Máighréad Medbh
Dog Day
It was an old house in the hushaby south-west.
A time-warp. The floor was cement pronounced
with “i”s. The fireplace cement, an alcove with
a chimney, and a hand-turned bellows to fan it.
The tea stewed on the embers. An iron pot hung
over the fire to bake the bread and the brack.
For any culinary nuance there was a Primus.
The family that grew in it were of a nervous cast,
sluggish circulation, faces flat and anxious.
The mother’s full-time job was a proto-intranet
of cousinly concerns that spanned the mountain.
The father took his tankards to the creamery
and was all day coming back, the ass tethered
desolate to a pole outside the Castle Inn downtown.
It was up a rough track at the head of a meagre ten
fields. A find for American tourists, forever open,
neighbours wandering in (the lesser ones, the strays).
A wide-eyed greeting, a slice of hot bread cut in the
hands towards the apron. Out in the byre a calf’s head
almost touched the ceiling, stranded on his own dung.
No hint of that in the mother’s genuine effusion.
I sat in it for the want of another and it was vacant
except for a flat-haired sheepdog and a man from out
the road. His name, his relation to the family, his self
in general, it was not in my nature to know. Summer
pixelated the air pale and pulsing with absence.
I rarely spoke and certainly not with this hunched-
over thick lump of brown serge on a straw chair
from which seeped like milk out of a pierced nut
a tensile hand. Stroking the dog. In the silence ticked
by the house’s subtler occupation, the fixing of watches.
The window framed by their small faces at all grades
of revelation. Exploring the dog. A finger of light
from the narrow doorway licking the two of them
with its dusty transparency, licking their darkness.
The dog yelped. The man kept his pose. Face and hat
conspired to one dull texture. The house went
limp as the white streak on the dog’s back shifted
towards the door. I thought of her nipples and
hidden else he might have hurt and how men
went bulky into bars with their heads down.
And then. Perhaps I slept.
Biographical Note
Máighréad Medbh is an Irish poet with nine published books and a reputation for performance. Her latest book, Imbolg, was published in 2020, and her verse allegory, Parvit of Agelast, was shortlisted for the 2017 Pigott Prize. She holds a creative-critical PhD from Dublin City University, focusing on poetic essay.