I still see you fold in half, one leg ballerina-
raised for balance as you bow into the wooden
barrel for next day’s flitch of bacon.
My brother wears his cowboy suit – black hat,
leatherette waistcoat with fringes across
the chest; his gun holster buckle the Lone Star.
Meat steeps in a bowl of water overnight.
Salt liquefies, spume rises and floats while
you sleep in a house of thunder, moths’ furred
bodies pattering the whore-red glow of
the sacred heart lamp on the kitchen
window, The Virginian’s gun under his pillow.
You slice bacon with your loneliness, the air
marbled various auras of sad – dawn, midnight,
August, the long years of your love like
starlight’s colossal dying, John Wayne
at the kitchen door, I’m the sheriff ‘round here.
Hands in the air, an’ nobody gets hurt.
Breda Spaight’s poetry is published or forthcoming in The SHOp, Acumen, The Ofi Press, The Burning Bush 2, Literature Today (India), and other Irish journals. Her debut novel God on the Wall received broad critical acclaim. She was a guest reader at the Paris Book Fair (2002).