Berni Dwan broadcasts about literature and history on Near FM 90.3. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Cránnog, Irish Times New Irish Writing, The Blue Nib, The Galway Review and Southword among others. Her Smock Alley Theatre shows Unrhymed Dublin (2016) and The Seven Ages; Like It or Not (2020) are observational. Her first poetry collection, Frankly Baby, was published by Lapwing Press in 2018. Berni came second in the Johnathan Swift Awards and was shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award. She is the recipient of two radio grants from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

Geisha

Again, the colour wheel turns full circle, forcing a new subtlety to
the shades of our humdrum domesticity. Answering the clarion, we
pick our hues with the diligence of apprentices in a
Florentine painter’s workshop. It is a Renaissance after all, a
rebirth of our household canvas; the true histories of wood and
plaster masked by fresh paint, like a geisha masked in oshiroi. We
imbibe the altered tones like Japanese tea tasters. Every splash of
red wine and coffee assume the flawless sheen of uniformity and
cleanliness. The sterile starkness erases all memory of scuff marks and
fingerprints. An eco-shift attends the proceedings – spiders expelled from
corners, silver fish forced into new redoubts, murmurations of
dust particles temporarily evicted. All

will be covered in the heady emulsion, except for the narrow strip on
the kitchen door recording the progress of your childhood growth.

That makeshift inch-ruler is sacrosanct.