To Stability
The consultants agree
your latest bloods and lung function indicate
stability; that you’re likely to remain
disastrously alive
as a toothache buzzing like an electric saw
applied to your wide-awake jaw,
alive as a spinal injury
that’s an iron claw
shrieking your name
across a white white wall,
alive as a screaming knee
which had to be taken off
in the back of an ambulance
with what felt like a football boot
still stuck in it, alive
as a folksinger made pluck his guitar strings
with fingers smashed in by hammers;
left to come up with some other solution
to the problem of you being you
and this being it.
Kevin Higgins was born in London and lives in Galway, Ireland. In 2016 The Stinging Fly magazine described Kevin as “likely the most read living poet in Ireland. His poems have been quoted in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, and read aloud by film director Ken Loach at a political meeting in London. He has published five poetry collections, and a New & Selected, with Salmon Poetry. His sixth collection Ecstatic is published in March by Salmon.