Remembering the Saucer
“The table is round
And so is my memory”
Pierre Reverdy
Flowers conspire in the fireplace
Casting apricot cups that spit
Emptiness into this sad room.
Books bloom. A science project
Unfurls in the window its miniature blue
Forest in the unforgotten saucer.
Don't bother.
The girl who cleans will be in Thursday.
She'll toss the pillows like babies
Into balloons of conversation, so light,
Repartée will catch in the squint
Of sun, its backward escape
Through the blind. The study
Will be aired out of memory. Acrobatic,
Dust bunnies will cartwheel
Under the liquid tool of the shadow
Your body (embraceable broom)
Abandons, pulling you onto your feet.
Jamie O’Halloran’s poems appeared most recently in The Honest Ulsterman and Spillway. The poems here are part of The Visible Woman, an unpublished chapbook manuscript. She participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project this past January, through which first drafts of her poems were posted daily for the month. Her poetry reviews are in or forthcoming in Lit Pub and Tupelo Quarterly. Jamie and her husband live in Connemara in the West of Ireland with one pair each of cats and donkeys.