Trivial Pursuit Poem by Irene Cunningham

1

I sink my teeth
Into the twelfth slice of bread –
it seems to be the only journey I can make.

She looks a little hungover
roots more prominent
not a mark on her face.

The scar that sparkled in August’s tan
has disappeared.

I’m dripping on her.

11

My brother buried our dog at the bottom of the garden.
I never quite stopped
saving food for him, glimpsed
his waving tail round corners, in doorways.

Someone once said that we resembled each other
had the same red hair.
He was fourteen years of my life;
she is ten.

We had telepathy.

111

She’s saved from my death, and his.
I feel my ears strain, stretch out
like caves on the edge of a forest.

She never got to see Bambi
or make love in an elevator.
Her family are only a whisper away.
The last time they travelled together was for
a wedding almost twenty years ago.

Will they play cards on the train this time?

Does Granny have
a fur coat?

1V

They yanked the black teeth out of my
father’s head weeks before he died
he had to help them
his body didn’t want to die it was too young.

Black dust in the lungs
drugs in the veins.

“Only the good die young”
has been exposed like filthy fungus
from a car-thief’s bragging tongue.

(Published in Envoi 1993)