She grumbles
POETRY
by DS Maolalai
slowly
she’s becoming used
to the cone. at first
she banged about, wild
all over – running into objects
and flipping down
her food bowl. 5 days
now, and she’s far
more circumspect,
more like a spider
on a windy morning,
dangling and tying off
her lines. she hasn’t scraped
the table once
this evening. I sit in the kitchen
and check the stitches – wipe them down
with alcohol
and antiseptic
cloths. she rolls over
gingerly
and feels the tile
and coldness on her skin,
exposed
and shaved from under hair. she grumbles,
turns around
and tries to scratch the stitches. they jut out,
black and livid,
rafters
from a burning house.
DS Maolalai is the author of two collections of poetry: Love Is Breaking Plates in the Garden, which was published by Encircle Press in 2016, and Sad Havoc Among the Birds, published by Turas Press in 2019. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in publications such as Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac’s Dog, More Said Than Done, The Belleville Park Pages, The Unrorean Broadsheet, and the Apple Valley Review. Maolalai has a degree in English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where he currently lives after four years abroad in the United Kingdom and Canada.
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