Imaginary Latvian Poet Who Works at Tesco in Ireland
in Michael O’Loughlin’s poetry collection “In this Life” (2011)
A Latvian Emigrant Bids Farewell to his Lover in Riga
Once I woke
to find you cradling me, holding
me tight like your child,
your eyes huge and close to mine.
I smiled, said something, and sank
back down into the forests of light
even then, thinking: I will remember
this at the moment I die.
Now, I think it was the moment I die.
A Latvian Poet Climbs Killiney Hill
This city has dyed her hair blonde
And had her breasts remodelled
To look like the whore
In the hotel foyer
Anywhere in the world
I want to know what she looked like before
So I climb Queen Victoria’s Hill
To look at the famine obelisk
Because I know that hunger
Is the true God of the Irish.
It came down from the mountain
And gave them two commandments:
Thou shalt devour and thou shalt hate
And laugh and dance and sing to fool
The angel of death into thinking you’re alive.
Looking down the hill at the muddy path
I think I see her looking up, half-crawling
Yellow maize porridge cakes her lips
Her breasts hang slack and luscious
As dying fruit on her ribcage
Which trembles like a songbird’s throat.
Her skin is white as the mushrooms
In the cold ground of the Latvian forest
But her eyes and hair are black
Black as the wind in the thorn bush
Black as potatoes rotting forever
Deep in the black earth.
A Latvian Poet Writes an Ode to Capitalism
I sit here eight hours a day in my blue uniform
At the cash register in Tesco’s
Trying to think of a name
For what I actually do.
My co-workers are called Mariska or Mujumaad
I do not know where they live
I do not know what they eat.
All I know is we are low-caste priests
In the greatest church that history has ever seen.
The people come to the altar rail,
We lay our hands on the fruits of the earth
And give them back to the people who made them
Blessed, sanctified, paid for.
