Myopia Poem by Irene Cunningham

Brim full of coffee on a fat Saturday
morning, flies skirting the ceiling
I think of all the men I’ve ever had.
The cod n chips, Neirsteiner, cigarettes –
every one left wind in my hair.
My eyes have seen the shady bars
the pale misty men with cyclorama minds
and seductive cocktails.

I keep a map of the barely-pink world
on my wall. This planet, temporary
as a parking lot, just water,
bouncing on an electric stove.
A tongue slips and slides through my mind
runs over a scar here a mole there,
someone is sucking the sweet skin
of my inner thigh. My belly aches.

I can’t hear the elevator for the
sweat trickling into my ears.
Fifty-one, is a lumberjack in great boots
stomping through the new snow
on Mossop’s field, his breath bursting
up at me, mine clouding the window.

(Published in Iron Magazine 1995)