We tried to do it perfectly
We tried to do it perfectly;
packed the car
with sandwiches, with flasks of tea,
biscuits,
a sleeping bag
and a bottle of wine.
then we struck
west,
with no destination in mind.
We had wanted
to get lost on the backroads
and find somewhere to visit
people don’t go often
but it was hours
before we were even out of Dublin
and Ireland
has been signposted to death.
You drank wine
while I was driving
and played with the radio
and got bored pretty quick.
4 hours in
and we were looking at the coast,
all the way to America,
with nowhere to go
but backwards.
We’d tried to do it perfectly;
once there was a hawk in a field
and once rainshower
and the country spread around us,
green and glistening
as a dropped bottle.
You tossed a can at the sea
and complained that you needed the toilet.
I sat
with my ass on the front of the car,
eating a sandwich
trying to remember
the last time I’d been excited
by home.
The prince of milky bedsheets
You say
you are
in love again.
she
is a writer
of course
for magazines,
18
of course,
and pretty hellish
wealthy.
Parents with car factories in germany
and business interests
stretching all the way france.
You,
of course
are a traitor to your friends
for wanting
this,
for accepting it,
the price of new love.
you accept
our mockery.
one does.
and gossip
which comes
with young bodies,
trotting like a puppy
on a walk to the shop.
our scorn
is a price
for the prince
of milky bedsheets.
All you want
is all
that anyone wants,
for someone
to be in love with
until,
like the river
shearing into a shoreline
or the twist
of the ungrateful snake,
life whips around
and bites,
less miserable
On me every day
My wallet
(fake snakeskin)
with its tinderscrap of receipts
and its plectrumbone
of exempt debit cards.
a blood donation slip.
a drivers license
cradled with age.
10 Canadian dollars, 20 American dollars
15 euros
(all I can spend).
2 durex condoms (real snakeskin)
and 4 coffeeshop loyalty cards,
2 stamps apiece.
a crumpled photo of Melissa
her eyes back home.
DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Bindweed Magazine 