Suddenly a poem hits her on the wing,
pricks her nose, tightens her throat.
Its spontaneity makes her mind sing
rising from lines with a sudden ring
of truth after years of learning verse by rote
at school with little heed to its meaning.
She’s stunned a lyric can bring
this feeling, charge her being like a note
that speaks to her soul’s inflecting;
didn’t expect he could make her eyes sting
thought it the claim of the urbane who gloat
about books they’ve read, years of learning
to infer the arcane a poet is saying
yet it took just a minute to be smote
by his buoyant delight in his muse, sipping
a Coke with his lunch while scribbling
lines of giddy desire that dote
on his date whose charms are reaching
past all the world’s portraits, retreating.
Emily Cullen
Emily Cullen is a Galway-based writer and the Meskell Poet in Residence at the University of Limerick, where she lectures on the MA in Creative Writing. She has published three poetry collections to date: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003). Conditional Perfect was included in The Irish Times round-up of “the best new poetry of 2019”. Emily holds a PhD in English from the University of Galway. Twice nominated for the Pushcart prize, her poetry explores themes of history, social justice, ecology, music and the female experience.
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