after Eavan Boland’s ‘Tirade for the Epic Muse’
Your mouth’s a bone. You switch and tic.
In my kitchen, in my epic,
Wretch, find peace
bone-headed witches . weaving their rat spells
in an iron cauldron . off with their heads .
catching shrimp in a fish net . winding
holy faces into shrouds of nightingale gauze .
the dead ships go back and back . the centre
of a poem is yours . a servant’s chore .
to follow the long stringed path through a castle’s
green shrubbery . all that galley funk . incest .
mother love . black sails . herringbone
awash with evil’s blood . what a monster song .
all your splashy smarts awash with long coats
and rifle buttons undone . like shiny sons .
who will name the on and . on of an epic’s vanity .
its stretched limo . Irish guns . poor little widow .
take back what you said about the day’s winnowing .
the three-cornered hat is a dance . find a kitchen
and its lino spoor . find another match little girl .
moon in the boiler room . no woman there . just go
Jennifer Harrison has written eight books of poetry, most recently Anywhy (Black Pepper 2018). A new book Sideshow History will be published in 2023. She manages The Dax Poetry Collection housed at The Dax Centre at The University of Melbourne. The poem “Monster” is from a collection in progress titled After. Echoes, which features poems that respond to the work of Irish poet, Eavan Boland (1944-2020). Jennifer received the 2012 Christopher Brennan Award for sustained achievement in Australian poetry.