Call

The middle of the night and the phone rings.
Nothing.
 
But someone is there.
We listen to each other
 
in the dark and quiet we listen
there is between us not even breathing.
 
Yet I know
the moment I’m released
 
what could be said
will now not be said.
 
A click;
the neutral purr
 
and I wonder who was out there
at five in the morning
 
who’d listened unknown as I had listened
listened to my silence –
 
then quietly gone, cut off
blipped out into the darkness.
 

Denise McSheehy

first published in Poetry News, Summer 2013;
in collection The Plate Spinner, 2017, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068567-5-5

 
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Cold Mouth Prayer

early and untouched
the green in the cold
 
the morning the prayer
and the trees all tall.
 
Cold mouth prayer is sappy and bite
the fizz in your nose. Colour –
 
flowers you’d forgotten, out of the pallid
held back earth.
 
Cold mouth prayer, the shock of it
is praise, is vapour
 
oh your warm life issuing –
Cold mouth prayer
 
here, here again
now.
 
 
after the mural Cold Mouth Prayer by James Aldridge
 

Denise McSheehy

first published in Agenda, 2013, Poetry & Opera issue;
in collection The Plate Spinner, 2017, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068567-5-5

 
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Still Life

Even the dried flowers have a sweet
dusty smell in this heat.
 
How I can be still; long minutes at a time
the wrap
 
of one leg over the other, the exact
inclination of my neck
 
the stretch of an arm, heavy.
This graveness of flesh;
 
as if knowing mass
suspends the world in line and lightness …
 
an enclosed slot onto the street
the building’s fine verticals
 
tapering upwards
rectangles of glass, opaque, flashing,
 
a geometric cast animated only
by the fixed
 
extraordinary heat.
My slow breath.
 

Denise McSheehy

first published in Stand Vol 12 (3);
in collection The Plate Spinner, 2017, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068567-5-5

 
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Shelter

He is quite still.
Such a little breath, a little flutter, a little
spring of the arms.
 
Head like an Easter egg
the one blue eye that opens and shuts once
to take me in.
 
Now I stroke with a finger only.
He sleeps and will not feed
his skin tinged yellow.
 
And my heart
that I have not always recognised
squeezes and swells.
 
I watch her watching
him unfold
take her rounded brown arm
 
between my hands to keep her safe
and guard my thoughts.
And guard my thoughts.
 

Denise McSheehy

first published in Stand Vol 15 (4);
in collection The Plate Spinner, 2017, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068567-5-5

 
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