I make an excuse to go to the village. I grab my bag—the one with the zip-pocket stuffed with scrunched coils of undone Polo rolls and loose mints buried like eggs in a nest of popped blister packs, body spray, cheap lighters, and a bottle of that green Lidl hand sanitizer that eats all regretful scent except the chemical afternotes of itself.
I write dead eels, limb, salt, choke. I write the stairs are steep.
I write Retreat, with a capital R.
In the latest issue of Quagmire I find 7 new poems by Billy Collins.
In the new Kiss My Quarterly, 12 poems by Billy Collins.
Coming soon in Broken Meter, 18 poems by Billy Collins.
I’ve all but given up on ever speaking Irish again,
on playing the cousin to tones of a country once removed,
plucking on phrases I learned phonetically under
the nettled glare of a Christian Brother.
Take the time
my brother, just a boy,
sat alone in the house
and spoke to the stray.
marking out the route,
pulling out road signs from the back of the car—
road bowling in progress—