Changing Room

Where did they think
she put her libido?

In the baby seat
where her son slept?

Top left pocket
of her white coat?

In her breast pads
catching milk overflow?
In her stethoscope?

Maybe her marriage ring
signified a nun-like immunity,
or a capacity to resist temptation.

They paraded proudly…
their gold-plated chests,

dimples of Venus,
furrows of muscle,

musky man-smells,
dancing members,

downy thighs,
chiseled calves,

herculean feet,
… oblivious

to her averted eyes
masking arousal.

**

Star

The luminous star
on my ceiling

shone down on me
and my children

while we slept
on floor mattresses.

Each night
for three weeks

they argued about
who had the most space

which curses
were now allowed

and who would have
the last word.

Until
finally

each went back
to their own room

where their father’s death
awaited them.

** 

Accretion

His body lies nearby in a coffin,
shielding his beloved brother’s.

We lay four sunflowers
wrapped in absorbable

material on his grave,
one from each of us.

How long will it take for the earth
to bring them to him, Mommy, how long?

Not long.

And how will he know
which one is from each of us?

He’ll know.

**

In Skin
‘Ultimately it is the desire, not the desired that we love.’ Nietzsche

Is it a relationship

if you’ve no contact by phone,
you’ve long gaps between texts.

If you don’t eat, drink or watch a screen together.
You don’t sleep over, he doesn’t walk you home.

If you are disdainful of his need for a text
once you’ve safely reached home.

If it could end after this time or this week –
you’ve given no promises, made no plans.

If you are wary of his suggestion to holiday together.
You hold hands only when away.

If you’re ecstatic to holiday solo,
as you watch adherent couples bicker and frost.

If in company his cheek brushes against yours,
a careful formality, but your eyes don’t linger.

If you prefer breakfast in bed, alone, toast crumbs
on your belly, a trickle of honey on your chin.

If in text he greets you by name and ends with his name,
like the warm dry handshake of a stranger,

though his fingertips, his lips,
must still smell of you, taste of you.

If you temper your texts, skim this surface like a skater
on water, fettered to the trivial, logistics for the next.

If your bodies open to each other with utter abandon,
more explorative and playful as there is nothing at stake.

If you don’t remind him of things he said
he would do and hasn’t or wouldn’t do and has.

If you give yourself the same freedom
and never explain.

If you buy a house, a car, celebrate a birthday
mourn a loss and tell him after or not at all.

And he you.
And he you.

If you delight in his shortcomings, rehearse
your incompatibilities, resolve to withhold secrets.

If you curb your instinct to draw in close, starve it of contact.
You don’t miss him, well, not for days, then only his touch.

If you’re relieved he doesn’t want more, after all,
you’re done with reaching, grasping, clinging.

You never want that again though he says he does.
His truth, which doesn’t feel real.

If you love how he chats on when you go quiet, his muscular hands
knead the air above you, give form to his words.

But you never say
or show.

If you are more at home in skin than in discourse.
You don’t talk about it.

After all, what’s there to say
that needs to be said?

**

Culvert

You don’t know what happens food
once you bolus it, pack it off,
bundle it back the sentry throat
beyond the threshold of consciousness.

You’ve no idea if the oesophagus cheers,
boos or just endures
what passes through,
as a snake engulfs an egg.

No sensation either of the mincing
and folding in your stomach
– unless it is scalded raw
then a crude ache lights up in your brain.

In silent darkness, the gall bladder
showers food with detergent,
unless blocked by a gall stone
then rhythmic spasm brings pain.

As you go about your day, food chugs on
through intestinal passages, like a mute impatient queue
roping through security, palisades of villi
plucking nutrients, pickpockets fleecing a crowd.

Without your awareness too, food is squeezed on
through the bowel, fed on by bacteria,
metabolized and desiccated, toweled down,
its feet never touching the ground.

Finally, its stretch on your rectum reaches
threshold, your consciousness pricks,
it will come soon, so you take all of you
to a solitary place for release.

Ideas form, propelled by forces
you have little knowledge of,
are honed and brought to fruition
then surface in conscious thought.

You stand on the shore, believing
you’re in charge, but you are just witness,
aware of aeons of tidal saline sea
spread before, behind and within you

---

Aideen Henry is a poet, short story writer and dramatist. She completed an MA in Writing, NUI, Galway (1^st class Honours) and has published 3 books of poetry with Salmon Poetry, Hands Moving at the Speed of Falling Snow, Slow Bruise and A Bloodless Field. She has published 1 collection of short stories, Hugging Thistles, with Arlen House. She has written plays for stage and radio. She is a recipient of a Literature Bursary Award from the Irish Arts Council and was shortlisted for the Hennessy XO Literary Awards. Her short stories have been shortlisted for Francis McManus Awards and her radioplays have been shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Awards. She has completed residencies in Heinrich Boll Writer’s Residency, Achill, in Áras Éanna Writer’s Residency, Aran, in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and in Cill Rialaig, Kerry. She was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival. Her work has been broadcast on RTE Radio and has been published in Southword, Ourobourous Review, Salamander, Ambit, The Interpreter’s House, The Dublin Review, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Café Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Cyphers, Drawn to the Light and numerous anthologies.