Eóin Flannery September 2024
Let the last beat stop,
rewind and undo itself,
return us to the first heartbeat
of our meeting.
Ringing clearly on
a sound-belt of touches.
We sit under a gallery of lanterns,
easing skin onto skin,
an embrace through which
each beat echoes and blends,
so there is no telling which beat
strikes first.
Turning a corner into my eyeline,
you are
the curve of the street.
It follows you,
obeys your mercury.
And, there, there is the foreglow,
a blaze
that swims towards me.
Your stride takes me with it,
tallies our hours.
Each step brings us closer to
the indolent love,
fumbled into life by the
arching back
of a sleepwalking river.
Until a new light flocks up
and out from your eyes,
unshadowing a landing ground.
Eóin Flannery is a writer and critic based in Limerick, Ireland, and he is Associate Professor of English Literature at Mary Immaculate College. He has published 12 books of literary and cultural criticism. His poetry has appeared in The Galway Review and Vita and the Woolf Literary and Arts Journal, and is forthcoming in Inkfish Magazine and The Hog River Press. He is working on a collection of poems entitled, Unshadow.
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