Poetry: Selections from Alison Hackett

A Decade of Pilates

I’ve tried it all, yoga,

Pilates, Feldenkrais,

the gym, Amatsu,

and the hands of my

husband on my back.

But the one I’ve come

back to is Pilates,

especially the hundred.

Supine, lift the head,

clench the abdomen,

engage the core, hover

stiffened arms and paddle:

one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten;

one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

It feels like beating out

a decade of the Rosary,

not what I was taught

not the right words

but, oh yes, the rhythm:

hail Mary mother of grace,

blessed art thou amongst….

women? sinners? virgins?

something, something Jesus

in the hour of our death,

and the chant carries on

stiffening the soul

and forever the core.

I and Thou

Her attack blindsides me. Out of no-

where. Words wing, hurl,

hook, find purchase

in my belly. My back crumples.

 

I’m tripping over myself, apologizing

for oversharing (was it?) on the phone,

the fucking phone. I should throw

it into the sea, let it sink to the bottom,

go rust ugly, leak titanium onto

barnacle-crusted rocks, kill limpets

clinging on, poison hermit crabs.  

And after that I’ll relearn the skill

of presence, the visual cue, the soft

knowledge of a subtle gesture, a touch

on the arm, the glue of friendship,

the I-and-thou of eye to eye.

 

(Later, we find it was all a cock-eyed,

blind-alleyed trail of miscommunication,

from beginning to end. Forgiveness, friend.)

Sentient

Flick the black ball of fuzz from the sofa.

It lands in an empty mould of a box of chocolates,

buzzing in its sweet-slot, like a tiny wind-up toy

or battery-driven thing. Jabs of adrenaline

when you go closer to find it’s a living lumbering

bumble bee. Did it hitch a ride on this frozen day,

from popup shop downtown, to inside here,

your home? You don’t want to do it, but demand

it must be done; with a torn piece of paper

he presses gently until it stills in its snug plastic

grave. Later, you sit leaning against him,

his hands on your back, your I and thou

of touch when your vision snags on a dark

and fuzzy thing on the floor beside you.  

 

Feel the sting of precognition in a bee that

climbs from its grave, falls from a table,

crawls across a carpet, homes in on you

again. Press down on its soft humped buzzing

rotund self until you hear the mildest snap

of its back. Tenderly, lay it in the empty fire grate

so dust and ash cling to its soft dark hair. Want

it not to be a killing, but a planned push

to pass them through their Zen phase of bee,

to bird or bear or colt, on their way to the infinite.

Watching Him Through a Glass Eye

She places the webcam pointing at the sofa

so she can watch his purr-laden sleep while

back in the office, still fearful he’s unwell.

She envies his freedom from the agitation

of her wakeful state at work. The cam can’t

hear the hum of the fridge, nor see its light,

unsealed when the door opens in a Schrödinger-

moment of minute decay, food rotting in spores

of warmer air; she thinks of the wet-cold

dank it emanates, counterpoint to Bug

rubbing warm against her, his scent clinging

in a swathe of static to her trouser-leg,

the feel of his velvet fur unfelt through the cam’s

glass eye. She doesn’t know she can’t hear

the smoke alarm emitting a feral beep

every twelve seconds as the battery fails.

N.

Waking to the aching query of your absence

and my one-sided conversation with you

that the paint colour must be white and only white.

I pick Arctic Blonde remembering your laugh

telling me the time you painted the whole house

in Death White. Your paean to Dublin: these

hummocky hills are your hills, a topology of vast

dominion underpinning city, your city, your buildings.

 

On the ferry for Wales I slip from the harbour

marvelling at low mud flats and old marker buoys

channelling us to places the Vikings first saw.

Two days before you go, I send you a message.

Dearest N. Thought I heard you fly by last night.

Must have been a crane. Or maybe an owl.

Alison Hackett is the director and founder of the publishing house 21st Century Renaissance and author of The Visual Time Traveller, which was selected by an international jury for the Global Irish Design Challenge exhibitions of 2016 and 2017. Her work has also been featured on the website of the Irish national broadcaster (RTE) as “poem of the day” and in Crossways Literary Magazine, Delmarva Review, The Nonconformist Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, The Rail, Afloat.ie, and numerous other literary journals in Ireland, India, Australia, and the U.S. She has a BA from Trinity College Dublin.