deepdown torrent the sea the sea
Andalusian girls asleep in the shade
glancing eyes primroses violets create
yes red slippers yes I will Yes drown

wooly jacket lovely hour coming home
nightwalkers and pickpockets quays dark
evening wildlooking laundry ride me swelling
pleasure dew danger dream garments blue sea

guitar bathing plunging
into the sea
mourning for the cat
young stranger

squeezed squashed sleep in the coalcellar green dress
rainy day dribbling along in the wet coming home
staring sleeping hard peach perfume pouring jingling
poking rooting ploughing climbing hanging

cricket match walked home
a stone of potatoes
curtain clapped dance barebum
tongue touching plumpudding

dark knocking roughness carelessness flirting
whistling Venice moonlight romps
smell of the sea saltwater flannel trousers
hot as blazes cat she rubs up drunker

falling up the stairs stripped love chamber performance
moated grange at twilight excite eyes figure wheelbarrow
Irish homemade beauties sparrowfarts mists voyages
drowned windmill hill I loved looking running twisting

dancing pigeons screaming
I blew exploded bang wild
dreamt of her firtree cove
bird flying below us

tortured rousing tickling tender finish it off
white blouse caressed them robbing chickens
crushed flowers bloometh handwriting singing
silver dress sundancing domineering

the coffee bottom ash pit trouble mahogany swindle
wonderworker talking Bushmills whisky bursting booming
always waiting waves and boats drenched with sweat
dancing sashes warm bath rainwater the levanter heat

whistling train
tumbling tongue
lips shout fire
smoother skin

milk me sweeter thicker hurt teeth mark bite nipple
kick or bang lemonade greenhouse nymphs strumming
marsala fatten laugh sucking in Grafton street bank office
Inchicore September champagne oyster knife combing

measuring mincing food and rent burn violet breathing exercises
bottle of claret stout at dinner hanging tender fingers cracking nuts
featherbed mountain Glencree dinner outsider swearing blazes
skyblue silk fireflies dragging canal lock teeth Irish beauty

boycott politics
thumping piano
eloped jaunting
in a train holy show

charming girl whistling peaches port flushed tossed boiling embrace
breaking tearing freak persevering hungry rain skulking skirt raincoat
brazenfaced skeezing begging tasting the butter hearthrug fire bracelet
excite him waggling laughing wipes water washed up potato cake poems

fuming housewarming dressing perfuming punish thunderbolts whisky or stout
confession on canal bank wildly pretending imagine knitting woollen Dublin
pressed by the Tolka singing denying stealing potatoes ruining blottingpaper
wrangle in bed covered it up slinked out flirting hides razor imagine dying tragic

smelling my fur
politics and earthquakes
great leg laid up
breakfast in bed

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Nathanael O’Reilly teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Arlington. His twelve poetry collections include Dublin Wandering (Recent Work Press, 2024), Landmarks (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Downingfield Press, 2024), Boulevard (Downingfield Press, 2024), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), and Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017). His work appears in journals and anthologies published in fifteen countries, including Anthropocene, Cordite, The Honest Ulsterman, Mascara, Meanjin, New World Writing Quarterly, Rabbit, Southword, Trasna and Westerly. He is poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.