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MARIE NAUGHTON

Marie Naughton's poems have appeared in publications including Mslexia, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Dark Horse, Crannog and Lines Underwater. Others have been placed in competitions and she won the Cafe Writers competition in 2012. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the Centre for New Writing at Manchester University. She is a psychotherapist and a counsellor in a high school. She lives in Manchester.

      Elegy

Before the phone rang again

I sloped off to a farm near Frodsham

and bought three hens:

Sussex, Wyandotte, Cuckoo Maran

and another, a Cochin, another,

Rhode Island Red, always another

like tales of your childhood

–– tell us, tell us

we pestered to hear them over and over.

The nanny goat, locked in the outhouse

on Sundays, the family at Mass. That Easter

you found her, wedged in the toilet. Or Rover

the growler, a neighbour laid poison

because of his barking. Or best of all

–– tell us, tell us

your dad’s cap, snug with eggs

cradled home from the allotment

to hatch by the fire.

No one warns they’ll wreck a garden.

I’d have laughed, not believed

how they dig and turn beds

into earth mounds 

and craters. Up to my eyes in redmite

and lice, the reek at the door,

I repeated what people kept saying

–– nothing compares. And the taste,

those fresh, delicious, golden yolks.

©2015 Marie Naughton

Author Links

'When Elvis Died': poem by Marie Naughton in The Dark Horse

'Before Her Diagnosis': poem by Marie Naughton at And Other Poems