A new poem from Rita Ann Higgins, in response to WB Yeats

The current issue of Poetry Ireland Review is a special Yeats 2015 anniversary edition, edited by Vona Groarke, that features new work from Irish and international poets such as Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Sinéad Morrissey and Harry Clifton. Below is Rita Ann Higgins’s contribution.

It also includes responses to Yeats’s legacy and readings of his poems from a diverse cast of contributors, including Bill Whelan, Neil Jordan, Colm Tóibín, Frank McGuinness, Mary Costello and John Banville. The issue also includes Yeats’s poetry collections, reviewed by leading poets as if just published.

This edition is available for €16.50. A one-year subscription to Poetry Ireland Review and Trumpet is €38. A two-year subscription for both is €70. See poetryireland.ie. 

The Bottom Lash

By Rita Ann Higgins

One that is ever kind said yesterday:

My dearest dear,

your temples are starting to resemble

the contents of our ash bucket

on a wet day.

What’s with your eyelashes?

They grow more sparse by the tic tock.

Are you biting them off

or having them bitten off,

like the lovers do during intimacy

in the Trobriand islands?

You have no bottom lashes at all.

Personally, I wouldn’t be seen out

without my bottom lash.

A bare bottom lash is tantamount

to social annihilation.

A word to the wise, my dearest dear,

the next time you lamp the hedger

you might ask him to clip clop

your inner and outer nostril hairs.

It’s not a good look for a woman.

By the by, doteling,

I’ve noticed the veins on your neck

are bulging like billio

when a male of the species

walks into the room.

Is that a natural phenomenon

or is it a practised technique?

Up or down you’ll get no accolades for it,

nor for the black pillows

under your balding eyes.

Apart from that, my dearest dear,

your beauty is second to none.