ELA DREAMS OF DANCING
(for Ela Jago)
Weary with the cumbersome drag
of her fish factory day,
she remembers the flounce and swing of her gowns.
Escapes from the gut and stink and fleshy slime,
the stringy rawness of scales and entrails,
into memories of chiffon and satin in shades of cappuccino,
peacock and sugar pink. Muses on her tiered skirts
and sequins, still in a suitcase under the bed.
As she slices and gills the fish, Ela dreams
of her ballroom heels
though wellingtons chaff and skin her ankles.
In her imagination she’s light on her feet in champagne sandals,
her dancing partner bows, gracious
in Oxford patens, black tie and cumberband.
When the others nip out for cigarettes,
she listens to ‘A Fine Romance’ on her earphone.
Glides into Fred Astaire’s arms,
gives Ginger a run for her money.
BIRTHDAY FEAST
I offer to cook a dinner to celebrate your birthday,
but you have other plans, you tell me
how you’ll spend the day, the nice bit
of topside beef you’ll roast
according to your mother’s recipe,
her voice in your head, reminding you
to rest and tenderize the meat,
and how to get the gravy, just right.
I want to believe in your fantasy feast,
imagine your basket full of fresh ingredients,
see you in a striped apron,
an eye on the clock to time the Yorkshire puddings
puffed up in the oven.
But we both know
it’ll be just another ramshackle day
in your rack and ruin house.
And come the night
the cans of cheap lager you’re buying
will buckle as they thud, tinny and dinted into the dark
of the rancid bin, already overflowing.
CLOWNS
Odd that the clown in his baggy trousers
tugged me from the crowd that circus day
to cycle his joke bicycle around the ring,
wobble to avoid the water he’d squirt from a flower.
His mouth was a slash of red, ghastly
in the greasepaint, as he urged the crowd to deride
my efforts to maintain balance
while I zig-zagged on cardboard wheels
to avoid the trip hazard
of his out-sized shoes, the wild slap and toss of them,
his crazy run at me:
all antic and buffoonery.
He squawked a bugle blast of mock distain
at my every fall, ordered me back on the saddle,
this clown who’d shape-change to many guises:
others who’d crack the whip
insist that I pedal on.
Margaret Galvin is an Irish writer living in Wexford. Her poetry and essays are frequently broadcast on Irish national radio, on ‘Sunday Miscellany’ and ‘A Word in Edgeways.’ She has published six collections over the years, most recently Our House Delirious from Revival Press, Limerick. She is a regular writing workshop facilitator and has a particular interest in supportive writing with social care groups, in cancer care, mental illness, intellectual disability, etc.
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