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Image by Annie Spratt

AN AITIUIL: AN ANTHOLOGY

with the martello journal

Runkerry Song

by olivia heggarty

This evening there is evening conversation
about lemon drop chilli jam, champagne
bottles spotted through the orange oil strip
of his window,
rabbits hung on the back of his granny’s door


but I never thought about birds being neighbours,
and the trees above are baubled with nests and the
crows are talking too —


and there is evening conversation about her
journey through mucky Runkerry hills in search
of tinfoiled Easter eggs that were never there
to begin with


but look! at the black lambs, and black slugs
on pilgrimages with knapsacks! They are pushing
their bellies over
the tough ground for Easter Sunday and their own
bodies are crosses!

I see now.

You can’t write poems in company —
it takes you out of the world.


But have you ever noticed that the sea does not fade
to black along with everything else this evening?
and especially not here,
and especially not now that I’ve written it so.

Olivia Heggarty is a poet from Belfast. Her work can be found in Horizon Magazine, Dublin Poetry Magazine, Catatonic Daughters, Abridged and forthcoming in Skylight 47. She was a UniSlam first runner-up in 2022.

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