Poetry: Selections from DS Maolalai

Banana vodka

I remember you telling me

around 1am

I was starting to mix up

some synonyms. and the party had run

out of beer and nice wine

so celene brought out bottles

of dodgy thick liqueurs

you pick up on holiday

and leave to go dusty

somewhere in the back

of a cabinet. caramel rum,

banana rum, vodka

and things of that nature.

and we'd made them

a drinking game,

because that's what you do.

them, and something else –

cards against humanity,

which (even sober)

I can't ever stand. I prefer, I admit,

to hear rape jokes done freestyle,

and that’s if I must

have them be done at all.

and anyway, I remember

I was talking a bit (or I thought

I was talking) and pointing,

calling it a dullards game

for dullards. there were some people there

who didn't know me –

I believe they were even

offended! I admit, not the most witty

of remarks – but I'd been losing badly; drinking a lot

of the banana vodka. we got in a taxi afterward and I tried

to make conversation

with the driver – also a mistake

at 1:30am. you brought me home

and put me to bed

and in the morning you made coffee.

it was my friend's party. I'd brought you

as a guest. I don't know why

I didn't behave better. I promise that next time I will.

Tarmac

fog floats over fields

in the undeveloped country,

and the frosty white hairs

of grass in a crunch under dawn.

driving to the baldonnell

newly-built business park,

I turn off the naas

road to roundabouts.

loop over a bridge

past brownsbarn.

 

the sun is a hump

on horizons behind me,

like boats coming – ghost-

ridden horses on hills.

and the ground clings

with ghosts too, though roads

are all clear – tarmac

warms early, cuts changes

through weather

to build. a truck

just ahead holding boxes

of bricks makes a turn

to the left. I follow it,

blinking and indicating.

I tend toward a snipe

being told by my girlfriend

that I'm slightly a snob. not a snob

like for class – more like for

personalities – for my friends

and the people

you meet. I suppose

that it's true, as it goes

in these things.

I tend, I admit,

toward a snipe

at an unmoving target.

 

tend to be shitty,

though mainly toward people I like.

it doesn't make me popular

where kindness is valued

but sometimes I'm seen,

I suppose, as a wit

or just want to

and see opportunity.

perhaps I'm a bully as well,

you could say –

 

though I think that I don't

target weakness beyond

the oblique. I'm not though,

I tell her, and then, of course,

cannot resist: after all,

look at how long

I've gone out with you.

Carrot flowers

there's a party upstairs

and I'm down here alone

in the dark typing poems,

drinking wine. I feel it like carrots

must feel leaves, carrot-

flowers. like garlic

feels those strange

globes they make.

The vineyard

jack walks past

poppy stems.

pinches, breaks pods.

says he doesn't know yet

how to make wine of opium,

but intends to find out

and to try it –

my garden is nothing

but red standing flowers.

 

he holds out the basket

and promises bottles

which I know I won't drink

but will compliment anyway.

I just like colours

and sowed them for the bees –

never thought someone

would harvest. over us, sun settles

 

bent like a poppy,

reddened and round

like a poppy. the news

says pollution

is much worse this year –

it's been making

some wonderful

sunsets.

DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, Noble Rot was released in May 2022.