Garden God
Easing her flip-flops and ectopic body down the lamp-post, this grasshopper of a girl fringed with electricity from São Paulo and the South Seas hangs with me at three a.m…. touches at herself publicly – and grants her charm in piecemeal at the postern earlier in the night in the stripclub she works in and told me about: Leitrim Street’s greased pole awash with wallflowers and those who grope at mechanical movements and things without a chance in the chaos of corn, watching the phantoms that they’ve fallen for… suggesting sudden betrothals and leave, moping down Coburg Street where all the shadows cross. Let’s run off to Rome, she says, to someone she hardly knows, and sees only from the dimly-lit strip-joint in her head she hardly wishes to return to, and I, in a pile of manacles shall join her in cuckoo-time of Shango, Maytime of Bachué, lily-time of one chance to love, one chance to hope, to lock arms on Connaught Avenue at half past three in the morning dreaming of Rome, in the grasses’ arms, with the gold in the shadows where we are loved.