Barter
- Barter
Peggy O'Brien, poetry
The shortcut proved the long way round. Mid-summer,Insomniac sun. She ambled through the market.Throngs pressed the flesh. Is this salmon firm and fresh?These strawberries plump and sweet, as ripe as June?Crubeens and chickens, carrageen moss and peas.The price went up according to the depthOf hunger in a voice. "Cheap flowers," "cheap flowers,"Hypnosis, the sellers' siren sing-song roses.
He undressed her with a glance, the burly butcher,And, as he dressed a rabbit, they danced a minuet.One hand grabbed the neck, the other the hindquarter,Then wrung it like a wet, gutted rag. A snap,Two knuckle cracks, a quick slit in each hock,And like a gentleman removing a fine leather gloveIn one clean stroke all that soft, protective furSlipped off the long, lean, torso, a kit on a hook
Drying off from a swim. She reached her destinationAround midnight, watery light, cobblestone cloud.Threshold and lintel the jaws of a skull, and insideThose rooms, the catacombs in winter, a one-barElectric fire. Hot whiskey. Narcolepsy.She woke all alone on an autopsy table, the sheetA slab of marble, a wild animal in her pelt.3 AM. Ice cut through ill-fitting shutters. Morning. [End Page 268]
peggy o'brien is the author of four collections of poems: Sudden Thaw, Frog Spotting, Trusting Ice, and Tongues (forthcoming in 2019 from New Island Books). She is also the editor of the Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry and the author of Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney. She spent half her teaching career at Trinity College, Dublin, and the other half at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
