DS Maolalai has received nine nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).
A settle of saturday morning
breakfast with baker
by fegans in the settling
feathers of saturday.
mostly clear, though the sky
drops occasional spatters
of rain out of grubby
grey clouds; a fumbling toss
of a ten penny coin. we are both
having coffee. I’m eating,
jack’s waiting on breakfast.
two tables over, a french couple kisses
with hands in each others’
jeans pockets. it’s may
now – the summer has sparked
a good light out, like all of the lighters
outside all the bars
every evening at 7 o’clock.
like lights outside cafes at 11am
between french girlfriends’ fingers
and in waitresses hands on a break.
a pigeon walks under the table
and picks at a dropped piece
of bacon. it steps around ash
and is fat grey and silver.
it’s remarkably clean
for a bird.
Some flattery.
“look”, I said eventually –
he’d caught out the lie
about something I’d put
in the cover –
“I don’t want to sound
as ungrateful as I think
this will sound,
but it’s not as if anyone
really reads poetry.
of course I still hope
you should take
both the poems,
and take where I mentioned
my rising respect
for your press and achievements
as an editor
with the implication
it might be
some flattery. it’s not
as if either of us
hoped our careers
would involve some small magazine
printed way out in sligo. well,
maybe you did – I’m sorry;
I had aspirations.
and it’s not either
that I don’t
really want you
to publish me –
just, you know, you should
know that, given the option
I’d have gone probably
with faber
or someone
else first. shit.
wouldn’t anyone?
they pay.”
Nature will do things
the last guy who lived here
grew garden potatoes
and carrots. now flowers sprout up
in that corner each spring – all white
and bright yellow,
like tropical frogs
climbing stems.
I have let them go wild,
but nature will do things,
even when left
out untended. once
a goose landed,
falling like knocked-
over furniture. pawed about,
biting at seedlings and dandelions
while I stood by the door jamb
drinking water and watching it move.
Freedom, unpredictable.
kids in august summer
and sunning the park – just like dogs;
so unpredictable! and I never know,
walking from work,
what they are going to do
next – if they are going
to yell something
or kick a football at me. and yet,
it’s all so fine – it’s freedom, unpredictable
and I’m not feeling threatened.
I was like that myself once, though in my mind
I haven’t changed much
in 15 years, beyond perhaps gaining
a tolerance for alcohol.
it comes especially
when I see people I went to school with
at that age; like a brick
falling out of a house, I remember being part
of a whole
structure. the one
from when we all
were holding each other. it’s strange.
and yet, I was not an animal,
and they are not
either;
more like flowers. like when you drop seeds
in the garden and forget about them,
trying to make a meadow. staying inside
for weeks. the strong ones surviving, the weather
all closed. one day you open your door
and outside it’s all poppies,
grown and rained on. wet to a height
of five feet, perhaps more.
Manifesto
theme grows like plants
out of eaves, out
of gutters and fascias. it is not
laid like bricks – it’s not planned,
it is natural leaf. theme turns
to the sun and from dirt
in the corners of structure.
I cannot stand gardens. love dandelions,
thistles and daisies. divisions
on motorways, hemlock
wild garlic and nettles where rats
can lurk, biting and pissing.
the space between pavements
where people pass walking
and don’t look around, look ahead.