Wee Maeve
She was eleven, freckly-faced and gingery-hair
sharp in class as the skrake of dawn,
chubbily confident amongst wild, wiry boys
who - knowing only mastery of the cane -
spent more time on the floor than sitting down.
I took quicker to the rounded vowels
of her Christian name, Maeve (an Irish queen)
than the baffling silents of the likes of Siobhan
and her surname, Connolly, had all
the ricochets of their history
the executed martyr .... how so much began.
One day she explained a rare absence
every word noted carefully, she taught us
more than I ever could, struggling for a say.
I imagined wee Maeve shocked awake,
her door battered down, the Paras invading
her home, dragging her Da away.
In that commonplace classroom in Clady
it was hard to see how she’d kicked out
and scrabbed such burly armed men,
must have brushed her aside like a pesty fly.
She described her revenge intricately:
mirror to the eyes of the helicopter pilot
targeting with her weapon, the sun.
Page(s) 31
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The