Mary O’ Malley

The Shannon Stopover

The next house will be bone
A cruciform scrimshaw my passport.
There will be a red lamp by the door

In a niche. They will sit, the gateposts
On the highwater mark
In Spring and all the solstices.

Welcome to life in the metal hum
Of gated love, the votive glow of blood
Flowing through the atrium.

Here, it is pitch black behind the mask
A surprisingly soft hood
Though my wrists chaff, blisters burst.

I won't think of the electrodes
Until it happens. Yesterday someone
Lifted the hood. A place with shades

Of green out of a Hollywood film
Ireland of the welcomes
The colour of Islam. My English comes

Back to me in clichés. Bright
Floating things whirl around my head
Explode, blowballs of white light

And the unbearable green world
Refuses me. I am spared leprechauns.
Who knows what the drugs and the dark hoard.

The terrible, the ridiculous. A bush -
Bush! - flowers white, bridal. Each blossom tiny.
The hood drops its deep kiss.

Every breath is torture. If you cry
The cloth sucks a cave mouth.
A black comfort blanket. Slow. Easy.

In . Out. In. Out. Show the heart. Ruth says
My name. My real name. Cat's tongue rough
Her voice is here, her hand please

Just once let me be mad enough
To feel it where the noose chafes
My neck. O know the photographs

Of uniformed women. Could I survive
Being little Lyndie's dog? The mad children
Picking the legs off flies, the balls off captives?

Fruit or insects : it comes screaming one night
The truth - they do not know we are human.
A year in Guantanamo and they'll be right.

This is interactive television
The media game. The truth is nothing
Has happened that has not been seen.

I am not here unless a camera scans
This patch of Ireland, unless the light seeks this jet
Lances it's metal womb and reveals

My curled shape, my minotaur's head.
I want to be born again here, before
They fly me to Never Never Land.

They lift the hood for me to drink. A sign
Dances. The wire cuts all but 'Mile. Fail
-te.' I stretch but there is nothing

More. The engines hum. Tears wet
My cheeks. My cheeks. I see
Sandy coloured soldiers , Christ's

Desert booted army stream like ants
Across the tarmac. This is America.
The darkened mind plays tricks. I thought

I heard a woman singing low and sweet .
I saw the heron dip his Parthian red beak at Kells
No matter what verses or prayers I recite

That bright bush gleams like silver coins
In the hooded dusk. The engines thrust.
My head is pushed between my knees.

Give me citizenship of this planet -
At least one witness to speak for me
Here at the perimeter fence. Vos papiers? Poet?