“Disarticulation” and other poems by Clare McCotter

Selfie With Thelma after Thelma and Louise   In the Southwest desert shedding turquoise on an old man’s palm she trades time for a beat up Stetson hat. Only a day or two since she posed with rose red lips black sun glasses and Audrey Hepburn headscarf marking the start of their journey with the big Polaroid held at arm’s length.   A snapshot of two smiling faces left lying on the backseat of a convertible loaded down with all the stuff they thought they needed pencilling in borders shoring up boundaries soon smudged with ochre earth lost in the dust from a stampede of stars.   Everything looks different now doused with dirt they are part of place gunning the engine before flooring it for the canyon cliff. Out here at Dead Horse Point there are no shallow graves wooden markers or name plates only a thunderbird still whipping up storms suspended in a high solitary leap of faith.   Disarticulation in memory of E M   For them the grave gave no rest. Solely a spot to have and hold not visit on stormy nights with avellana and white lupin. Their beloved kept above the inscrutable depths. Each light riddled skeleton dispersed near and far along slender paths in groves of mountain thorn among the forest’s earth stars. Scattered bone shrines leaving the departed free to wander across space and place and time.   Out there in the raven Mesolithic would they have buried you with ochre and antler deer teeth, flint and amber? Far from settlement on an island low in brackish water would they have fanned flames to seal the grave’s scarlet lips?   Back in our un-velveted sixties dying the wrong death your own was dug in liminal land. Striking distance of font and altar and magenta gold and indigo glass the tract where they lowered you our dangerous dead.   But soon unearthed bones will gleam in a blue Bedouin moon. Humerus ulna radius set on the valley’s wind scoured floor. Femur fibula tibia high on dry northern chalk. Mandible and skull without blessing stone or feather here above bog and pine and old ghost trains. Alone where the watch bitch walks.   Whittling   From boyhood he had an eye for wood reading sycamore and sitka spruce against the grain he knew where to dip his hands into the shallows scooping out rainbow trout and salmon. It was all about patience, he said kings of the orient and stars and lambs and shepherds coaxed to surface with small short strokes. Knife more buff than blade guiding stag out of oak that wanted to be deer.   Disappeared on august sixteenth nineteen eighty one his was a long wake push and pull motion paring flesh to bone laid out in half bog half quarry three miles from home. Twenty nine years of Sunday searches brought her a graveside to shadow with time and worry whittled skin. Thin as each and every syllable they chip in granite – it wasn’t authorised by the leadership.   Shergar’s Groom Wonders   What friends would think if they knew history is filtered through the eye of a horse other times would have buried in a bridle of brass with grave goods at his muzzle.   Shergar’s groom wonders if those rebels would have emptied a Mauser into the river running down his face or turned him loose on mountain or meadow slapping his rump just for the hell of seeing him run.   Shergar’s groom wonders if his bright boy expected car-lined afternoons bookies shouting odds a jockey punching air being led up that rickety ramp night a soul-shaped thing was glimpsed in frosted breath.   Shergar’s groom wonders if Equus could really be attuned to the rhythms of the human heart his dark pulsings the last the horse heard no other could have gotten so near.   Shergar’s groom wonders to this day where his bones lie knowing they thought him the perfect hostage free from blood they thought wrong the horse more brother than his father’s son.   And he would have been made lovely for the earth.   “Disarticulation” and other poems are © Clare McCotter

Clare McCotter’s haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. She won the IHS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. In 2013 she won The British Tanka Award. She also judged the British Haiku Award 2011 and 2012. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on Belfast born Beatrice Grimshaw’s travel writing and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Cannon’s Mouth, Crannóg, Cyphers, Decanto, Envoi, The Galway Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Iota, Irish Feminist Review, The Leaf Book Anthology 2008, The Linnet’s Wings, The Moth Magazine, A New Ulster, The Poetry Bus (forthcoming), Poetry24, Reflexion, Revival, The SHOp, The Stony Thursday Book and The Stinging Fly. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun, was published in 2012. Home is Kilrea, County Derry.