It’s Tuesday night at the kind of bar
My ex was afraid to go into. The gentlemen
here are not members, they have gold
signet rings and pay in cash (not that eejit,
Madelle says, the other fella who sits

beside the games machine, he’s a poet like you,

he’ll write about anything, love or flowers

or whatever and he’ll write it for ye, he’s looking
to make his poems into a book as well).
Would that be an English name, then, Gary — west
Meath, he retorts. How deep does the green go
if you scratch the paint on the woodwork is it white
beneath or red, like if you scratched me
what colour would I bleed — I’ll tell ye that for free,

it would be passport colour, maroon,
and if you shattered the window with, say,
a brick, what then? A car bomb is a half Guinness,
half Carling, they tell me, half swallowing the words

since I’m from the border, though you’d have
a hard time locating it round our way.

Brendan Connolly doesn’t sell beer, he sells craic,
and craic is about rhythm; time in the pub

is a cat’s cradle, pulled taut from both sides,
criss-crossing and building to a peak
of laughter, sometimes ochs, then dissipating,
very much like the football, which is always on.
Thumping the woodwork there, Keane is.
What a shot but of no avail — plenty of Irish

in the crowd tonight, Gary. As for me I’m old
for my years, apparently, and even though

I admit I’m older than I look and crossly
remind the lads I did not come up the Thames
in a bubble last week, this is not what is meant.

What is meant is that my mind doesn’t match

my face; I’ve too much in my head for one
so young. In with the fairies, Michael says,
then tells me about the time they built the Dublin
ring-road right around the fairy thorn
because nobody dared to cut it down. Google it,

he says. Fairy thorn, Dublin. Then you’ll see.
I call him up a pint of the good stuff and it comes
out as a cloud. You fill her just up to the harp,
then let her settle before you top her up.
A cream moon rises in the black malt sky.

*

From Magma 86, Food

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