Leontia Flynn
A Poem for Christmas
Christmas has come, like Cholera, to town.
Women are struggling in the overheated aisles
of shops, where a piece of music twists like tinsel
towards its end, spools round, then starts again.
At a cue the bars disgorge staff Christmas diners,
who turn to the wall, and, as one man, start to piss.
then move on to other bars, get confidential
on the subject of lost lives, John Peel, George Best…
Their toppled glass is the right toast for this city.
To this place of gangsters, double deals and crime rings
I must belong: I see how it likes to drive
if they can love it, men off one by one
with broken promises – then pauses – and seems to thrive
as words and buzzwords rush to fill the vacuum.
Leontia Flynn was born in 1974 and lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her first collection, These Days (Cape, 2004), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She was selected as a Next Generation Poet in 2004.
Page(s) 49
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