2 poems by Síofra McSherry

The Repentant Magdalene, 1576-77

You wonder what she’s thinking

under that greedy moon

as spiders drop onto nets of borrowed light.

I know a man with penitent habits

who tells me today is the only truth;

the rest is literature.

But do continue. Yes, I recall

the time she caressed the feet

of Christ with her hair.

El Greco paints her cloak

falling from her shoulder

to show her skin is also moonlight.

Embarrassed Death has turned

aside his face.

Kingdom of the Moon

I am brain-bound in a bone chapel

where words float for a moment

on the surface of the mind and then submerge

where our prognoses are disappointing

where they shake their heads and mutter

good luck with that patient

where the high hung phone wires hum

between the midnight wards

as they divest themselves of us

where the meek lie waiting to inherit

with the fractured and the small

in grey fluorescent halls

blood is flowing out beneath the door

of the ladies’ toilet as a teenager

miscarries beneath time’s white face

the cops bring in a junkie in plastic cuffs

and he weeps for me as I beg of them

in tongues to take them off

it is long past the hour of sleep

when the watchman walks me to the garden

in the kingdom of the moon

she is new tonight and her blackness

rubs off on us in inky spots

we weep and rub at until they bleed

the old piano maker courts the maiden

he saw her sitting beneath the ash

she seemed like an angel woman

once he made a girl from wire and wood

she was as pretty as a song

her mouth a kiss of blood

he never told her that she wasn’t real

but she knew it in her wooden heart

that knocked against her wooden chest

____________

Síofra McSherry (she/her) is a Northern Irish poet and critic. Her first pamphlet, Requiem, was the Poetry Book Society Spring 2020 Pamphlet Choice. Síofra read English at Christ Church, Oxford University, and holds a PhD in American Literature. Her criticism has been featured in Poetry London, Poetry Wales, and the TLS. Her first collection Midnight Masses was published in 2024 by Broken Sleep Books.