Mourning

I come before the water;
what satisfaction it has
in ebbing and flowing,
pining after lost land
yet giving and giving
to the storm ridge,
inheriting for its labours
an empty beer bottle,
rejected driftwood,
royalties of its endeavours.
We'll go to it anyway,
though it is the definition
of utter madness to
dwell on past indifference.
Some have oceans of
knowledge to feed their
tears, while not a
glass to justify their joy.
This is no night to drown in,
no world to give in to.

The Quest

When I found my Grandmother
in the middle of the night, she was half
out of bed, one leg angling over the side.
Her arms were reaching out to me, like the
carving of Jesus Christ on her night stand
as she looked into
my face and seemed to know me,
the way a deaf woman recalls a melody.
Physical, penetrating, incantatory,
she swore that she saw something move
in the hallway, stammering across
the ribbon of light under the door.
I imagine her watching the yellow
sliver for a sign of life to travel
the length of it, waiting to be drawn to it,
as if she had glimpsed something worth taking;
light, shadow, light like heaven
in the darkness of her bedroom.
I took her open hands and helped
her up. I could hardly move her,
the whole century of her leaned on me,
gripped me with fingers so kneaded
together like a cable, eyes narrowing -
little heaven flames as she drew herself
forward, her weight heaving
on the floorboards, on her aching knees.
She went toward it with the same burst
she had left the womb. A lambency lit
in her eyes, I could see the filament
growing as we stepped along the beam
of light, her mouth open, wordless
as the flood came upon her face, like a child
entering into the world, the tympanic
beat of her heart, breath rasp and shallow,
inching into the brightness with fervor.
And like a God, Grandmother,
I deliver you to it.

What Doesn't Kill Us

They'd bring a tray to my room
and place it on a table, then leave
me there facing that bowl of lumpy soup,
one slice of bread, leaving me there
to live and kill. The bitch burned
in me, squalling my head with
her denials. I could have killed
the two of us, but we fed on each
other, like plants and animals,
the breath we inspire.
It hurt to smother her, but the pain
was not shrill. The bread was soft,
I held it to my mouth like a bandage
and cried into it. It was the perfect crime,
the scoop, the curve, the kill and return.
I sat in front of that bowl like it was
a mound of leeches that drank the pulse
of her, spoonful by spoonful
so that I would not die.
Wild and starved I drained it
until I could stand above her
and I heard her fall, the old black heart
growing thin and dead as meat.
I would murder, or she would thrive
on any terms other than my life.

^

Biography

Leanne O'Sullivan is from the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. She has won the Seacat Poetry Ireland National Poetry Competition and the emerging poet section of the 2003 Davoran Hannah Award, among other prizes, and her work has previously been published in The SHOp, the Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland and Wildeside among others. She is a first year student at University College Cork.