IRENE CUNNINGHAM
-Writer-
AVAILABLE NOW!
from Amazon
TALKING to WALLS
Fresh today, July 2023, this is almost ancient Me tidying up the poetry pile, the poems that don't sit in little collections. Most of them should have left home years ago! So now they have their own mansion and it won't feel like I'm drowning in poetry here.
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SANDMEN: A Space Odyssey
Me...writing with
Diana Devlin
a mad poetry conversation published by Hedgehog Press 2019
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN
Available from Dreich Press
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN
Star City stretches its legs, land hungry
for love, anticipating sparkle, like
an engagement ring on a virgin’s hand.
Imagine the architect, his legs spread
as he leaned over the model growing
into his child, product of letting loose.
The tower shoots up, brilliant, looking to
fuck a goddess, always on, forever
the centre of attention. I step out,
and a small woman, dressed in a beggar’s
opera kind of way, pushes her face
in front of mine and breathes a starving breath.
She is dense, gives off no reflection, light,
but my eardrums echo with her white noise.
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First published in Riggwelter April 2018
Camera, my camera, phone. . . magic wand; you're the ultimate extension of my snap-happy mind. And, now I'm aglut with more images than I can handle in the few years left to me, yet, I still grieve for the ones I missed.
We sit at the feet of angels, 180 degrees of blue sky arched around us, pierced by blackened monuments all stretching their tall tales into the century. We eat lunch in the city of the dead.
AUDIO BOOKS
Here lies a reader's dust, powdering shelves. Now, she listens, eyes closed. Voices entice her into the magic – here is an extrovert developed into a sweet potato. Easy listening seduced her mind from the bound tales that ornament her walls. Here is where the gadgets are; here my niece Facebooked she'd passed a body being CPR-ed in the middle of her High Street. Here in this upstairs cave I'd fail to be my own hero, expire leaving a body in its birthday suit, spilled like a sack of dimpled oranges.
To hawks and hares we must be looming warriors, trampling across their world. August, I strode through long grasses, gazed off a cliff at lighthouses and ships, ignored bees busy all around me; gulls wheeled, crying at land-wise movement. September, back home at Loch Lomond, I watch a man in a wet suit, walk into the freezing water, and wonder at his future.