DS Maolalai

FULL IN THE MOONLIGHT

full in the moonlight
we stand still
so shadows fall over
our bodies
like hot water
out of a showerhead
slicking our hairs. we are
weeping daffodils, heads
down against
any weather. we are
broken bricks in a half-
broken wall. worlds pass—
people going to bars,
making jokes, making points
about politics. tonight
there are so many stars.

LANDSCAPING. GLASS AND GREY.

walking from baldonnell
into the citywest village
and business park, this bright
friday evening, the ash-end
of february. two ducks overhead
whine like lawnmower rotors: they cross
from some field onto some
man-made pond shape, positioned
within man-made landscaping—
gentle hills and office buildings
in 2000s glass and grey, red brick
to detail and tired office workers
walking in herds toward the tram.

crossing the bridge of the N4
dual carriageway—seeing the world
curl like orange-peel up, as if the last man
to walk in an alien landscape
or a saxon discovering
rome built in south-eastern
england, discovering christianity.
a hand in my pocket and a hand
on the strap of my bag.

peace enters—I much prefer wildness
and cities, but admit they were right
when they put it together
out here on the empty-
land outskirts of dublin
for people to work and feel good in.
chemical factories and insurance
outbuilding call centres.
cafes for lunchtime. one bar.
a fine exhaust rising
from commuting vehicles
like a haze over water
which softens the shine
of the low-angled pissing in sun.

DS Maolalai is a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and after some years abroad, currently lives there, working as a maintenance dispatcher and writing poetry. He has received several Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, featured by RTE and has appeared in such publications as The Stinging Fly, Queens Quarterly, The Phoenix, Paris Lit Up, The North Dakota Quarterly, The Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, Ariel Chart and Grub Street, among many others. His work has also been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).