Juncture
Shh. You are in the photo
and you are here. Your ghost
opens like an offshoot,
a being curled sap-sticky
in the crux of two discordant
outfits. Your hair is dyed
an unfamiliar colour. Shoulders
tilt, protecting softness. You flit
into the less difficult parts
of the scene, the stranded
moss-stains on the stable rooves,
the gutters of the concrete yard.
You are here, and all along
Lombard Street West, flowers
inch themselves from the lee
of houses into the sun.
Trace
After Rachel Lowe
the sky is green or greened
dusk or window-tint
hills layer in a belated imitation
you can see where the wrist has flicked
the hand in silhouette is a flower or a beak
a ghost is often kinetic
like the times I closed my eyes
on the phone and drew friends’ faces
looping from memory
the rooves are terracotta and low
an orb high in the windowed sky
could be the shape of a tree
eventually all the lines tangle into a storm
and there is really nothing
like an overpass
nothing like a layby like an eyebrow
or a fingernail or the stitched hem
of a t-shirt anymore since
a ghost is the nib of a pen squeaking
on the surface of the window
as the car speeds away
a noise so clean I think
of a cat’s small perfect teeth
__________________
Alicia Byrne Keane is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, published in The Stinging Fly, Causeway / Cabhsair, The Honest Ulsterman, The Moth, and The Colorado Review, among others. Further work is forthcoming from Stand, Boulevard and Banshee; Alicia’s debut full collection will be published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023.
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