Illustration © Kaitlynn Copithorne
A d v e n t 1
Feast of St Padre Pio
The date escapes me. I conflate
the years because time is out
of hand, off-handed children
at the park, a remark made to the effect
of having my hands full. No shit
I’ll say it once. The mom-a-sphere isn’t
keen on my internalized thoughts.
Turns out the poetry isn’t either. It’s
not good for it. Not good for me.
I think there’s a pill to cure that.
According to the GP, mental health is
like a garden. Tend to it. Genius.
And, you know, there’s always condoms!
He’s not looking at me really. The last time
that happened—could have been last
week, last year. Have I been here in
hiding since (in your poems)?
The baby is crying.
As good an excuse as any to end
the poem.
A d v e n t 2
Feast of St Rose of Lima
What to say when there is little—
of meaning other than
present tense:
this is the modality
of motherhood. Start and—
stop again, to live again. Repeat
in threes, necessary for toddlerdom—
a kingdom of totality.
We have changed our language to suit its Reign.
of Terror? Sometimes. Of toddling? Almost
never. Add it to The List no one tells you.
Meanwhile, the clothes dry on a line.
That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Brain-dead—
on arrival, something something domestic poem?
or—
the shirt’s back snaps its slack...
even stealing no long illicits excitment.
Can’t even get that right.
A d v e n t 3
Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St John Lateran
In this part of the world
it gets dark by five
up three flights of stairs
even darker still
the attic flat catches
the rain in lashes
the after birth
A d v e n t 4
Feast of St Crispin
Where have you gone
but here embodied
I die a million deaths
for whom it is not
enough to want to want
abandonment in half-tones
all I can do do all I can
A d v e n t 5
Feast of St Cloud
You have taken them to your mothers’
again— to give me space—
from what I— me, a the
of I? lost my— eye
cry.
. . .
It’s like Stockholm syndrome—
little pants hanging from the line
waiting for little bodies. It makes sense
only now, the empty shoe or glove
forgotten. Who forgets a shoe?
Even I, brain-split, cannot forget
the shoe! But the crying—
paralysis illicited. But still—
life-giving, out-of-the-womb stuff.
We emerge with a battle cry. Good
indication of things to come.
You can’t win— not a dry I
in the house, not a peaceful sleep
to come by, to be roused
like Adam—ondi-Ahman.
A M B E R
Driving through the Valley
a little grey fleck of tin
amidst an overpouring of green—
an outpouring of rain, too
as we wind our way through Law.
I can’t help it; we’re out-laws here
and the ol’ in-law joke. It works
because I have decided they are travellers.
It’s not every day you visit a caravan.
Our five-seater hatchback groans
its way onto more gravel; we are in a toy car
with my toy children. We should be towing something
but instead, I’m sure I’ve left something behind.
A salad warbles in the front seat
where I should be sitting but,
ever the pragmatist, this is precious time—
wedged in the middle-back between my two babies.
I can think here. No, I can rest my eyes here.
We are greeted by an unhappy face
as ours omits childish grins for hedging our bets;
we aren’t from around here but have a reason to be
wherever here is. The law is different in Law:
people live in caravans. People wear sandals
in muddy pastures. People skip nap-time
and shower outside and keep mangy dogs
with names like ‘Tink’. Amber arranges wild flowers
on an oil-clothed table. Her husband, the boxer,
picked them from the hills because it’s her birthday.
And this is what 23 looks like in a caravan in Law:
two babies under two, chubby-fingered, doddling;
a citrus cake in the oven of a micro-kitchen.
It is open-planned in an unplanned way
this commitment to the mystery of life.
The sink isn’t attached to the wall and,
for whatever reason, this thrills me: what might happen?
We never find out because I don’t want to miss anything.
The Welsh beauty in her element, baby abreast,
a trapeze artist from her hip—light caught in amber:
the Baltic gem, sheer dress, slender calf.
Molly Vogel received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize in 2014. In 2017, she won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust and her first collection Florilegium was published by Shearsman in 2020. A series of her poems appeared in Carcanet’s New Poetries VI (2015), and her poems have appeared in several publications including The Dark Horse, PN Review, and Agenda.