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Selected Poetry by Oisín Breen

Photo Source: Public Domain Photos



The Fuchsia Tree


I am become the tender fuchsia tree,

As it sings its grapples upwards,

In delicate stretches,

Each soon to turn thick bark,  

Yet smooth to touch,

And bursting with flowers and fruit,

Its fullness unconcerned

By withered leaves,

           

And I am aware, too, of my seed,

How it opens to the tongue,

Leaving behind it only mingled air,

And a hint of citrus fruit,

Its taste a memory born in retrospection –


And this lightness is fantasy,

A near-knowing sense,

The thrill of turning you in my hands –


Yet I am always careful to thread the folds of your skin,

With only the blemishes that mark the rough edges of my own,

For I learned long-ago how to tease a play of fiction,

In the diurnal rest of a rabbit, sure of my caution,

As I carefully massaged its fragile neck.

 

And I am always careful,

For it is in the reaching

We are the most free.





Hunger in the Yarrow Stalk


I have left the city, and all I have ever known.

I have sold everything to fund my journey here.

Now I stand beside this small cabin

Of wattle and clay, one before me made.


I begged to be allowed to remain as I was:

An arbiter of annihilation

Rendered through shared flesh,

My hands deep in the gabble


Of the yarrow stalk,

But I had to change.

And now, I am not

What once I was.


Now, I have left the city behind,

And all I have ever known.

I have sold everything, and I stand here,

Now, near this cabin of spent history.


I have sewed a new garden fertilized by ash,

The remains of a scorched hive of bees,

And I offer their bodies as a sacrifice,

To ward off my wanting.


I tore up, too, the rows of plants that grew wild here,

Beans and peas, marrow, and fat bolting broccoli,

Because for peace, I must trade my fleshlust

For pregnancy, and my hunger is the seed.




Multiply award-nominated Irish poet and journalist, Oisín Breen is published in 140 journals in 24 countries, including Agenda, Acumen, the Irish Times, Books Ireland, Quadrant, Southword, North Dakota Quarterly and The Tahoma Literary Review. Breen has two collections, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín, a Scotsman poetry book-of-the-year, 2023 (Downingfield), and his well received debut, Flowers, All Sorts, in Blossom, Figs, Berries, and Fruits Forgotten (Dreich, 2020). Breen’s third collection, The Kergyma, is due out 2026 (Salmon Poetry).


If you are interested in learning more about Oisín, you can check him out on the following social media sites:

Twitter: @Breen

 
 
 
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