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Best of Irish Poetry 2010
Editor: Matthew Sweeney

Songs of Earth and Light
Barbara Korun poems translated by Theo Dorgan

Done Dating DJs
by Jennifer Minniti-Shippey
Winner, 2008 Fool for Poetry Competition

Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets
Edited and translated by Aidan Hayes

Munster Literature Centre

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MICHAEL McKIMM

Michael McKimm (b. Belfast, 1983, now based in London) won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2007. His poetry has appeared in PN Review, The Warwick Review, Horizon Review and Best Irish Poetry in English 2010. His collection Still This Need (Heaventree Press) was published in 2009. In 2010 he was an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa.

The Messages

There was always something strange

in coming back: bedrooms cold and quiet,

pipes clanking in the roof for water.

Always an object – a book, a towel –

not where you remembered it; always 

the business of unpacking and laundry,

and a hesitation when the curtains

were pulled from their slumber:

a field let loose with cattle, driving rain.

From the wander down for breakfast,

already fired with thoughts of yesterday,

with think where we were last week—

tottering back  to the tent, a saucepan

brimming with frites; coming out of an

asphyxiated dream, plump doves

calling in the dawn, hands grasping

for the zip; the headiness of long days

in the heat, salt and sand tightening on thighs—

to bringing offerings to friends, shy

and uneasy, you couldn’t quite explain

(so wouldn’t try) that the chance

of being kept down by crushing waves

was as much a part of it; or that you were

missing those you’d never see again.

But mostly it was the strangeness of walls,

singing electricity, sudden dark and coolness.

The looming last days of August

and amnesiac return to clocks and bustle.

Then Dad gone out in the car with a long list

of messages, to restock and resettle the house.

©2010 Michael McKimm

Author Links

Michael McKimm home page

5 poems by McKimm in Horizon Magazine (Salt)

Review of Still This Need in Verbal Magazine (page 16 of PDF)