The Ofi Press Magazine

Poem by Annemarie Ní Churreaín, Ireland (Published in Issue 26)

Hit Delete

Delete this:

the first kiss in a crowded room,

the poem that came after,

the tea-shop meeting,

the book returned months later

with a dried rose between the pages,

the booze, the stolen cigarette moments,

the party where he called me a bleached angel

and I stroked his beard,

the scarves he wrapped me in

on nights when we walked home from bars

half-drunk on each other,

always leaving something behind.

In fact, delete his whole scarf collection,

I never liked it much that a man had so many

and the lovemaking in the mornings

in a Georgian room, the awful, half moth-eaten,

fold-out bed, the green blanket,

the songs, the videos, the books,

the printed words, the said words, the dreamt words,

the day I crashed my car on the N7

thinking of his soft, tweed cuffs

and then the soup, the tea, the sympathy

– all of that too, the wedding

we didn’t go to, the places that we did,

that friend of his with the red hair (whatever his name is)

all his friends, fans, foes, I was sick listening anyway

and his home-made pinhole cameras,

his firelighter flames, his lamb curries,

his ironic fascination with vampires,

delete the whole of London.

--

Annemarie Ní Churreáin was born in 1981. She grew up in the Donegal Gaeltacht and now lives in Dublin. She is a graduate of the M.Phil in Creative Writing at the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin.

Annemarie’s work has been published in Ireland and abroad. Some of the publications in which her poems have appeared are; Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Shop Poetry Magazine, The Burning Bush, The London Magazine, The Morning Star Newspaper and The Chattahoochee Review.

In 2011, she was chosen by Agenda Magazine as a Young Broadsheet Poet, and she was shortlisted for the Erbacce Press poetry prize. She is a founding member of the Upstart Arts Collective in Dublin. Annemarie is presently working on her first poetry collection.