Social Realist Poetess Celebrates Birthday

Kevin Higgins

All is well. As the pundits predicted

over night she turned sixty.

The napkins have reported for duty.

The wine is unremarkable;

but the duck good;

the apple tree by the window

doing exactly what’s expected of it,

when her brother-in-law quips:

he thought by now she’d be in Stockholm

turning down the Nobel Prize.

The wine glasses stop moving.

Cousin Basil’s bow-tie eyes the exit.

The apple tree doesn’t know

where to put its face. The poetess

looks as if she’s about to grab

her best tweed hat,

and hurry off to address

a mass-meeting of teamsters,       

to reassure the brethren

that she will not rest

until the last evil postmodernist,

has been dispatched to a skull factory

the other side of Mullingar;

and when she’s finished

be carried shoulder high

by the horn honking brothers of Local 319

as she leads them in the chant:

Dreamers by Brigid Murray