The current issue of Poetry Ireland Review is a special Yeats 2015 anniversary edition, edited by Vona Groarke, that features new work from Irish and international poets such as Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Sinéad Morrissey and Harry Clifton. Below is Rita Ann Higgins’s contribution.
It also includes responses to Yeats’s legacy and readings of his poems from a diverse cast of contributors, including Bill Whelan, Neil Jordan, Colm Tóibín, Frank McGuinness, Mary Costello and John Banville. The issue also includes Yeats’s poetry collections, reviewed by leading poets as if just published.
This edition is available for €16.50. A one-year subscription to Poetry Ireland Review and Trumpet is €38. A two-year subscription for both is €70. See poetryireland.ie.
The Bottom Lash
By Rita Ann Higgins
One that is ever kind said yesterday:
My dearest dear,
your temples are starting to resemble
the contents of our ash bucket
on a wet day.
What’s with your eyelashes?
They grow more sparse by the tic tock.
Are you biting them off
or having them bitten off,
like the lovers do during intimacy
in the Trobriand islands?
You have no bottom lashes at all.
Personally, I wouldn’t be seen out
without my bottom lash.
A bare bottom lash is tantamount
to social annihilation.
A word to the wise, my dearest dear,
the next time you lamp the hedger
you might ask him to clip clop
your inner and outer nostril hairs.
It’s not a good look for a woman.
By the by, doteling,
I’ve noticed the veins on your neck
are bulging like billio
when a male of the species
walks into the room.
Is that a natural phenomenon
or is it a practised technique?
Up or down you’ll get no accolades for it,
nor for the black pillows
under your balding eyes.
Apart from that, my dearest dear,
your beauty is second to none.
