2 Poems

 

  by Anne Fitzgerald

 

 

 

 

Airmails

 

 

Did you hear the latest, all the rage apparently,

this pyramid selling lark, grows like dandelions.

 

Aunt Hanna’s great granddaughter sent some twenty

dollar bills from Illinois no less, sporting a brick family

 

of pyramids, with visionary Masonic eyes, and an army

of George Washington’s, to keep us honest, her copper

 

plated words says: not for bets or booze, so here’s a soft

pack of them Lucky Strikes, wrapped in a Good Sheppard

 

novena, to be read thrice daily for seven whole sunsets. 

Lets indulgences sought hover as if them same-said low

 

slung clouds that looms, as bamboo shoots are stripped

clean by Pandas in Dublin’s a Zoological Gardens. Droves

 

head for d’Hudson; or dream of rivers roaming different lands,

say like the Nile flowing into Edfu, Kom Ombo and the Aswan,

 

paralleling the Red Sea, up above Luxor towards Hurghada

with Suez in sight. Where the Mediterranean flows into d’basins

 

of Bitter Lakes, opens sea route between Europe and Asia

Minor, Minor, echoes of history pages: Sultans ‘n sultanas,

 

golden turmeric ’n cayenne, rough silken Ottomans colour

the Sinai as if a caravan of rainbows arcing desert sands;

 

all mounds form little triangles; angling as aspiring pyramids

mirrors the divinity of ancient Egyptians and distant cousins. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs. Arty Magoo

 

 

For the love of money, terrible things

Prudence did do, to rid herself of Arty

 

Magoo.  You see she had such notions. 

Not Casey’s of avariciousness though

 

more, she deserved a place in the light. 

In light of the fact that she’d won seven

 

long jumps and two or three cross country

hurdles thingamajigs, or such like yokes

 

she has a verve for the edge of real things

imagined in unimaginable conditions,

 

favourable for sunny spells and scattered

showers as a low line depression fogs her

 

perspective of what passes before her eyes. 

Buys time for her to process limbs at odd

 

angles, shadows wrestle darkness as moon-

light plays tricks, as if sequences on Come

 

Dancing caught in the spin of a foxtrot sashay. 

Says she’d swim the channel faster than a canoe,

 

knows her own mind, is what’s mostly

said.  Lead she was, like an innocent abroad

 

who’d lost her way down Venetian alleys

whose puddles wobble spires when stepped upon.

 

On account of her state of fairly graphic play

on Tiddley winks, and winking at young Ludo Lill,

 

chess was to find no home nor three card trick,

as Prudence turns d’odd trick, ménage á trios usually

 

le fresco, she has a weak spot for the bark of oaks

says it’s the rough surface she’s after, not the fall

 

of dappled sunlight clothing her body in after glow,

as glow worms come up for air, as if stowaways.

 

 

 

 

Anne Fitzgerald’s collections are The Map of Everything (Dublin, Forty Foot Press, 2006), and Swimming Lessons (Wales, Stonebridge, 2001).  She is a recipient of The Ireland Fund of Monaco Writer-in-Residence at The Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.