All The Men I Never Married No.15
Remember that night we’d been out drinking
and on the way home heard raised voices,
saw a couple across the road, arguing, leaning
towards each other and then he slapped her,
once, across the face then turned and walked away.
She stood there for a while and then she followed,
down Rawlinson Street as the lights from passing cars
fell on her, then swept on by. We didn’t call out
or phone the police. We didn’t speak, not to her
or him or to each other. When we got home
we didn’t talk about the woman in the denim skirt,
holding her white shoes by the straps. I wasn’t
close enough to see her feet, yet I remember them,
the blackened soles from walking on the pavement,
the sore on the heel where the strap had rubbed
and raised a patch of red. We did not speak of her
and so we made her disappear, limping into the night,
trying to keep up with that man, who knew she’d follow
so did not turn around, hands thrust into his jeans,
front door key hot between his fingers.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 119:
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 119 includes new poems by 48 poets including Frank Ormsby, John Kinsella, Rachel Coventry, Aifric Mac Aodha, Gerald Dawe, Alice Miller and Claire Potter. Also included are translations by Richard Begbie and Kirsten Lodge, an essay on Bishop, Lowell, Heaney and Grennan by David McLoghlin, and reviews of Paul Muldoon, Paul Durcan, Sarah Clancy, Medbh McGuckian, Kate Tempest, George the Poet, and many more. The issue also features photography by Hugh O'Conor, Dominic Turner, Sheila McSweeney, Fergus Bourke and John Minihan.