Mary Madec has a B.A. and M.A from NUI, Galway and a PhD from The University of Pennsylvania.
She has published poems here and abroad and in 2008 she won The Hennessy Prize for Emerging Poetry.
In 2010 her first collection, In Other Words was published by Salmon Poetry.

Diptych

If I were an artist I’d draw Demeter looking back,
Persephone stretching out like a light beam
into Spring.
Demeter like Lot’s wife
shadows in the salt,
her strained moist eyes
bright as the candle of winter
flickering on the thin outline of herself,
the white x-ray of her bones,
pale tissue in which throbs her dreams—
out of which come her sobs and screams.
Persephone comes back to Demeter
with her old juices,
claims her so she might live,
dollops of tears, swarovskis on lupins

Persephone: Coming of Age

At the end of the Spring season, she plays in the ragged grasses
clumpy, uneven, wet like the hairs on the mount of Venus,
the sentinel peaks rising in the distance
by the tender early light, now her breasts;
in the waters of the inlets her arms and legs
stretch like promontories.
She is aware of the suck and tug of the earth
taking her into itself, into its dark folds.
When she thinks of her hips, they are a boat
carved out of an old apple tree she remembers.
She longs for a river; she would give herself to its bed,
its mud and stones like flesh and bones.
And she knows, as a salmon knows, that she would go with it
into the dark places water flows, on its way to the sea.

First Kiss

“Maybe this is what a friend means
When she says there is a pair of lips
In the air, maybe this is desire and need too”   Mark Cox

Those lips in the air move like velvet and sponge
to make words, round up vowels,
explode plosives into the quiet morning;
backed by gutturals they do the labial stuff
your tongue peeping to lick them off
and reward them for their work.
The angle in your eye which brings your gaze to mine
sends my lips off to float too like a red line
in a white sky, a kite let loose on a summer’s day.
You put your fingers up to cover them
as if to hide your secret intention,
as if to restore them back on your face
and me mine on mine;
a pause for thought, a breath—
not ready yet for that first kiss.

Soon it will be Winter

and Demeter does not know what she hates most
about the change—her straw hair, her broken nails,
a shrivelling up inside, no blood rain,
insomnia as she tosses her tired head this way and that.
She thinks of Persephone, the daughter she fed
and is jealous of those pert little breasts,
those eyes, reminding her of another bed
where she was desirable as a wife.
She can feel her sagging eyes
stretched into crows’ feet as she smiles.
There is no sap inside her anymore,
a grayness rising up through  her thighs.
Persephone is wet with smiles
her soft legs parting for Hades.

Afterthought

Is this age, not knowing
if you are still fit for purpose
when purposes change?
You wonder what remains
when love is force of habit,
forgotten immortelles,
each morning’s doily of burnt milk,
the knife wounds on the bread board,
the dry crumbs
remind you that
you value too little ordinary sustenance,
distrust the thin lip of your teacup,
the mouth’s need of them,
your embarrassed, tired, empty arms,
your thighs’ rawboned descent,
the skin falling ever so slightly away
from your arms,
separating muscle and fascia.
If this is wisdom, you think, it is only
the echoes of voices gone
and insight gained which remains.
And blood might halt your thoughts
when you tilt your head
so you can’t remember,
as you struggle across the river
to the other side of the kitchen.

Autumn Evening

“God does not leave us
comfortless so let evening come”  Jane Kenyon

Now I wonder why I kept telling her to go,
that she had my permission,
why I ever thought it was mine to give.
I was the midwife for her soul,
coaching her through the labour
of breathing, her lungs filling up
like a tidal pool full of seaweed.
I gave myself to the intimacy
of her clammy hand and her sweaty head
on the pillow; somehow it seemed
like I was wiping up a great athlete
on the homerun
I didn’t think very much of how it would be
when it was all over
as one thinks little of the closing of day,
the sun slanting through the window
from behind the alder
the wind rising; the leaves trembling
the darkness chasing all living creatures
t search for comfort.
It will come. It will, I tell myself
Which is why I said, Go!