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Doreen Duffy
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the poet
Doreen Duffy, MA Creative Writing DCU, studied creative writing and poetry at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, University College Dublin, and online with the University of Oxford. Her work has appeared in many publications – among them, Poetry Ireland Review, Washing Windows Too, Arlen House, The Galway Review, The Irish Times and Germany's Beyond Words Literary Magazine. Doreen won The Jonathan Swift Award, and was presented with The Deirdre Purcell Cup at the Maria Edgeworth Literary Festival.
the poems
An Altered Landscape
They changed the flow
of traffic along the quays
we were seventeen
Bernie Phelan got in a car
with Rasher Mullen
full of the joys of life
We could see her throwing
her head back gurgling, laughing
but he forgot
and drove the wrong way
We could see her head being
flung back
her throat gurgling
Someone made the journey
to our house
to tell us
because we had no phone,
back then
Two days later
we made the trek
to her funeral in Bawnogue
A flat piece of grass
where people dance
that’s what Bawnogue means
But there was no dancing that day
We climbed the fence
and crossed the fields
bundles of poppies
splats of red
where the diggers
had thrown them aside
four of us girls
all silent,
when we were never quiet
They’ve cut the road
straight through there now
so I can hardly remember
the long walk
through the fields of grass
or even where they were
but I remember how
she danced
the night before,
spinning and turning
until
the memory’s a blur
How to press a rose
I Google ‘How to press a flower’
a sunflower fills the screen
This star-shaped flower
petals spread like an open hand
bring me back to the image on the news
fingers immersed in dust grasp
and scrape among the rubble
for someone’s wife, a child, a mother
‘How to press a flower’
‘Pick all the petals off,
lay them out face down
like soldiers,’
The TV continues to spatter
dystopian scenes of the darkest opera
the barbarity of its sole composer
buried in every image
I leave the room to breathe
when I return
framed behind the glass
this city, this country in black and white
women and children walking towards borders
a hollow caustic scene
The thorns that remain clutched tight
cause my skin to bleed, the people I see, become my own
My mother walks across the screen
Her knotted hand clutches her scarf
her bewildered eyes searching
My child muffled in her warmest coat
the skin of the rose in my hand her velvet collar
Her feet sweep through all our photos and memories
littered on our floor
My son, eighteen yesterday, clutches her to him
just once
And then, he turns to me, his eyes already reflect the fight
seventeen years evaporate
he goes to join the other teenage boys
teenage boys with kissing mouths
drawn into hard lines
A dog that doesn’t understand
Why his human boards the train
And leaves him there alone
Strains on the rope that keeps him there
There is lace over the trees over the screen
billows of smoke over a hidden thing
Slanted rain washes birds from the sky
their screams a painful slide on a guitar string
A flame shoots across the sky
at a hundred beats a minute
A coin flicks in the air
it spins and all eyes below roll
A cluster of clouds in the sky
form a star
My red rose
has turned brown
the petals curl away
the stem still strong
holds its heavy head
weeping,
the colour drains away
Gypsy Moth
In this November
night sky
tucked in the corner
of a window
in the radiology room
a fully winged
flightless moth is trapped
She tries
to vibrate her wings to fly
The blue gowned child
watches from the bed
death still
She waits
The silence is frightening
waiting for the sound
is worse
Cut between
slats of MRI slices
she isn’t here anymore
Beneath celestial moonlight
the pull too great
she plummets into a
spiral flightpath
until
radiant she touches
the source of this light
the energy of the sun
and like the moth
she has gone
Publishing credits
An Altered Landscape: Poetry Ireland Review
(Issue 129, Ed. Eavan Boland)
How to Press a Rose: Live Encounters 13th Anniversary
Edition 2010-2022 (Live Encounters)
Gypsy Moth: exclusive first publication by iamb