City Love Songs
Polis of nail-scissored green, Taiwan
electric blue guitars with tremolo arm
hocked before Rogation Sunday and
the final catalogue payment, of pledged
nine-irons and bullworkers, tough brown
carry-out bags, walk-ins welcome
at ‘The Head Gardeners’, of white
lemonade and black taxis and
pay no more than 30 a score
on lit subway and tenement walls
where they’ll sort lost ignition-keys
— continental models no bother —
out-of-any-hours, will have your SIM
unlocked and other services and off
before you’ve felt a mobile’s absence;
city where the celebrated Niagaran
funambulist would walk his last wire;
seething locus of the spare-a-dime
paradigm, source of lethal dejections
and active contrition, of wall-
to-wall licensed grocers, eat-as-
much-as-you-like Heavenly Buffet
and Alec’s Detox-ville Juice Bar,
shield each one of us (home
or away, straight and getting
straight, inside or out) with thy
unceasing patronage and forever
on account of her dress-rings
from earlier loves and the Gibson
Dobro mandolin we traded at
Joe Kavanagh’s ‘I-Buy-Anything’
(well before the incendiary
business) for a rough night-passage
to Heysham, I will hold your people in
the bleeding auricles and ventricles
of what passes, lately, for my heart.
from DIVERS: THE POETRY WORKSHOP ANTHOLOGY (Aark Arts, 2008). 2nd Prize, Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, 2005
Other Poems
Read more about Cahal Dallat’s poetry.
