The last words of my grandmother

POETRY

by DS Maolalai

there weren’t any.
the mind gone a long
time before that. she just lay on a sheet
while they played intravenous
morphine out, like a line
for a fish. outside the windows
the ash trees were dying as well
of some mould making knots –
lumpen and knuckled-fist ugly
and rotten. after a while she exhaled
one long breath
which caught like a badly-oiled
chainsaw and started and stopped.

That kind of money

POETRY

by DS Maolalai

mark comes to get dog treats
and a box of good chocolates
and 14.5k in cash in three envelopes
withdrawn over a couple of weeks.

I offer him tea – he says no but the kettle
is boiling, painting the window
in rising and mushroom-head white.
he makes conversation
and looks at what the guys did.
he’s holding the money in both hands
which sit on his knees; roughly five
month’s salary (mostly a loan)
but cash in a stack like that anyway
never seems like something you could spend.

it is though: you have to remember.
it was owing – still is – but owing the bank it
feels better than owing a person.
but I could have done something
with that kind of money.
could have got a new car
or an airplane ticket
and had plenty left over
to pay for wherever we went.

Different people

POETRY

by DS Maolalai

reading a poem written
by a girlfriend – we’re both
in the same magazine. I like it
at first – then see I’m in there.
that’s shocking – to know
that a person who fucked you
up, you fucked up some-
what as well. I present
to my wife – she sees it
before she even sees it. sees
how I’m affected – asks
should she get worried.
I tell her to not – it all happened
ten years ago – we were both
different people; when this happened
she would have been 15.
I’m happy with her now – especially
she doesn’t write poems.
privately, I write this
to someone I remember:
nat, if you’d said it then
I’d have been ok to stay.

Our dog

POETRY

by DS Maolalai

she looks smaller lately.
ever since the vet
scanned her heart.
like a glove you find
in mid-summer
in the bottom of a box
of other things.

The maintenance manager

POETRY

by DS Maolalai

the burn and the tan, the bruise
and the beautiful tuesdays outside. circling
housing estates, like a dog taming tick-
bitten sheep. I’m driving – it’s boiling,
the AC is broken. my back is a shadow
of sweat on the seat and it dries off from wetness
to stink as I pull in and examine my various stops.

and the radio broken as well as the fan –
I drive in the loud hum of tires on motorways
rolling and wind through the windows
which hits like a coffee. drive to balbriggan –
lusk and the laurels estate. an ash end of picturesque
broken kneed countryside, to look at cracked drains
and barely moving gate-motors. this is the job –

maintaining of common space property
in apartment blocks and housing estates
left out from the government’s wing. it gets you
outside. at one point it’s beautiful, even –
a field drops to the left, cliffs and the horizon
is the mismatching blue of a bruise around bandages
on a badly sprained ankle, peeking past white into view.