Lit-zine
JU
Sadness sketched
on the side of the moon
Drinking with Geologists
By
Diarmuid ó Maolalaí
was always good
because they always picked
such strange things
to argue about.
I'd never have known
otherwise
there'd be controversy over conglomerates
worth hashing out
over an entire night
until everyone's too drunk
to talk
and got distracted instead
arranging beermats into sandcastles.
or that there could be a difference
between prehistoric insects
that'd leave two people
sniping
for the best part
of a round.
they're mostly phds
and very clever
or at least
good at arguing
about things that make them seem so -
better than my undergrad
english class were,
anyway,
who used to get drunk
and only talk about boring shit
like poems
and what you could even
do with them anymore.
Sadness sketched
on the side of the moon
the night is a hospital;
cool under cold sheets
and people
are lonely
outside
and smoking away their nervousness.
and in the cafes too
everyone is tired,
staff working late
serving coffee and biscuits
and workers
looking for a latenight pickmeup.
people
walk home without eachother
or together
or so drunk
they can barely talk.
the flesh is all tired,
wore out,
fagged
and beaten up as washing
tangled on a line
and tore through with wind
and sparrowshit. you go out,
look around
and see sadness sketched on the side of the moon
and men pushing brooms
on their own
inside shop windows.
the night is a hospital;
people walking around
hugging themselves,
sleeping
or waiting
for someone to go to sleep.
Kool
every soldier
politician
or cop on the street
of a certain age
in Ireland
once sat at that schooldesk
and drank
out of those boxes of milk
they gave us all in primary school
with that damn
fucking
cow on the backside
above some pun
about milk being good for you;
same 6 all the time
someone sat down to write them,
sat down
6 times
to draw
a cow in a sports car
looking cool
wearing sunglasses. Kool Milk
they called it. if you wound up right
you could get a box
all the way across the room. we all did,
even me, one of the good boys.
I knew
when I was being patronized to.
anyway
that's why I can never respect
any policeman
or politician
who looks
less than 5 years
older than me.
DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press.
He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.