Love Poem, poems by Attracta Fahy
Attracta Fahy’s background is Nursing/Social Care. She works as a Psychotherapist, lives in Co.Galway, and has three children. She completed her MA in Writing NUIG in 2017, and participates in Over The Edge poetry workshops. Her poems have been published in Banshee, Poetry Ireland Review, Poethead, Coast to Coast to Coast, Orbis, Crossways, The Curlew, Impspired, North West Words, Honest Ulsterman, Four x Four, Boyne Berries, The Cormorant, Enthralled, The Blue Nib, Burning House Press, Elixir, Bangor Literary Journal, A New Ulster, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon, Fly on the Wall, and several other magazines, and journals at home and abroad. She has been included in The Blue Nib Anthology, shortlisted for 2018 Over The Edge New Writer of The Year, long listed for 2019, and a Blue Nib nominee for Pushcart. She was a winner in a Pamphlet competition and is working towards her first collection.
Love Poem
I dreamt you were a poem, a numinous sonnet;
held my breath in hope you would conquer
immurement, loss, love, reveal a truth, quell
the unbearable paradox of who I am.
A raw belly of words tried to articulate
allegories. I, lost in want, could not touch.
Where are your hands, feet, lips?
Already, you’d penetrated.
Even in retreat, love always wins.
Your verse an epiphany, needed nothing
more than to be. I envied your self love,
your sureness. My heart gave up its ghost,
found in the embrace, what love you offered.
I took your syllables, your lines, made them mine.
How Could I have Understood
abstract mysteries, coded Latin manuscripts,
sitting in my kitchen, the sun streaming through
skylight, spreading itself over the table
of books,
lost dreams recorded in journals.
How am I responsible for the worlds pain?
Guilt creeps into thoughts, through my body.
The serpent escaped from the rout of Dionsysus,
crawled up my spine, now I have degenerative
disease, my neck creaks when I move.
I carry the weight of ancestoral oppression,
my auto immune system reacts to our animal
nature, wild beast which lurks in depths,
instinct of original savage,
as we rape, plunder the earth.
I plea for release from this nonsense,
escape to beliefs, magical thoughts,
ecstasy, hope has become enemy.
Over the road cattle are moved,
calling familiarly into a new field,
their lowing prophetic.
In my garden I sow red, childlike tulips,
tear dropping fuscia, white annabelle
hydrangia, this is how I live now Prophet,
in your late arrival.
Andromeda Speaks
Perseus, I have been circling ocean cycles,
orbiting our galaxy of sky too long
to trust ideas.
My Grandmothers deformed their bodies
with corsets for ideals,
no longer a girl
the eye you can’t see from holds a different view.
The new I behind these eyes,
not driven with desire to please, walled woman
with her hands tied to rock will not be consumed,
I already befriended my sea monster.
Medusa,
willed you to find her in you.
She knows I paid with my blood.
Her stone face rides on the helm, our ship.
Don’t assume I am happy to serve a vacant
eyed role, or untie these hands until all deals
are off with my father. This handless maiden will
not be seduced into smouldering fire,
from her lone boat voice waiting to speak.
I will love on my own terms,
you already had mother, and I need a man,
not a boy.
Jupiter and Venus swing in gravitational pull,
mess earth’s stability,
togetherness held in polarity.
I look out from chrysalis, ripe with birth,
in search of a face, Jesus, the grail
groom of slippery fish, his constellation stale.
I’m ready to lead, your hand on my heart, a new
milky way,
and here I am with my cross,
walking to Calvary, my freedom,
falling down, and up again ready to love.
Now tell me again what you are offering, Perseus?
© Attracta Fahy