Noel King was born and lives in Tralee. His poems, haiku, short stories, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in thirty-five countries. His debut collection, Prophesying the Past, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2010. His second, The Stern Wave is due in 2013. He has edited more than fifty books.
Cable
On the poetry channel
Eve takes instruction
on how to make a sonnet.
Yesterday they showed how to do haiku
and she wrote three last night.
When Jim comes in from work
she will show him them,
Jim will say, very nice dear, but while
she’s polishing it she’ll hear
the football channel cracking her ear space.
Jim is encouraging of her writing
or is it that he just wants sex.
Tomorrow, the poetry channel say
they will move onto the Sestina.
In bed with Jim, Eve dreams
that one day she will be a famous poet.
Plunderers
My bookshop…!
My books…!
Get out you bastards!
But they barge through
to their section: ripping,
plundering, angry black faces,
while we stand fear-white.
Neo Nazi’s push us around
into a corner, snigger and leave.
But literature stands above,
a testament to truth,
soon re-ordered, re-stocked.
Rywanda
In the village of Kamura
women gather after the main
family meal, after an hour of preparing,
cooking, a day of tilling the fields
and turn in an hour hand-crafting
weaves of baskets that will earn
them one euro a day, which makes me
think it equalises what I earn from poetry.
The Consultant’s Condom
She asked if my hairs were growing again,
whether it hurt pulling the bandages off?
If this was the case, she assured me,
one of the nurses could re-shave my groin.
I tell her I’m fine, really, watch her arse
depart, searching a knicker line in the glow
of her white coat, wonder if she’s reached
the big 3. 0. yet?
Later…
she slips a condom into my hand,
steps from her white coat, a slip, her bra,
touches my left hand and I wake up…
right hand by her pussy,
finding her there, over my bed,
with two students trying to keep
their expressions professional.
The Galway Review 