by Kevin Higgins

after Ocean Vuong

Because the poodle’s polka dot collar
lying luminous at the bottom of the stairs
was an exclamation mark
discarded from a poem.
Because all your relatives
kept turning up — & the kettle
exploded from our over use.
So I gathered mouthfuls
of  soil, dark as an Iraq veteran’s toenails,
and spat it out
like crazy black toothpaste into
a bicycle helmet
little enough to keep safe
my idea of myself.
Because at the funfair I aimed
for the  target and failed
to win you the teddy bear
you would have named Jonah—
instead tore off for you
a leg of roast chicken
despite knowing
you’re vegan and only eat,
from the clay plate you knitted yourself,
the end result of photosynthesised light.
I will take you nowhere
but go everywhere myself
dressed like this.
Because I, too,
need an interpreter
to make sense of me
and pour my Chai tea. So I held my nose
with what I believed were
your fingers and leapt
into the seaweed bath, sawed open
the tin of tuna you brought me
and set all the fish free.
My mouth was a wound
that had healed over
and I could open it no more,
until I ran around the place
screaming in every
pair of shorts I’ve ever worn
& it was done.
& I was poetry.

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway. He has published five full collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008), Frightening New Furniture (2010), The Ghost In The Lobby (2014), & Sex and Death at Merlin Park Hospital (2019). His poems also feature in Identity Parade – New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010) and in The Hundred Years’ War: modern war poems (Ed Neil Astley, Bloodaxe May 2014). Kevin was satirist-in-residence with the alternative literature website The Bogman’s Cannon 2015-16. 2016 – The Selected Satires of Kevin Higgins was published by NuaScéalta in 2016. The Minister For Poetry Has Decreed was published by Culture Matters (UK) also in 2016. Song of Songs 2:0 – New & Selected Poems was published by Salmon in Spring 2017. Kevin is a highly experienced workshop facilitator and several of his students have gone on to achieve publication success. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Galway Arts Centre and taught Creative Writing at Galway Technical Institute for the past fifteen years. Kevin is the Creative Writing Director for the NUI Galway International Summer School and also teaches on the NUIG BA Creative Writing Connect programme. His poems have been praised by, among others, Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul, Observer columnist Nick Cohen, writer and activist Eamonn McCann, historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Sunday Independent columnist Gene Kerrigan; and have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times (London), Hot Press magazine, The Daily Mirror and on The Vincent Browne Show, and read aloud by Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published topical political poems in publications as various as The New European, The Morning Star, Dissent Magazine (USA), Village Magazine (Ireland), & Harry’s Place. The Stinging Fly magazine has described Kevin as “likely the most widely read living poet in Ireland”. One of Kevin’s poems features in A Galway Epiphany, the final instalment of Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series of novels which is just published. His work has been broadcast on RTE Radio, Lyric FM, and BBC Radio 4. His book The Colour Yellow & The Number 19: Negative Thoughts That Helped One Man Mostly Retain His Sanity During 2020 is just published by Nuascealta. Kevin’s sixth full poetry collection, Ecstatic, will be published by Salmon.