Katie Donovan

Two Women, One Grave

Now, at last,
she wants to see his grave.

This is our first time
meeting: she turns out
to be small, straight-nosed,
determined –
oddly familiar.

It was she who ended it,
their long engagement;
moved on, to a better job,
a certainty she needed –
more than he had to give.

As I puppet my way
through the narrative
of his illness, she grows still.
It is a long drive to the grave,
and I wait
while she has her tears.

I’d like to blame her
for something.
She’d like to pour balm on me.
She thinks quietly –
I imagine –
of her lucky escape.
I think of his misery.

But we are alive now,
and he has been gone
for seven years.

So I drive more hours
and we speak of our children,
as women do:
we women,
who live
long enough.


*


Snowman

After the blizzard,
the road is cleared;
bread and milk
are finally delivered.

The retreat of ice
leaves slush;
drip of melt
from the eaves.
Birds sing of their survival
through the freeze.

Ten years ago
a different storm
blew in – froze us,
brought him to the hospice,
buried Christmas.
When it left
his breath went with it.

Our snowman’s head shrinks,
loosening his stone teeth.
I begin to fear this thaw.
What will be uncovered
once the blanket is lifted?

Nothing is ever finished.


*


First Aid

Will I break her ribs?
Snap her clavicle?
I press and count:
One, two, three, four,
a burn kindling
in my braced legs.
My daughter holds the phone
as the emergency lady
guides us,
as we take it in turn
to dissuade
my mother’s heart
from quitting.

It’s not the same
as learning First Aid,
practising on a doll.
This my girl’s
grandmother, sprawled
on the floor – loud,
brash, stubborn as hell –
now, just a shell.

At last, the First Responder
finds us, takes over;
the ambulance team
fires up a defibrillator;
she’s stretchered
down our narrow stairs,
and sirened to the ICU.

We are left
in the shaking house.
It’s a Friday morning,
she had just
eaten scrambled egg,
in bed, said she felt
a little better,
ready to get up.
Next, we heard the crash.


*


Salad Days

I’m sorry,
you can’t be a poet any more –
you aren’t young or sexy now;
or even a beautiful person
whom everyone online adores.
You haven’t had a lover in years
and your children are teenagers.
You look all right – but not in photos –
and worst of all
you’re so peggable as a mum.
That’s you in the supermarket, right?
hovering over spinach
dreaming up a nice school lunch?
You should be slumped
over espresso in some NYC lookalike café,
or drinking wine as you pen
another lyric to heartache.
Stop thinking about feeding the birds
and paying the heating bill.
Don’t eat any more chocolate,
and, as for cheering your son on
while he plays soccer –
have you totally lost it?
If you could have just frozen yourself
circa 1995, when you wrote that one poem –
you know, that ended up
by freakish chance in the anthology? –
you might have managed
to remain a viable presence
on the poetry scene. But now,
well, truth to say (unless you’re prepared
to give a reading for a fund-raiser –
would you be? for free?)
you’re just a has-been.
 

    11     Deluge
    12     Lost Song
    13     Polar Switch
    14     In a Perfect World
    15     Arachne’s Metamorphosis
    17     Wings
    19     Interruption
    20     The Verge
    21     Stories
    22     Invasive
    24     Foxed
    30     Midsummer Rescue
    33     Détente
    35     Honeycomb
    37     My Fluffy Valentine
    38     Recycling
    39     Murder
    40     Shelter
    42     Needle
    43     The Three Who Were Lost
    44     Baby Feet
    45     Home to Vote
    47     Let’s Go
    48     Two Women, One Grave
    50     The Diggers
    52     Beaming
    54     Snowman
    55     Archaeology  
    57     Portrait of the Mother as a Clay Teapot
    59     Undertow
    60     First Aid
    62     Picnic in the ICU
    63     The Dragon-printed Robe
    65     Walk On By
    66     Signs
    67     Death and Taxes
    68     Midlife Crisis
    70     Salad Days
    71     Spain
    72     This Singular Horse
    74     Berkeley
    75     Olive Trees, Provence
    77     Rome Project
    78     Shapeshifting
    80     May Swim, White Rock, 2020
    81     Salvage
    82     Marking Time, Dalkey
    83     Catching Flies
    84     Bailing
    85     Divination
    86     Sizing Up
    87     Recess
    88     Dancing Queens
    90     The Seal

    93     Notes
    95     Acknowledgements