Four Poems by Edward O'Dwyer

Good Machine Cogs

Our clothes are Guineys’ finest,

our delusions of grandeur five-star

as we relieve would-be afternoon tea types

of your finest window table.

This time we’ll sit here until the end of the world,

we’ll gawk eternity away

at the engraved walls and antique furnishings

with our never-ending pot of tea (two tea bags, please!)

and pint of Mi Wadi orange.

You’ve known for the last time

the relief of watching us leaving.

Be good machine cogs,

remain polite, smile, keep curses under your breath

as we watch you expire.

We’ve nowhere else to be, nothing better

we could be doing between now and Rapture.

Without anything but the clothes on our backs

and the welfare cards in our pockets,

we’ll be the survivors of this that you could never be.

It’ll be us, styro-foam and the insects left

(and sooner than you might think)

when nothing remains of you

but name badges on uniformed skeletons.

In today's Geography lesson Miss Reynolds talks about the weather, and one girl, her pet, Tracy, sitting up the front, says it’s so unpredictable the last few years. She says you can have all four seasons in the space of four hours. As she does,

the April sun shines through the windows, alighting on her blue raincoat, resting on its peg. Miss Reynolds asks the class why that is. The question briefly silences the room, and Miss Reynolds likes this, beams at the students with the familiar look of satisfaction they know well as they think a way into her good graces, to perhaps be sent with the next message to the principal, or be asked to wipe off the board at the end of the school day. A boy in the second row, Brendan, raises his hand, and Miss Reynolds nods. ‘Yes, Brendan?’ ‘Is it something to do with global warning, miss?’ Miss Reynolds asks Brendan if he would mind coming to the top of the room and writing that on the board for the rest of the class, so he does, all in capitals. Just as his teacher had suspected he’d said, the children gaze at the words, ‘GLOBAL WARNING’, and Brendan returns to the second row, thanked by Miss Reynolds. In no hurry to correct the term, she asks the class what this means. Silence again; the look of satisfaction. Róisín, in the back row, raises her hand, and her teacher nods. ‘Yes, Róisín?’ Róisín is nervous, perhaps because she is answering a question with another question.

‘Has it something to do with God? Is He trying to tell us something important?’ Miss Reynolds smiles, looking about the room and noting the different facial responses of the class to Róisín’s revelation. Just then, though, the bell sounds for lunch. The room empties, and Miss Reynolds sits, consumes the apple given to her by Tracy.

Lip Balm

I am waiting for you,

and we have passed the point at which

your text should have arrived

to say you’ve been waylaid.

That’s not to say, though, that I am

becoming impatient, or that these minutes

are chipping away at my zeal

to see you arrive in the doorway. And

it’s not to say this is lost time,

even though my coffee cup is long emptied,

my short story by Kevin Barry long concluded,

the faces at the other tables all changed.

I imagine you brushing your hair,

ironing your work shirt.

I imagine you applying lip balm,

petting the dog next door.

I tell the enquiring waiter

that I’m okay for the moment, thank you;

that I’m waiting for someone to arrive

before making another order.

I imagine you’ll be all apologies,

arriving soon, perhaps short of breath,

but you needn’t have hurried,

you need only give me an eager kiss.

I really don’t mind waiting here,

articulating just what it means

to have you sitting in this other chair

and cocoa powder collecting in your lip balm.

Hope

Last week when she left you for the last and first time, slamming shut forever the book of your seven-week love story Cecelia Ahern won’t ever get around to writing, hope became an empty crisp packet on a street on a windy day. By now she’s probably half way down the aisle, getting hitched with that prick of a best mate you always knew fancied her and told her you weren’t good enough, her mother there in her most ridiculous hat yet thanking the heavens that it’s not you. You hold on to that image, though, that empty crisp packet blowing around in the street on a windy day, because, you suppose, that’s what you’re meant to do with hope. All you can do other than throw it away like trash.