Two Poems
The Rubric of Shared Love
We tell each other tall stories,
And drink together to furnish our loving,
To turn our dreams into fact,
And spur us to undress – again – and lie together.
We whisper fantasies of reaching
The bliss of birds, because we know
The truth of everything is the truth of being,
Of seeing and doing and knowing.
And again we turn to the old manoeuvres
Of putting one foot after the other,
Of being glad the other is always there,
Of life, shared unto life,
Cognisant, and full of daydreams,
Breathless and still in the permanence of joy.
Spring Shift
There she sat,
All tawny like,
And I examined her hair,
The way a veterinarian checks a horse’s teeth.
And I asked myself,
When considering an affair,
If I thought her head was too small,
Not whether I loved her.
She’s also nearly married.
I met him.
And all I could think of was his teeth.
I met her, and I could not think.
And I want her, but not like he does.
I just want to taste her and please her,
Then the next, and the next.
Yet behind my hunger,
Is a dissonant beat,
Water falling, and a change
Imbued with spring.
Oisín Breen is a poet, part-time academic in narratological complexity, and financial journalist. Dublin born Breen’s widely reviewed debut collection, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom, figs, berries, and fruits, forgotten’ was released Mar. 2020 by Edinburgh’s Hybrid Press.
Primarily a proponent of long-form style-orientated poetry infused with the philosophical, Breen has been published in a number of journals, including the Blue Nib, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, Modern Literature, La Piccioletta Barca, the Bosphorus Review of Books, the Kleksograph, In Parentheses, Kairos, and Dreich magazine.
