The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Ernie Wormwood HAPPINESS IN IRELAND AFTER example, Mind You Kiss & Carnal Intentions Agreed. People fondle openly.The dogs are all named Happy and it works. Think about it. You just need to buy a lot of dog biscuits. My father lives there. If we listen we can hear him booming out “Hello,Darling” at the Daytime Dance Hall and Pub, where the musical Hello, Darling is the headliner. The DDH&P is open 24-7 for sudden and yes, flash dancing. Poetry is the national pastime. Ernie Wormwood is the poet laureate. She has her own Poetry Train. The National Anthem is Up On The Roof and the dance of tradition is theHokey Pokey. Children compose the news. A taste of recent stories includes: Some Kittens Can Fly The Kids Guide To Hitchhiking The Boy Who Passed Out From Eating All His Vegetables The Pop Up Book of Human Anatomy (reviewed by all the children) Places Where Mummy and Daddy Hide Neat Things Dad’s New Wife Robert The Man In The Moon Is Actually Billy Collins The consequence for things like not enough public kissing is nude bathing in a waterfall. PIZZA for Galway Kinnell I eat pizza for breakfast sometimes I eat it cold usually I eat it alone because my kids are already at school or they are still asleep. I am aware it is not good to eat pizza for breakfast alone or even with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir because of the pepperoni and the four cheeses and the glutinous nature of it. It is a high cholesterol criminal whether one eats it cold or even hot. I eat it at home alone. Unless Dante comes to eat it with me which he did the other morning when I was in the Inferno. He suggested we have wine with the pizza so I brought out my Chilean merlot. He didn’t mind it wasn’t Italian and he offered me a cigarette the best cigarette. He began rolling—and I took it. Eating pizza for breakfast is bad enough but it was Dante for God’s sake. I fetched us the Waterford ashtray that had been my mother’s from the high cupboard over the refrigerator. He admired the way it caught the light. The Irish sure know their glass, he said and death. You can tell they read my “Inferno.” Why are you reading it? “I am a poet studying sin and death and obsession.” He inhaled deeply and blew circles in the air. Catholic? he asked with a smile. “Recovering,” I said. You never recover. And so we breakfasted, neither of us liking anchovies both of us adoring marinated eggplant, sipping Chilean merlot, smoking, talking of Beatrice, sex, death, & poetry. PINK IN IRELAND That last Friday in Eyeries, I spent the afternoon on the bench near O’Sullivan’s Market pretending I was the village greeter. Up the street an orange house then a yellow, a blue, a lavender and the pink one, where a friend snapped my photograph. My first Garda (police) car stole by, then clopped a red-haired girl in platform hiking shoes. She was licking an orange ice cream. I lay down on the bench and made love with the Irish sky. MEDITATION Elephants put their trunks in another elephant’s mouth when they kiss. It stops the buzz in their minds. It quells their anxiety and heightens their experience of being present in the moment. Try it, pretend you are an elephant. See, you are getting bigger already. GIRL WITH A JADE EARRING for Hilary Tham (August 20, 1946 - June 24, 2005) Vermeer would have painted the angle of her Asian cheekbone the Chinese rebellion the American veil, Judaic mask, underpinning of aubade. He would have seen the Mrs. Wei in her & admired her repairing ways. Lamenting the too few Hilary days, he’d place the jade in her ear— a sign of the deep & dark—imperial. © Copyright 2006-7 by Cook Communication |