Joyelle McSweeney

one poem

Sheep at Derrigimlagh

A cosmic, ruined garden—Greek names
like the shards of teeth and buttons in a mass grave
scatter the wrist-thick stalks and teethy leaves—
scent comes supping up the bridge of the nose
to the port of the brain
that port is crumbling like chalky bone—
its pinnacles and minarets
osteoporosed, its heights
collapsing to a powder on the whitening scurf of the sea
as in the dish of a pill splitter, when the cheap blade is lowered
and some stuff scuffs away. Elsewhere
tucked in a black-green gland
the pharmacy is asleep.

time scales. weeds genius. the sheep with their faces
stripped away by ONE UNCONTROLLED DOG, each with blood pouring
from where their eyes should be
gaze redly down the stoop of the skull. Some grin.
They graze the blanket bog
where the Marconi tower
has been bombed to nothing, and the same wind
buffets the cliff of the brain, the bog
formed where our ancestors burnt the ground to ashes
so that dead sheep may close on stiff grasses
soft parts which have been stripped away.

ONE UNCONTROLLED DOG
a warning is sellotaped to the fence
the fence is sellotaped
to the rain, but there is plenty rain
on beach or bog or ben, propped up and taped
with polypropelyne
to the face of the sky
which has been stripped away. The skull of the sky
is a trove of rain

Agora of weeds, tuneless Aeolian chokehold
of chokeweed and knots, but it has a drone,
the tuberous rhizome
like needles driven into the peat, with their plungers up.
As the nurse flicks the barrel of the hypo
before she drives it in, the sheeps’ attention
even dead, rises like a bubble
in vein or level
to blow apart the brain.

(when black showers
fall like soot
I shake me to sleep
as if I a sheep a-were
and dream of maidens
in their polyester smocks
where they sat on stools
in photo developers’ booths
in parking lots
collecting shot rolls of film
like virgins on their tripods
snaky toxic tongues of green
the constant fumes
of chemical baths—
while inside the market
red meat sings
its oxygen song
bacteria furl
their battle skirts of green
between the polyvinal chloride and the
polystyrene
I am native to this damage
I bear a native’s fluency
like a lollipop
from the bank
its plastic sleeve
I recognize it
I know it again
even from this cliff’s distance
from which I wave
mine own frayed
mitochondrial flag
I am a sentinel
& cannot ride
on violent wind or violet tide)

Faceless, brutalized sentinels, stupid
with knowledge, sacred and bound
in saline Celtic robes, they turn up
their bleeding no-faces
liked brained priestesses
and bleat. Not angels nor a wreathe of flame
but these stunned animals guard the gate,
their faces converted to one
sublimely ludicrous tongue of red
which unrolls straight to the heart through the eye
and communicates to passerby
the sum arrival of all wayfaring:
that all roads are the same road
wet and slick
that the end speeds from the beginning
that time rushes up from stopped drain
to find its target & rides on rain
down the national and the regional road,
the local and the lane.

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, stories, novels, essays, translations and plays, including the forthcoming poetry double-volume Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books, 2020). With Johannes Göransson, she co-edits the international press Action Books and teaches at Notre Dame.