Fiona Tracey
Lately, I always feel worse for having spoken,
and think those monks with the vow of silence
must be onto something. On Tuckey Street,
the builders listen to Lana Del Rey like they’re afraid
they’ll never again know the touch of a woman,
and for our part, us girls check our horoscopes faithfully
each week in the paper, hoping we’re the ones the moon
is talking to personally. Back home they say nothing has changed,
the townies are still spilling tallboys, getting up to sing
Angel from Montgomery at last call, sleeping
with the same people to see if it’ll be different.
We’re all so painfully aware of our own existence,
stubbing our toes on the baseboards and swearing aloud
with no one to hear. And what lasts? Not here, not this,
not our clear-eyed beauty, not the first loves
we climbed out of windows to meet,
reversing down farm tracks with the headlights off.
Now each night is a tunnel we enter without a torch,
all longing to meet someone in the smoking section.
We’re just dying to tell someone the very worst things
about ourselves, then, more quietly, the best.
Fiona Tracey is a poet living in Cork. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Shepherd University and an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from UCC. Her poems have appeared in Stony Thursday, New Irish Writing, Anthropocene, Channel, Skylight 47, ROPES, Ragaire, Southword, HOWL, and elsewhere.
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