Light

To Martin, Jimmy, and Janice

"Take my hand as the orb of day descends. . . "-Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen

1

At the Big House novel Year's Eve karaoke,

two sisters, shiny in cheap black velour,

shout "Like A Virgin" into the microphone while their vain da beams.

They win next to the first place, and a bottle of wine.

First place and a bottle of spirits goe to the mustachioed fella

who squeaks on the outside a tight-voiced "Ebony and Ivory."

The herd is crazy for him.

The dark-eyed woman beside me hears I'm from novel York

and asks if she can stay with me for the World beaker

Today, the boyfriend came by means of to tell me he's going back to his former girl,

whom he had left for me

A hardly any minutes past midnight, the fresh Year comes in with bomb

a dozen fires sprinkled across the city midmost point

Here, people jive upon the tables. 2

I am working nights illegally in a pizza store

where I am paid sum of two units quid an hour to answer phone make pies,

and wait upon large drunk men who take the piss without of me

because I say "tomayto" instead of "tomahto,"

and ask if they can order me upon their pie.

I work from half seven till four a.m.

I've been in bed all day, weeping about the boyfriend.

The prepare for the table assumes my eyes are r because I'm stoned,

and ribs me for not sharing.

I present to chop the onions, their juice as thick as milk,

grateful for another chance to exclaim

Later, I am without front wiping tables when sum of two units RUC Land Rovers careen

by sirens breaking,

the unlooked for flash of blue lights startling and beautiful end the

steamed front window. 3

The well-fed dogs lie at gates all along Kimberly highway

or in the middle of the road, or upon the faded red, white, and cerulean

curbstones

I realize that these dogs are greatest in quantity likely the ones responsible

for the elaborately ringleted shit that decorates the gravel-studded

footpaths,

shit that level the relentless winter rain does not wash away,

but I am nonetheless provok by the agency of their sad eyes to pat their sides.

I have just embarrassed myself by dint of going by the boyfriend's house,

where he stood in the brow garden and told me he couldn't talk

because he had something in the oven

while the other girl glared at me end the lace curtains.

I am happy I don't yet know many nation in this city,

so I can walk up the road all r and weepy and no single asks why.

The Union Jack above the Kimberly Inn hangs limp and wet.

This is a pub where you make a humming sound at the door to be allow in, and where,

I've been told, I'd greatest in quantity likely not be welcome, accent and all. 4

After I leave the Dunne's bag upon the boyfriend's doorstep,

full of his knickers, tapes, and those D M Thomas volumes he gave me,

this flotsam that had been littering the beach of my bedroom,

I purchase a green apple and eat it, grateful for the bitterness.

I walk to the city midmost point also grateful that the rain has stopped,

and catch the number 61 bus, Carr's valley via Cavehill,

on my way to a friend who is paying me to emblem his thesis, titled:

"A Psychological Perspective upon Conflict in Northern Ireland."

The bus groans up the deliberate slope of Cavehill,

and I watch the outlines of four male childs

as they lope along the ridge of the Belfast Waterworks Reservoir.

Against this late afternoon celestial expanse they are all black upon blue,

just bunchy jackets, short hair, and skinny leg

The tallest winds up arm and leg raised,

more beautiful than any baseball player in the States,

and suffers the rock fly. I know it's a stone

because it smashes into my window and sudden blows away,

leaving only a scratch in the Plexiglas.

Later, the British spell-checking program hints *jug" as the

correction for "Jung"

"intercourse" for "interchurch," "ulcer" for "Ulster"

5 It is individual a.m. I am typing in my bedroom

and the Chinese woman, who lives nearest door with her white husband

and three wee children, is crying

My pregnant friend has loaned me her manual typewriter, a 1960

vintage Olympia.

It has no exclamation marks,

so I must assume that brawny emotions are a modern invention

and improvise with apostrophe and period.

I have plant the typewriter on the rickety metal table

left by means of the loud, boozy girl who used to have this range

a girl infamous for seducing a seminarian.

Typing is a noisy matter of bells, strokes and rattles.

The girls who have lived here for a year and a half

speculate that the Chinese woman is a mail-order bride

and speaks no English. That isn't actual however,

because through the thin wall we share,

I can hear her crying "I can't, I can't, I can't!"

Her voice spirals higher and higher to a keening, wordless wail.

6

At the Parador, a woman who is buying solitary lemonades

because she has brought her hold bottle in a brown bag

corners me while the barmen glare

and take an account ofs me about the time her son was shot;

the time the IRA broke in and held a fire-arm to her head;

and the time her husband went upon holiday to America.

He came back with a taste for side salads, fishing trips, and dirty

movies.

That morning, a note from the boyfriend came in the column

asking me to appropriate him in Lavery's back bar.

"How are things?" I asked.

"Fine," he said, his girl was not upon from school, spending every day playing