Mairéad Byrne

Circus

There’s so much emphasis on the individual we forget how much a single person is actually a double. For a start, we are symmetrical: 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 lips with two halves in each one. Our 32 teeth can be divided in two so many ways they deserve a poem of their own. And, taking a bird’s eye view—2 hemispheres in the brain. The story goes all the way down: 2 shoulders, 2 arms, 2 lungs, 2 kidneys, 2 testicles, 2 ovaries, 2 bums, each one divided in two, 2 knees, 2 legs, 2 feet. We are actually really 2 people in one. And what do we do? We pair up. We get married, shackled, shack up. Why we do this I do not know. We are already getting quite enough action being 2 people in one but whatever. We have to have an outside person too, who is also more 2 persons than one. It gets complex. Now you have a 2 X 4. Kids arrive. Each kid adds 2 to the mix. Sometimes there’s twins. Pretty soon you have chaos masquerading as a family. I’m thinking of Ben Franklin. Now Ben was the 15th child out of a total of 17 born to his mother. This figure may or may not include 2 children who died. The numbers are staggering. I’m thinking of Mrs. Franklin. This is a woman or, to my way of thinking, practically 2 women, who had 17 or 19 children proceed through her, i.e., 34 or 38, in addition to providing accommodation for the regular visits of Mr. Franklin. This is not a woman. This is a pomegranate. This is the fabled village it takes to raise a child. Mrs. Franklin herself was the green on which the townspeople cavorted. Is it any wonder we thought of mitosis and meiosis and all that. It’s written all over us. How do you end something like this? It never ends.

Figures

I used to be 4 years younger than my husband then he left me with 2 children & I got 7 years older very quick. Two years went by. I was 11 years older then. He stayed the same age, always 30, possibly even younger. In no time, I was 20 years older than him & hurtling towards old age. Even the children began to age. They were small & wrinkled, older than their own father. His skin was baby-smooth, his brown hair rising like a stack above their wilting heads—or like a vividly brushed dun & purple mountain range ringing the horizon in the pan of which, somewhere, they tottered

In the Woods

Last night I mailed a lot of heart-stamps to a lot of trees. It's sober in the forest—almost a stage set—nothing but huge, upwardly mobile trunks. It's like standing at arm's length among an at-ease army of headless & footless chests. With silence like a system of cups—like large acorn lids or coconut shells or even bodhráns—catching the large thump-thump (like the inside of a wardrobe) of the little red heart stamps knocking into the chests of the trees. And I standing, breathing, tacks clamped between my lips.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

My mother sits inside me like a frog. We are watching a movie. It is The Wind That Shakes The Barley. At first I think my mother will like it but then I realize she will not. It is dark in the movie theatre, so dark it seems empty. I am crouched down in my seat & my mother is crouched down in me. On the screen terrible things are happening. Micheál is battered to a pulp for saying his name in Irish. His insides are smeared all over him. The Black & Tans jump their rifle butts into men’s faces breaking their noses & teeth. They are panic turned lethal. An octopus of shout. They hack off a girl’s hair taking great swipes of her scalp. The Black & Tan captain draws Teddy’s fingernails out with a rusty pliers. The Black & Tans kill the boys. The boys kill the Black & Tans. Then the boys kill each other. The old story we all know we know it so well. Though it is not spoken about. It is like heavy metals in our bones. We are made of its secrets. My mother is stirring inside me, anxious to eat.

These prose poems are taken from Talk Poetry (2007), Miami University Press, Oxford, Ohio, USA.

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