Poem of the Week

Our third Poem of the Week this April is “anseo / here” by Emer Lyons from Four Poems from a Lesbian Diasporic Body, published in Feminist Mournings, a recent special issue of the journal Meridians.

a hoan / one

the cheapest preschool around was downstairs in the town hall

+ taught entirely in Irish

alongside a flimsy grasp of my native tongue, i learnt many

valuable skills

i learnt the skill of bartering

trading jam sandwiches for rice cakes coated in nutella

i learnt the skill of self-preservation

thumping a boy to tears in the bathroom after he stole my

miniature packet of smarties

i had bartered away a wagon wheel for those smarties

so i wasn’t about to be left folamh láimh

i learnt the skill of molding

somebody’s mother came w/pristine marla, a cheap version of

play-doh

we sat in a circle around her as she smoothed the strips of

marla into heads + bodies

she made a family, a mum, a dad + two children

she put this family into a boat that she had carved like a viking

foirfe she said

+ the boy started to cry again

+ then i started to cry

the family in the little boat didn’t look like our families

a dó / two

i grew up w/many marie’s

plagued, they were, by the weight of such a name

one marie in particular couldn’t keep her head above the sea of

bitterness,

of sorrow, of rebellion

she’d sink into rages, when we were only five, six at most

marie’s darkness would scream a siren of warning

the teacher would evacuate us, children + children first

marie would shred the classroom to ribbons

the teacher stayed in there w/her, asking her again + again to

count slowly to ten

we’d peek one at time through the square of glass in the door

lined like graph paper, dividing marie + the teacher into pieces

small enough to hold

the teacher held marie’s exhausted body as we crept back in

quietly righting the toppled chairs + desks

a trí / three

one day the virgin mary’s head cracked off her shoulders +

dropped to the floor

we crowded around her

she didn’t look half as pious w/out her hands clasped against

her chest in prayer

her head looked ordinary lying on the lino by itself

we’d been left alone for more than ten minutes

we filled the precious moments of freedom by pushing +

shoving each other

w/all the pent-up purposelessness of youth

the girl who’d slapped against the cupboard that dislodged

mary’s head

frantically called out for glue

it was primary school there was no sufficient glue

only the stuff we’d lather on our hands + peel off like skin

the girl put as much as she could on the statue w/out it being

noticeable

that afternoon we turned to mary as we did every afternoon to

pray

her head oozed off before we’d a chance to hail

a ceathair / four

right girls, ye are old enough now to start getting involved

w/the nastier side of the bible.

the days of loaves + fishes + tax collectors stuck up trees were

behind us

our teacher at the time was a wizened old nun, smaller than

some of us at ten

she glorified in her task as our tour guide into sin, damnation +

HELL

the girl i’d married at small break under a tree refused to look

at me

i got the sense that our first kiss was to be our last as she rolled

the daisy ring from her finger

my eyes darkened at the sounds of the fiery inferno escaping

the nun’s pinched lips

i was sure to be damned if i continued to love other girls + not

god

i wondered if his hands would be as small + soft

if he’d smell faintly like the morning’s milk spilt on a wool

jumper

if i’d find heart-shaped notes from him in my school bag

the small nun reprimanded me for staring into space, told me to

read the next line aloud—

thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire

a cúig / five

elbows out emer, elbows out

the nun built like a tank

whispered to me as i approached the starting line

she had overheard me call someone gay the week before

+ called me up to her desk to ask me if i knew what the word

meant

i said no then yes

she said, we’ll talk about this later

i was still waiting for this later to come as i lined up for the

sprinting race

she winked at me + smiled from the side lines

after i lost the race another teacher said i could’ve won if i

wasn’t so busy looking around me

ah, the big nun said, she’s better off w/a bit of curiosity

a sé / six

ciúineas cailíní

we press our fingers to our lips

in the pose of silence we’ve been taught

our bodies tell our minds to be quiet

Feminist Mournings, edited by Kimberly Juanita Brown and Jyoti Puri

Contributors to this special issue of Meridians explore feminist articulations of mourning that are anchored in slavery, settler occupation, colonialism, migration, and the violence of modern national states. The authors perceive mourning not as a process of individualized grief to be worked through or overcome but as a collective condition that encompasses historical consciousness and contemporary collective action.

Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism
Ginetta E. B. Candelario, editor

Meridians, an interdisciplinary feminist journal, provides a forum for the finest scholarship and creative work by and about women of color in U.S. and international contexts. The journal engages the complexity of debates around feminism, race, and transnationalism in a dialogue across ethnic, national, and disciplinary boundaries. Meridians publishes work that makes scholarship, poetry, fiction, and memoir by and about women of color central to history, economics, politics, geography, class, sexuality, and culture. The journal provokes the critical interrogation of the terms used to shape activist agendas, theoretical paradigms, and political coalitions.