Category: Poetry

Chorio

On By grainne proinseasIn death, Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment
I came so close to Death
I could see the color of her unblinking eyes
They were indigo
The same dark blue as those of my husband
The same as the eyes of my newborn daughter
a few weeks later with or without me.
Death stared me down to an ache
taunting
just long enough to make me taste the loss of that blue, that all-mine ocean
And then
She let me pass

last samurai (upon reading Helen DeWitt)

On By grainne proinseasIn language, Philosophy, Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Grammars and vocabularies

Kanji, Alphabets,

A single page of translated and footnoted Greek

say, from the Iliad

Which could serve, a thousand years hence, as a key to the scriptures and literatures of human civilization in the 21st Century

The mind must somehow

outlive and live outside of the body

and until this planet casts us off

Words will drape and swim around her

Mind will stand stubborn in the warp and the woof

of her garment

 

it’s like this

On By grainne proinseasIn parenthood, Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment
At three forty something a.m
I lay beneath the horsehair blanket
of your frustration.
You trilled and sobbed kicked and grabbed your feet.
You rolled and yelled
between your fathers feigned sleep and mine.
Finally he put a hand
on your chest and said “shhh. It’s too early. Close your eyes.”
You glanced at him,
Turned your head away, bucked and wailed.
I imagined getting up, getting dressed,
and leaving the house.
I would walk, alone,
to Happy Donuts.
I would drink  caffeinated coffee and eat a sugar donut
while looking out the window at the dark empty parking lot.
Then, I would walk down to the Berkeley Amtrak station.
I’d arrive just as a train pulled in, and I’d get on board.
I would ride and sleep and ride
until some place looked nice through the window,
Then I’d get off and get a job and a room to live in and start seriously working
on my great American novel.
I snapped out of it.
Who am I kidding?
It would take them three days to find me and drag me back.
Then,
You rolled towards me. Little fat hands clasped under your chin as if in prayer.
You breathed in once, deeply, beside my breast and then,
quiet.
A miracle.

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painting by G.F Marlier

Before

On By grainne proinseasIn Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I was once a flowering branch

And tonguekissed

The pride of Amarillo

Leaning across a sticky table in a smoky petite jazz spot in the val de grace

Yes i once clowned at a large mirror in a dim vestibule with the moonglow oracle of bangladesh

I once sat atop a mountain of winter rubble at abandoned coney island and i once dove naked into cheat lake just as the first thunder broke and rolled down the valley like gods bowling ball and the rain came down in sheets so cold it was shelter we sought in the warmer lake water

And i threw back my head and laughed

And all this before i was

Your mother

Jean

On By grainne proinseasIn family, Ohio, Poetry, Uncategorized2 Comments
My husband’s grandmother has lost many of her teeth
but she put on blue eyeliner for my visit.
She says, “the next time you see me, I’ll look very different”,
and lets out a resilient noise that I’m reluctant to name
knowing I lack the aptitude to name it well and fairly.
She is more beautiful at 90 than she was when I first met her at 88
having foregone hair dye, her hair now white, and long, not messy but uncoiffed
and not wearing an “outfit” complete with flashy cheap handbag,
There is nothing between us to distract or to dull the effect of her eyes.
Her eyes are a pale electric greenish-blue
become striking as they’ve receded into the shadows
beneath her sharper brow-bones.
Jean says, “let me tell you something about music”.
As a child, she loved a piece called Falling Waters
because, she says,
“I imagined how you would choreograph a dance to it”
so she taught herself to play it, by ear.
after two lessons, the piano teacher told the Scottish sisters who had adopted her
out of foster care, and who wanted to encourage her ability,
“I will not teach Jean.
She hears the music
she will always hear it
you will never get her
to read it off a page”.

soft tectonics

On By grainne proinseasIn Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

A body is a wave                                                                                                                                    a seeming-sudden lift of matter                                                                                                    and it’s immeasurably gradual dispersal

This is a soft tectonics                                                                                                                            I will not mention millions of years, no, a few decades if we’re lucky

and how boldly foolish to say “luck”.                                                                                        What is this “luck” ?

We are the only species, the only life-form to have invented                                                     such a word, such a concept.

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say:

Sometimes the indifferent heft of Chance lands upon you and sometimes                                 it drops its weight on someone else                                                                                                  or in the wilderness, unwitnessed?

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  • painting by g.f marlier

new poems 11/29/17

On By grainne proinseasIn Art, memoir, Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment
  A dream
Storm-stopped
en route to Nantucket
I could board a ferry but
I can see from the jetty-
waves as high as a prison wall
The thunderous churning
sends up phosphorus white spray
and whispers fictions.
I decide to inquire at this small public house
in what once was a whaling village
where the bus deposited me
and I’m pleased to learn there is a room they rent by the night
in the tavern tradition
to pilgrims, wanderers, the lost, the storm-stopped.
I have plenty of money and feeling serene
and grown-up, I climb
a narrow buffed pine staircase
to a warm dry cubbyhole under the slanted eaves
one small window facing the ravenous, ore-black Atlantic
one wool blanket on a narrow bed.
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fish-eye
It’s what they call a fish-eye picture
lens curved to create an illusion of expanse
something, yes, of the detached surveillance,
the idiotic lingering of a fish
drumming its fins against lapping water
in dim, silty shallows.
There you are: tan coat, unlocking the door of your silver Prius.
It’s obvious (from the irritated look on your face
and your intense focus on the clicker) that it’s never occurred to you
you’re being watched.
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Shame
A diseased forest
sweeping arms of spent trees
their obscurity born of nature and inertia, not intent-
they permitted no pathway,
no companionship.
Any message chipped in their moldy skins
any mound of stones
was grown over, sucked down into the muck before it could meet
the eyes of an Other who might understand, advance, take heart, encouraged.
The sour smell of abandonment hung close to the ground
a stifling breathable fog.
The sun in those days was just a myth
or an ancient, pre-verbal memory
if someone somehow had been able to tell me
it still
was there
in flamboyant indifference
traipsing above the impenetrable canopy
I would have thrown back
my soft skull
and laughed.

fleet week

On By grainne proinseasIn Art, Current Events, family, Geo-Politics, Poetry, Politics, Spirituality, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Look for blue angels                                                                                                                 over the bay                                                                                                                          early in October.                                                                                                                  Look for wave-worn sailors                                                                                               craving vast rolling softness                                                                                                     in the piss-stained streets of the Tenderloin.                                                          Santa Rosa’s burning to the tips of the tree roots                                                            calls are coming in from all over San Francisco:                                                         “my bedroom/living room/building is full of smoke                                                              but I can’t figure out what’s burning”                                                                 “Ma’am/Sir calm down calmate it’s 200 miles north of you                                         don’t worry it won’t effect you”.                                                                                                          An artist is creating an exact replica                                                                                 of the Golden Gate Bridge                                                                                                             to put next to the Golden Gate Bridge.                                                       My friend says “Good, maybe Sharkzilla will get confused and bite that one instead”

and                                                                                                                                              I had a dream last night that my cousin who thinks the U.S should bomb North Korea off the face of the Earth is actually a really nice guy

at Hearst Castle

On By grainne proinseasIn Poetry, Uncategorized1 Comment

Luminous tiled pool of cerulean glass and gilt

German couple with selfie-stick, expanse of Pacific ocean blown out behind them

One black guy on the tour, wearing plaid shorts and matching shoes-                                     He’s the one who says “trident” when the guide asks “what does Neptune carry?”

Heavyset girlfriend with cat-eye frames to ponytailed burner/burnout journeyman boyfriend: “We should win the lottery and build a pool like this”                                              He responds “Yeah”.

My mom: “I wonder who polishes the silver?”                                                                     Another white lady about her age standing nearby: “Yeah, I don’t want that job.”