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Peter Devin Poem
A priest once told me that the lump
on my hand was a ganglion,
a fortress of fat besieged by health.
At last it burst and the hand swelled
like an old man's,
shovel shaped and splayed.
It was her black pan, butcher's meat,
too many eggs; backed up
on a plate like silage.
It was her slight hands shaking,
the constant poking with a bread knife,
the endless journey to the
first biscuit from the pack;
a menace that caught our hearts
and buttered them,
teeth marks, crusty.
Moreover, tomatoes,
pulpy and bloodlet,
burnt my wicked tongue,
purged a shard of shame,
dare I eat a box full
bedraggled in juices
and spitting at the angle of a chop kept?
Caked at the start in the corner
of the pan, beached in lard,
over fried, sole fit, chewed in discontent,
longing for more
between the acceptance of juices;
hope swallowed with brittle rashers,
timbered and gathered.
It was the thought, the deed,
the plan, the wait and duty of it.
Potatoes, eschonced in the pot, sullen, strewn;
a flaky hand sliced them deftly,
washed the starch off and raked them in.
It was sausages, flame ripped,
dashed, blackened and wedged
on the barbs of the fork,
heaved in with fried bread,
salty with froth.
It was puddings,
sinewed and cut crooked,
corpuscles of grizzle
congealing the blood,
jaws working the skin like the cud.
Eggs like ignoble sea creatures,
speckled and stiff,
surviving on the rise and fall of breath,
morphing into another gender
or something to wonder,
to chew on, to mention, once.
Perhaps a bean to lubricate,
to allow a channel of liberty
but still reheated to a lump,
a thankless sweetener to a morsel,
not unlike news.
Tea, besugared and welcome,
a scald to erode stubborn detritus,
a wash to emerge from.
Between mouthfuls of talk we glided,
sometimes low to the ground
near silence, seldom
scuttling to any real height.
I suppose that was left for
pipe and ***, in the latter end,
when all offence was shut up tight
and we had regard again;
the smoke curled up
and carried our souls,
and mingled, indiscernible
and flowed away.
Copyright © Peter Devin | Year Posted 2020
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Peter Devin Poem
The teeth are dry.
It is Silken Thomas
muffling for promises
among the rats in his straw,
jostling for a hand,
once wielding but now
scratching the toes of power.
The tongue leather bitten,
studded with the supplication to You.
A lament of request,
where a crumpled
cluster of bones saddens.
We can’t only touch the fingers,
it is the dust that we pray to.
Skellig harbours the aping of Him,
the attempt to elbow and impress,
to crack a languid smirk somewhere, somehow.
Bless us with crusts and drinking water,
a hard bed and no doubt,
for these thy gifts.
Tertullian calm in Tibet,
Cork bet and the hay saved,
a good death for the Blackfoot Shamen:
all the islands of possibility
chipped in Easter heads.
There are nebuli in half breaths
and in the vacant thoughts of man
we spawn vaticanus, Giza, Picchu.
A rattle of stones stacked by bones,
their names will sometime hurt us.
Poor half naked Thomas,
breathing on the kindness of strangers,
with his five uncles shivering
on the whim of one.
We are drenched in his fear,
in his fall, in his beauty cracked to stink,
in his soiled fashion.
Our guts rejoice like a pleasure sickness,
vomiting lechery. 10th Earl of Kildare,
loved by the wrong ones and too young,
your prayer is heard,
though it throbs at your heart like a wound.
Our school story is brief,
your prayer echoes still.
Copyright © Peter Devin | Year Posted 2019
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Peter Devin Poem
Madonna swelling at the Kilmore,
every girl a wisp of ungovernable smoke,
and vomit on my shoes as they threw me
out the door, addled and clueless as I was,
and, forgive me, still am.
I hit the tarmac like a warm can
but you stood at the step
and watched me breath,
and would do it again.
I was not swallowed by the dark
completely. An addiction way past taming,
you were a shocking case.
Copyright © Peter Devin | Year Posted 2022
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