It never happened

I dry my hands, observe my reflection in the ultra-
glossy cupboard doors—other people’s bathrooms

can be disquieting experiences. Curiosity gets the
better of decorum; I ease them apart, and glimpse

a riotous bundling of child-proof bottles & semi-
open packs of capsules, making of this bathroom

cabinet a high-end plaything of modern alchemy.
Let’s be clear: we’re not talking aspirins here, nor

eye-drops, nor ointments for a wart; eye-shadows,
creams and shampoos must be lodged elsewhere.

No, these target our internal geography, speaking
to its dips or deeper hollows with sleep-inducing,

mood-enhancing, anxiety-banishing fixes, some
I don’t recognise with long names ending in –ine

and multi-language small-print disclaimers, to be
taken with caution on the advice of your doctor—

but relax. All this I imagined. It never happened;
this is a poem, a crafted thing, and I’d never dare

peek into your bathroom cabinet, which I have no
doubt exists. For I’ve brushed shoulders with you,

in the supermarket or the car-park, edgy women
of indeterminate age, just out of yoga class and

brittle with entitlement, dashing off to chauffeur
children to choir practice, robotics or advanced

debating. We didn’t talk, but I caught your fear
like static on your gym-toned arm as you reached

for the gluten-free, carob-coated goji berry biscuits
to eat up your fear of not being quite up to scratch,

the kids under-performing or resisting the mould
for which they’ve long been sculpted, freefalling

into mediocrity, Maccas, middle management. To
counteract the strain, you nurse your (half) glass

of Chardonnay over yet another catch-up with the
girls at 3.00 pm, and later head upstairs, heeding

the siren call of modern medication, doing your
little suburban bit to keep the industry afloat.

Shortlisted in the Plough Poetry Prize 2022
2022 Short List | The Plough Arts Centre

Highly commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition 2023
Winners – Welsh Poetry Competition

**

The embrace

After the rain, even the weeds
gleamed. No sodden cotton wool
……………slung the sky, and the last
lungful of wind had breathed itself
out. The stone bouquet still lay
……………draped across the slumped
fragment of her headstone,
exactly as it would have
……………then. No passing jogger’s
sneaker crunched the gravel mulch,
no remnant of any word uttered
……………in this space remained.
Not one thing disturbed this small grave.
Really, there was no need to hold my breath.

Let us call her
Agnes Mary R. to stall, for a moment,
……………her mounting anonymity.
And further, let us say
she’s lain here since 13 March 1872,
……………though the inscription’s mostly
long surrendered to the dusty crust
of lichen. Child of immigrants,
……………certainly, and scarlet-fevered away,
possibly, ‘aged two years and—’,
she would have been born in these streets,
……………taken her first steps in them,
played in them: half a name and half a date
suffice to scaffold our imagination.

I lift the buffalo grass
matted at her headstone and her
……………mottled bouquet—then
step back, let gravity do its work.
Behind her, a lone cypress
……………strives upwards
to the wide, white oyster of the sky
that rims us all: it is for the moss,
……………glowing soft in the shade
and the ivy fingering her bouquet to hold
this forgotten child of the imperial age
……………to its green breast,
and slowly return her to
Earth’s creeping embrace.

Note: Inspired by a small grave at St Thomas’ Rest Park, Crows Nest NSW, site of the first European burial ground on Sydney’s North Shore (established 1845). In the 1870s, nearly a third of burials were children under ten, many of whom contracted scarlet fever, diphtheria and typhoid.

Highly commended in the Ethel Webb Blundell Literary Awards, 2022
EWB Poetry Judge Report (swwofwa.com.au)

First published in Brushstrokes III, Ros Spencer Poetry Contest Anthology 2021-22
(WA Poets Publishing, November 2022)

**

Pietà
After Perugino’s Pietà (c. 1493)

And in the granite tenderness
…………with which she lays her hand
over his long pale body laid out
…………stiffly across her knees, is written
every mother’s deepest fear, that it should
…………come to this. She’s set apart;
the portico around her makes sure of that,
…………framing her in air. And yet—

There’s something monolithic
…………about her seated, blue-robed form
and sturdy spaced-apart knees, though
…………her left hand curling his thigh is
fine boned, her little finger curving out and in
…………like yours or mine; sometimes,
in these great works of art, it is
…………the detail that we relate to.

Aware of her, we yet can’t bring
…………ourselves to face her. Instead, our eye
detours to the russet-haired and sandalled
…………woman at her left, her fingers
steepling the bleached blades of his shins:
…………this weeping Mary Magdalene,
cheeks reddened and glistening tears pearling,
             dares expose her undiluted grief.

Here’s what we notice: the hair of St John …………
…………brushing the bleeding face of Christ,
Nicodemus’ eyes raised heavenwards
…………as an aged Joseph of Arimathea rests
the hands that helped to bury him.
…………But we are putty in the artist’s hands,
and party to his formal composition,
…………and drag our eyes at last to hers.

If we hoped to read them, we may think again.
…………She’s composed, has been for centuries,
and we are left to wrestle with the knowledge
…………that this was always meant to be,
that part of her would have it no other way;
…………the other part is left for us to fathom how
a blow unthinkable in human terms
…………can in an oil painting be transformed.

 Second prize,
International Proverse Poetry Prize (Hong Kong),
27 April 2022

First published in Mingled Voices 7, International Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology
(Proverse Hong Kong, 2023)

 _____________________________

Denise O’Hagan is a Sydney-based editor and poet with a background in commercial book publishing. Her poetry is widely published and awarded, including in the Dalkey Poetry Prize (first place), the International Proverse Poetry Prize (second place), the Australian Catholic University Poetry Prize, the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition and the Welsh Poetry Competition (high commendations). She was Poetry Editor (Australia/NZ) with The Blue Nib until 2020. Her poetry collection Anamnesis (Recent Work Press) was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award (USA) and the Eyelands Book Award (Greece) and shortlisted in the Rubery Book Award (UK) (2023). https://denise-ohagan.com