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- Herausgeber: Renard Press
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
'Eventually, she spoke. If you don't laugh, you'll cry, she said, as she did neither.' The fifth poetry collection from an award-winning poet, As if it Meant Something is a startlingly beautiful, wide-ranging selection that lays the tapestry of life beautifully bare. Dealing with the mundane and profound, everyday experiences sit alongside the devastating decay caused by domestic violence and terminal illness, the soaring beauty of the Irish coastline and love, art, thought.
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Seitenzahl: 129
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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As If It Meant Something
steve denehan
renard press
Renard Press Ltd
124 City Road
London EC1V 2NX
United Kingdom
020 8050 2928
www.renardpress.com
As If It Meant Something first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2023
For previous publication details of individual poems please see p. 274
Text and cover illustration © Steve Denehan, 2023
Design by Will Dady
Renard Press is proud to be a climate positive publisher, removing more carbon from the air than we emit and planting a small forest. For more information see renardpress.com/eco.
Steve Denehan asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, used to train artificial intelligence systems or models, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.
EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected].
Contents
As If It Meant Something
One of Those Days
Long and Thin, from Her Temple to Her Jaw
The Murder Face
Broken Nail
Metallic
Desert Cars
anonymouse_weezil
Cherry Red
Fingerprints Are Snowflakes
Broken Vacuum Cleaner
A Mass Shooting in Boulder, Colorado
Purple Skies, Pink Sheep, Brown Grass
Apple Cores and Street-Corner Small Talk
Different Times
The Drive Home on Saturday, November 2nd, 2019
Howls
Update
The Bird
On the Escalator in Liffey Valley
Vending Machine
Time Is a Rabid Dog
M Is for Moon
The Alchemist
A Rainy Evening in October
The Truth Is Out There
Oddball
Thirty-Six Zeroes
Boogaloo Radio on a Late November Afternoon
Roches Stores, Henry Street, a Quarter of a Century Ago
Clinking Silence
A Knee on His Neck
Winter Market, Galway
Inverted World
The Mayfly
Half Lives
Pilot Light
Bad Days
Chimes
Learning to Pretend
A Part of
The Last of the Light
Something to Do
Barberstown Castle, Straffan, County Kildare
Late June, Allenwood
Mantelpiece Carriage Clocks
He Did Smile
The Mystery
Winter Yesterday, Summer Today
Miles Away
Another Question
After a Two-Hour Phone Conversation with Amazon
Paradise
Impossible Questions from My Daughter
Prisms
Hit the Road
Travelling to Work Every Day for a Decade
Chocolate Spread
Listen
Deep-Set
Telephone Calls
Cream Crackers
Light Show
Cautionary Tale
Of Service
One-Way Street
The Brain in the Jar
Sometimes the Whole Orchard Is Diseased
Whittled
Edenderry
Bullets
Ocean Roaring
Sometimes There Is Only Rage
What to Get the Man Who Has Everything
Zipping
Another Poem about Time
Do Not Feed the Animals
Hallowe’en
Ace
Winter Sun
Rockfield Hotel, Brittas Bay, County Wicklow
A Visit to the Ophthalmologist on December 17th, 2020
Raining Frogs in Tokyo
The World Cup Trophy at Brown Thomas in 2001
The Magic Hill and the Scientists
French Toast Breakfast
New Year’s Resolutions
Another Poet, Another Interview
The Joke
Learning
Still Here but Not There
Bursting
Roll with It Like Burt Reynolds
Turf Stacks
Tough Guys Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk
Mirrored Shades
If Anything
The Choice
The Nun with No Bones in Her Hand
’88 or ’89
Tomorrow
I Am Too Old
Run Throughs
School Day, Nine Years Old
Fistfuls
Hidden Depths
Forty-Five
Sun Shower
The Gaggle
The Courier
Spray
July 20th, 2022
Sitting at the End of Dún Laoghaire Pier
The Long Walk
The Duds
Fuck, Shit and Bastard
McDonald’s, Lucan, June 21st, 2022
Dublin City, Winter 2019
Jardin des Plantes
Does Not Mix Well with Others
Away from the World
Purple
Paper Clip
The Carpenter and the Crocodiles
Gecko
The Thief
Drunk on a Sip
A Cold Cordial on a Warm Day
WhatsApp Messages
One Small Step
Chrysalis
Ochophobia
Best Man
Millennia
Mathematics
Five or Fifty-Five
Emergency Room at the Hermitage
The Spot
The Band
Maybe All Poems Should Be Burned
End
Acknowledgements
as if it meant something
For my family and friends, and for Will, for taking a chance.
One of Those Days
There has been rain
lots of it
all morning
wind, too, hard and bellowing
slamming the house
corrugating the canal
no yellow, no blue
just grey and dark grey
Monday May 10th, 2021
Long and Thin, from Her Temple to Her Jaw
We went to lunch sometimes
she would talk and I would listen
while looking at the ducks
in the pond on Stephen’s Green
she came into work once
with a bruise
on the side of her face
it ran, long and thin
from her temple
to her jaw
I asked her what had happened
without hesitation she said
that he had pushed her
into the side of the wardrobe
it was not the first time
it was not the last
I told her to leave him
she told me that she loved him
I asked her how
she smiled
we sat on a park bench
eating our sandwiches
finding silence in the noise
the ducks swam back and forth
eventually, she spoke
‘If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry,’
she said, as she did neither
The Murder Face
The Murder Face
that is what they call it
my wife and daughter
snickering behind their hands
they always ask what I am thinking of
when I have the Murder Face
I always tell them
that I do not know
which is true
sometimes
though sometimes
it is a lie
I do know
I know exactly
I have been thinking of what
given half a chance
I would do to the guy
who is tailgating me
to the woman in the queue
standing far too close behind me
breathing on my neck
her open-mouthed chewing
almost inside my ear
to the cashier who rolls her eyes and tuts
when I mention
that she has left me a fiver short
grim thoughts
that do not appear in my mind as a lightbulb
but rather seep
inky, sticky, warm, black
from the edge
to the centre
to my face
they say it again
The Murder Face
they laugh
I laugh
I laugh along
I laugh along right along with them
Broken Nail
I asked her what had happened
she looked down
sighed
said that it had broken so easily
maybe brittle from the cancer
maybe brittle from the treatment
I asked if there were other side effects
she smiled wistfully
her hair was thinning
she had a hell of an itch all over
couldn’t sleep
said that she was lucky
though we both knew that was not true
it was eating her
from the inside out
lungs
ovaries
diaphragm
she asked about my parents
my daughter, my wife
only getting breathless once
she looked down at her broken nail again
said that it would grow back
I didn’t know what to say to that
Metallic
It had been building for a few weeks
the pain
forgettable initially
bulletproof eventually
the dentist stood over me
shaking his head
talking of bridges, caps and root canals
I shook my head
having been down those roads before
with mixed results
in that it had gone badly
or very badly
he looked horrified
when I told him to take it out
said that we could save it
as though it were a limb
or my sight
not a furious, rotten tooth
hidden in the dark of my mouth
he got down to it
pulled and twisted
pulled again until
driving home I tasted blood
warm and metallic
oddly familiar
my tongue ventured cautiously
a tentative slug
I wanted to know
I didn’t want to know
and then, I felt it
what I knew that I would feel
nothing
nothing at all
Desert Cars
It is like a sea
is a sea, really
glinting under the California sun
cars, three hundred and fifty thousand cars
driven to the desert
parked in lines, rows
shimmering, perfectly uniform
Volkswagens
mostly black, grey and silver
the odd red
worth hundreds of millions
they are left to rot
to be taken by the elements
and eventually
by the land
something to do with emissions
and deception
maybe some day
after centuries, after millennia
fall as grains of sand
in an egg timer
there will be no desert
but lush forests
maybe in one section trees will struggle
or grow crippled and mutated
maybe our distant descendants
will study the soil
find toxins
find rust
maybe they will dig
until the shovels jar in their hands
until they hear a dull thud
they will speculate
wonder why
a kind of religion…
a form of worship…
some kind of mass grave…
but with no answers
no way of knowing
they will look at each other
and scratch their heads
much as I do now
anonymouse_weezil
I ate the back of my hand last night
in a half-dream
half-nightmare
everything was vivid
besides the pain
of which there was none
the flesh was all texture and no taste
a gelatinous resistance
to my teeth and tongue
I saw the long, thin bones of my hand
moving smoothly up and down
as though seeing the workings
of a clock
with no face
online, I discovered
that there are experts for dreams
but not nightmares
people detail their dreams on a forum
receive analytical responses
are grateful
for a stranger’s insight
into their own subconscious
there are dreams of falling, murder
car crashes, drowning, being buried alive
I found just one instance of someone
eating their own hand
the analysis they received
speaks of a crisis of identity
a fear of losing the sense of self
or of being consumed by ambition
or obsession or a tendency
towards self-destruction or a yearning
to be a better communicator
each dream expert has a different explanation
often contrasting and conflicting
always vague
until anonymouse_weezil wrote
‘Maybe it’s just a fuckin dream.’
which, in the end
is what I went with
Cherry Red
She followed love to Paris
but love soon left her
she could dance, she was desperate
the clothes came off
the francs piled up
a burlesque queen, an exotic dancer
an artist, an artiste
never, ever
a stripper
it paid the bills and she kept a distance
no contact of any kind
during or after
she became adept
at gracefully avoiding
drunken, leering lunges
the call came and, with both hands
she took it
a stand-in dancer
at Moulin Rouge
six sparkling months
the best of her life
a golden time
in a golden era
***
She looks at herself in the mirror
ninety years old now: somehow
her skin is soft but the lines
are deep and they are plenty
there is still fire
she sees it
in her eyes, two jewels
at the bottom of a laundry basket
her hands shake slightly
as she paints her lips
cherry red, her signature shade
she opens the door
walks out
strips, with all that grace
her clothes
from the washing line
humming softly
to herself and no one else
Fingerprints Are Snowflakes
I do not have a criminal record
have never had to roll, not press
the pad of my finger on an Indian ink sponge
then down on to a crime sheet
I was adopted and so
have two mothers
and two fathers
none of whom
could separate my fingerprint
from any other
I have a laptop
state of the art
with an on/off switch
that doubles
as a fingerprint reader
it turns on
flutters to life
just for me
every morning
when I touch it
a miracle of technology
magic
science fact from science fiction
we are connected
in this intimate way
the laptop and I
it is Tuesday morning, January 27th, 2021
I sit down on the couch
into a cyberpunk dream
I press the button while remembering
that fingerprints are snowflakes
both unique and both
eventually
will disappear
Broken Vacuum Cleaner
His vacuum cleaner broke today
the final straw
the tipping point
a small thing, really
but enough
he called me
his voice, ice cracking
on a sunshine day
said he knew
that it was just a vacuum cleaner, but
with his body failing him
and his mind leaving him
was it really too much
to be able to depend on
a goddamned vacuum cleaner
there is no antidote
I know that
for clocks ticking, for bones hollowing
but I passed the phone to my little girl
all the same
I heard both sides of the conversation
a grandad, a granddaughter
‘What have you been doing today?’
‘We planted flowers!’
‘That’s brillo! What type of flowers?’
‘Really, really lovely flowers!’
and so on
after a few minutes
she handed me back the phone
I sensed it, the change
we talked on, a father, a son
the news
the football
the weather
smaller, bigger things, and before we hung up
he said he knew
that it was just a vacuum cleaner
and I felt myself smile
because I knew
that this time he meant it
A Mass Shooting in Boulder, Colorado
People dressed in ten-thousand-dollar suits
sit in a million-dollar studio
asking loaded questions
about loaded guns
they talk about the Constitution
as if it were more
than just a piece of paper
filled with words
just words
written hundreds of years ago
by other men
in another room
never mentioned
are the mothers, fathers
sisters, brothers
it dawns on me
for the fifth or sixth time
today
that people
will never
ever
change
I pick up the remote
let my thumb hover
over the on/off switch
raise my arm
point it at the television
pull the trigger
Purple Skies, Pink Sheep, Brown Grass
I was a child prodigy once
for a while
six months or so
I was pandered to, paraded
my head spun as I asked myself
how could everyone know
something that I did not
I liked to draw, to paint
still do
still no good
I had been painting and drawing
purple skies, pink sheep, brown grass
things the way
that they were not supposed to be
abstract thought
being beyond a child so young
they jumped, leaped wildly
to a ridiculous conclusion
and all at once I became visible
luminous
to my classmates, my teacher
myself
for six months or so
colour-blindness
that was all
colour-blindness and just like that
I was invisible once more
Apple Cores and Street-Corner Small Talk
How will it be after I get old
get older
when my body breaks down
even further
when a voice says
Grandad
while I am still getting used to
Dad
how will it be after she leaves
when she has gone
to conquer the world
when the musketeers go from three
to two
when her room is quiet and finally
finally, tidy
how will it be after they go
when the phone no longer rings
when the visits stop
when the birds
stand on the garage roof
but nobody whistles
no birdseed, no apple cores appear
how will it be when the vaccine comes
when the virus goes
when life reclaims itself
when the world exhales
and street-corner small talk resumes
how will it be after the next wave of tests
when I learn if my eye
is responding to treatment
or whether the trees and the cat and my hand and her smile
are to remain distorted
funhouse mirrors
B-movie nightmares
how will it be after I collect her from school
and she tells me that someone
was mean to her
when I have to gulp the fury back down
