Spring 2009, Volume 6

Poetry by Kathleen Kenny

About the War

We are back into autumn
and it's cold.

I am curling a thread of hair
round your drowsy, old ear lobe.

There is a bone inside your throat:
this funny thing called Adam's Apple.

It makes me mistake you
for someone who will tell.

Lead-Bottomed Boat

He is stretched out
on the orange couch
exhausted
from hammering nails.

His hands rest
across his chest
like a concert pianist's.
They are elegant: artworks.

When he wakes
from this unintended nap
he will be startled
by a moment of sunshine,

startled by his light legs
their lame attempts
to lift his entombed feet
back down to the floor.

These heavy boots
keep him leaded, earthed,
keep him wedded to the street
to the mundane tasks at hand.

Except for sleep
he wouldn't dare,
he wouldn't dare
allow himself to drift.

Sport

There is a black bowling ball
in a black bowling ball bag
on the lower shelf of the two-tier table.

She dusts the top
places over it a white cloth,
puts a pot of sunflowers in the centre

as if she's got no idea
just how perverse he is.

The Invisible Woman

He leaves the upstairs room
looking out over the city,

takes the set of marble steps
that lead down from the side of the house.

Here there are no more lemon lamps
to light his path, only eyelets.

In this moment
he might turn to catch your hand,

instead he looks back towards
the sharp brown rocks that grow in the yard.

He lights a cigarette, examines it,
thinks about himself in great detail.

Mental note to self:
never wear blue against a blue background.


BIO:  Kathleen Kenny is a writer of Irish parentage who lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She earns her living as a part-time creative writing tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Her latest collection of poems: 'Firesprung' was published recently by Red Squirrel Press.