Anne Donnellan attends the Kevin Higgins poetry workshops in Galway.

She has been published in the NUIG ROPES Literary Journal 2018 and 2019, A New Ulster, The Linnet’s Wings, Bangor Literary Journal, Boyne Berries, Poethead and Orbis.

She was a featured reader at the March 2019 “Over The Edge: Open Reading” in Galway City Library.

In-between time

When the lead load of slumber
deadens your waking
the burrow beckoning you
like the badger to its clay chamber

you crawl with your fear
eyes chilled behind blackened stripes
clawing at the slit string
of the muted music of touch
where everything seems stale

while listening for the beat of morning grazers
you tug at the spike of breakthrough light
the blush of courage steadying your sinews
to let the meadow freshness
nourish your heart
and scaffold the untrapped trail
of this new day.

Mother’s Momento

He lowered the dark wood case
from the top shelf of the parlour press
flicked its slim silver hook to lift the lid
reveal the green felt covered platter
gloss of hollow metal arm suspended
near recessed dish of thin steel needles

too young to work the music machine
his aunt stood up to turn the handle
move the groove for mother’s favourite tune
retrieved from its creased cardboard sleeve
she placed shellac “78” on rotating plate
let heart speeding step of the Clare set
dance in dust with the Tulla ceili band

on a rung beneath the wireless
the perspex electric record player dozed
with an eye for the precious
it was mother’s gramophone
her grandson choose

Pig Ring

Never one to show softness
my grandmother’s dented marriage band
revealed the grind of her time

her rose gold stuck in the metal of the pig’s nose
as she lobbed pounded potatoes on the trough
spilled with feed in the shed belly
she was swung by the swine
flung to stone like a bag of meal

she clung till the pig ring snapped
then gathered her galvanised bucket
steadied her stride home to cast iron pot
hooked from the kitchen fire crane
stirred boiling bacon for her bachelor sons

September Sunday night
when all were out in town
she died on the hob

it was hard to remove the ring
her skin beneath
was soft