DS Maolalaí has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019).
The gourmand.
crockery,
red
and spitting
from the microwave –
like reading a book
which you have read
before, with blood,
the coppery taste,
and flavour,
muted
by preparation
and humdrum
cheap
familiarity.
~
White cover
summer,
and the sun
on everything
like frost.
you come up
from your basement flat
at 7am
and the rain
on the pavement
reflects cloudbanks,
like walking on a mirror
or thick winter ice –
twice as much sky
and all
falling
down it.
a bus
turns a corner
and tumbles upward.
bicycles
fly
through
the late and august air.
a dog
pauses,
smells a corner,
and realises
the only way back
is downward;
light
like spilled
pineapple juice
claws around
perception
and the weather
quite naturally
getting worse.
~
Juvenile.
opinions topple
like apples in autumn
and I’ve put out a book
which is selling quite nicely
and giving license
to all my friends
who didn’t really
like the first one
to come out
and finally say so.
and it’s not as if
I like it myself now –
a bad waste
of a good title. but I don’t like it
personally
because it just feels
so juvenile now – and I was juvenile
when I wrote it
so that’s alright. but
I was being honest – it was all
over this one
ex-girlfriend,
and everything I said about her
I really tried
to mean.
my perspective on that
has shifted too – of course. it’s been
years. I admit it –
sad
angry love
in afterthought
ages worse than wine
found open in the kitchen
the morning after a loud party;
nothing like a good bottle,
fine and forgotten
under the stairs
or somewhere else.