From Fothermather
An Apple Seed
apple cup & shell
I say these things to you I read them
from the book book book this is a
book you roll yourself to where
the sound must be to sound to word to thing
to me the mouth that sounds out sssssssshhhhhhhh
ell you watch my lips to see the shell
come out come out shell the shell
comes out & curls itself around the air
again the thing itself is waves
of sound for sound it is a swimming
moving to & fro vibrating shell
the peel & rind creaturely home upon a time
spacetime is soft-bodied
Einstein said the mollusk we are in a constant
flux the quantum world stretching twisting curving
your small body to my own your hands
against my lips your fingers on my tongue
what is that sound what currency
is this what vessel for existing
ssssssshhhhhhelllllllll
when you were still in shell we counted you
in days two cells on day one four the second day
six the third when you were placed
inside another room to make
your way an apple seed a blueberry an ear
of corn a coconut the day of shelling
came & went till two weeks on you flexed
we were two Sauls something like scales
something like shells were falling
from our eyes as out you came
you come out with a cry just like the aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh
of apple
Gail McConnell is one of the co-winners of the 2017 Ink Sweat & Tears/Café Writers Pamphlet Commission Competition and the pamphlet Fothermather is the result of that competition. She is a poet, literary critic and Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of Northern Irish Poetry and Theology (Palgrave, 2014) and articles on Irish and British poetry. Gail’s first poetry pamphlet is Fourteen (Green Bottle Press, 2018) and she is working on a book featuring ‘Type Face’, a long poem published in Blackbox Manifold concerning her experience of reading a Historical Enquiries Team Report about her father’s killing. Gail’s poems have appeared in Poetry Review, PN Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and Stand, and she is the recipient of two Arts Council Northern Ireland awards. A programme based on Fothermather will be produced by Conor Garrett and broadcast on Radio 4 in 2020.
Gail is featured in the panel discussion ‘Confinement: Exploring Feminist Perspectives’ at Poetry in Aldeburgh this evening and will be launching Fothermather at Cafe Writers in Norwich on Monday 11th November.
You can buy Fothermather here.