Two Poems
by DS Maolalai


An undersea jellyfish

outside the porthole,
as they turn down the cabin
to footpath emergency
lights, then – it is dublin,
a smear on the landscape,
spread out and glistening
like a sample of microbial
cultures. it lies on the world,
extruding its thick threads
of motorway, joining as liquid
these isolate dismal
commuter-filled towns
with the centre, an undersea jelly-
fish's poisonous light. it's a clear 10pm –
we'll touch down in an hour
in london. I move my legs gently
and open my book,
feel the clay of portmarnock
full of living life under my cushion.


Time

flicking through a book
of diane wakoski
poems, I find
an old note in
my handwriting.
"check costs for our lady's
in Drogheda – service"
folded on a yellow post-it
note. that's from 8
years ago: I worked
scheduling service
for emergency hospital
equipment. defibs
and so on. lasted 3 months.
I was terrible. probably
people were killed. at lunchtime
I'd try to read, bored and small
as a woodlouse, and smoked
electric cigarettes
which tasted of candy
with the maintenance guys
in the carpark.


****

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).

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