CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Naming It
Acts of Faith
Eeps
Come Live with Me
Without Me
For Stuart who Accidentally Obtained a Job in the Civil Service
Donegal
Festival Time
Games
Brinkwomanship
Here
The Amazing, Disappearing
The Second Mrs de Winter
Without Me
Without Me
The Miracle of F6/18
Without Me
On the Third Floor of the Royal Infirmary
When I was Sixteen I met Seamus Heaney
My Dream Mentor
Snow
Nocturne
Without Me
What You Get
Two Crossings
Doyne
Pet Deaths
A Pause
It’s a Wonderful Life
Bridges
bed poem
Perl Poem
Granite
The Franklin’s Tale
April, 7 p.m.
The Myth of Tea Boy
The Morning after Ruth’s Going-away Party
Holland
The Magician
Satis House
Boys
The Man with the Hatchet
For Lily Allen
It’s a Wonderful Life
The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled
26
By My Skin
Mangles
These Days
Acknowledgements
Copyright
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Epub ISBN: 9781446443958
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Jonathan Cape 2004
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Copyright © Leontia Flynn 2004
Leontia Flynn has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
Jonathan Cape
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
www.randomhouse.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
EPUB ISBN 9781446443958
For Karen O’Reilly
Some of these poems have originally appeared in Envoi, Fortnight, The Irish University Review, London Magazine, New Soundings (Blackstaff), Poetry Ireland Review, Product, Proof, The Shop and Staying Alive (Bloodaxe).
Acknowledgements are due to The Arts Council of Northern Ireland for a bursary in 2000 – which allowed me to purchase my computer – as well as, very particularly, to Belfast City Council for funding a residency at Annaghmakkerig in 2001, and to the British Council in Belfast for sending me to Budapest in 2003. I also have to thank my friends and family – and Lawrence Warnett for writing the code for ‘Perl Poem’.
Five years out of school and preachy
with booklearning, it is good to be discovered
as a marauding child.
To think the gloomiest most baffled
misadventures might lead so suddenly
to a clearing – as when a friend
taking me to her well-stocked fridge says:
look
this is an avocado and this
is an aubergine.
On my 24th birthday
my lungs close over, tight as a baby’s fist
round its first rattle.
It might be the Holy Ghost,
the disc of light skittering on the ceiling