edited by Mary O’Donnell