Night Noise

Something is hungry, something I've forgotten.
I hear it scratching at my kitchen door,
waiting for me to let it in. It's hidden.
I search, but don't know what I'm searching for.

Something is crying, something I've mishandled,
With a voice like red-hot wire it lets me know
it's still alive, but broken. Now I've found it,
small and helpless, shivering in the snow.

Something is silent, something I've neglected.
Its uncomplaining body bears the weight
of every space where something's been omitted.
I fear I have remembered it too late.

Mary Meriam writes: 'Rose Kelleher’s second poetry collection, Native Species, is concerned with genes and jeans. Each of the five sections—White Monkey, Blue Hydrangea, Platypus, Maggot, and Trumpet Vine—contains poems that sing the male body, the dirty roots of desire, the genetics of plants, and the psychogenetics of Homo sapiens, with ancient historical twists. Seventies Man, Jesus, Dirty White Boys, and Snidely Whiplash are some of the colorful characters achingly and sharply depicted, intertwined with images of vines and blooms that grow out of dark and shady places. A thread of Catholicism winds subtly and sinuously throughout. These lines of meter and rhyme are coolly formal, but possess the hot interior of the heart.'

If you have any comments on this publication, or questions about it,  Rose Kelleher   would be pleased to hear from you.