Aidan Rooney-Céspedes
Tightrope
Both how, when I pulled the front door
this morning to let the sun in,
some night class of spinner had strung
from one jamb to the other
a will-‘o-the-wisp funicular
that, now a waft of light and air
enters to liven our dusty house,
passes lightning bands of silver
along its barely visible floss
as if to make sure all is clear,
and why, is just beyond us, unless
some huge jump needed to be taken.
Survival
Stay put
if you can help it.
Always be ready to say kaput,
but wear a helmet.
– Joseph Brodsky
Scant caveat for the double hairpin turn
our 2CV failed to quite negotiate,
that sigmoid a hundred yards back, squiggled
on an amber triangle behind a tree,
would echo the roadkill we ended up beside,
over-easy, driver‚s side, a few miles
far side of Falcarragh, were it not so far
along in its excited decomposition,
less the bourdonnement of bluebottles
than the cooperative wriggle of maggots
making heat in the bloated carcass someone‚d
flung into long grass, roiling like a motor
at the heart of the badger, our own still ticking
over, one wheel spinning in mid-air, till
we tip it back on all fours and carry on,
the top rolled back, to the Ostán in Gweedore
for a swim and sweat, our pelts carving water
above our trawled shadows, then glistening side
by side on cedar bunks, aglow and pulsing
in the kind of heat that would make your breathing
something to think about if we hadn,t talked,
then touched, putting all account behind us.
Extrait
Forgiveness, begged from the shaky indigo of a gas fog,
back then the way to go, genuinely sorry I‚d kicked her
half way through extraction when, like a boa constrictor,
she reared up on me, hissed, spat, then lit up a half-grass fag
right there in the county clinic, mother outside, no bother
to her, two molars left hanging in the cheek of me, a wee brat,
pleading in tongues that she finish off her joint then me, caveat
emptor, say nothing, it‚ll be our little secret. I‚d no other
choice but pass out, fast forward here, a clean hygienist
bent on my contentment, her children‚s impeccable dentition
smiling at the wall opposite where gobs, in stages of attrition,
bare their gingivitis. Thanks be, I shivered and, sighing, wished
to doze forever in that rocket chair, admire her steel spittoon
that swirled away my blood-flecked drool, the plastic cup
with its own little tap, the suction wand going apoplectic,
post-rinse, at fresh saliva, me wondering if she feels it too soon
for us to get serious. She questions from behind a half a bra
cupping her jaw, but even still I catch a lovely aroma of apple,
a hint of mint the giveaway she just flossed, aloe, maple,
and a miscellany of other mystery sugars. A-ah a a-ah, I baa,
to which she extracts her tools, holding them over my face
like she‚s taking a break from knitting, or wondering if I‚m what
she ordered last time at Siam Palace, if I come with kumquat.
Abracadabra, I whisper, now I can, beseeching every grace
to grant I never come to, toothless, in that other scary place.
Aidan Rooney-Céspedes is an Irish poet living in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1996 he was winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Competition and in1997 he received the Sunday Tribune / Hennessy Cognac award for New Irish Poetry. He has been published widely in journals in Europe and North America, most recently or forthcoming in The Irish Times, TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, Poetry Review, Harvard Review and Metre. His first collection of poems – Day Release – appeared from The Gallery Press in 2000.