Suppose

Jean O’Brien

Suppose that the hammer’s trajectory

had been a fraction more to the left,

the wind direction easterly instead

of west, or that he had turned his head

instinctively on hearing something

whoosh through the air, it would have been

a different story.

Suppose when I went into mother’s room,

excited, to show my latest trawl of tadpoles,

swimming their endless question marks

in the Mason jar, she had turned instead

and dashed them to the floor where they floundered

open mouthed and drowning in air, rather

than distractedly pushing me out

towards the door with a murmur of ‘Nice. Nice’.

Suppose I had not turned at the last moment

to see her raise her hand armed with a claw

hammer and heft it through the already cracked

glass pane of the window with a shout:

‘Now you’ll fix it, you bastard!’

I did, though –

and everything splintered and through

the gaping maw of the frame I saw

my baby brother sit quietly

in the garden, a red blanket under him

glass shards glittering all around like Chinese

luck money and just beyond in the long

grass, the hammer with its head and cleft

buried and rendered harmless.

Suppose my Father and Aunt had seen it

from my vantage point; and not what they thought

they saw, my troubled Mother fling a hammer

at my brother’s head, had I not froze, been

too shocked to talk, I could have told them.

The Doctor came and they gentled her out

into the waiting car. She returned weeks later –

eyes shattered, her speech hammered fragments.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 120:

Edited by Vona Groarke

Vona Groarke's final issue as editor is packed with new poems from leading contemporary poets, including Simon Armitage, Sinéad Morrissey, Colette Bryce, Paul Muldoon, Sean O'Brien and Caitríona O'Reilly. Books reviewed include new work from Derek Mahon, Bernard O'Donoghue, Rita Ann Higgins, Martina Evans, Denise Riley and the 2016 Forward Prize winner Vahni Capildeo. The centrepiece of the issue is an interview with Paul Muldoon in which the Armagh maestro shares his thoughts on subjects as diverse as public surveillance, the economic down-turn, and the exclamation mark. The cover image is by photographer Justyna Kielbowicz, and the issue also contains award-winning artwork from Sven Sandberg, Aoife Dunne, Jane Rainey, and Michelle Hall. Instead of an editorial, Vona herself answers the questionnaire she put to the contributors of Poetry Ireland Review Issue 118: The Rising Generation.