Poetry

The Birthing

by

Marian Quigley

Out of the fox-hole of night,

thieving the half-light

of my bloated existence,

slips the sharp little vixen:

demanding, primeval, insistent.

Her night-animal eyes

pierce the distance between us,

fixing and shaping my gaze:

I, her pale servant committed

to the blind room

and to this creature who screams loudest.

Unwrappings

by

Marian Quigley

Atop barren, newly corrugated land,

the building shimmers [shocks]:

a blinding whiteness

within a haze of heat.

Glass refracts, glitters,

whilst from an edge

a teetering shard

confounds its square simplicity.

With metallic footsteps

we climb the glass tower,

exposed to the hard blueness of sky

as workmen shout, drill and hammer

and radios scream.

Inside the labyrinth,

portholes sever primary walls of blue, red and

yellow,

framing shrouded furniture in grey rooms.

Beneath our feet,

layers of plastic whisper and shift.

Later, from a white balcony,

we pop corks onto the patch of emerging green

below,

projecting thoughts and predictions

beneath the worn paths of flying machines.