...from

...from Daniel, does it have to have happened if it is true There is a place in the vagina where the pelvis
Given the alchemy of hate and castor oil
Can hold a baby to the point of death or asphyxiation
Wherein its own orgasm opens it up for the m(other) to climb inside
To be carried through the birth canal into the world
To ride around inside the hated babe
There is a place due south where no oil is necessary
There is a place in the heart that has been vaccinated against hope
In this medicine bag naps the notion, that if need be will kill you
Fasten it around your neck for safekeeping
There is a place within family, eternally wintery
That dialogues only with death and will have its way
Birthing children to be sick, or not at all
There is a place where mothers can not want children
There is a place where children kill mothers, perpetually
There is a place in family that drives people to it
When you are not being driven there, you are at the wheel
There is a place in winter devoid of autumn or spring
There is a place where silence is not to be
There is a place inside daylight that has never known it, yet is not night-time
There is a place where you have met yourself
It is the last relationship you want to be in
There is a place where you and I have met
There is a place where you will forsake me
There is a place that I will not go with you
There is a place that you persistently drag me toward
There is a place in you that is murderous
Do you know what it is doing
When you are not killing someone
There is a place where there is no shortage of places

There are more places...
//

...Nineteen eighty six bisected life
Into before she asked me to help her die
And the longer half
Augered unadulterated fury
Having said no
In a vehicle fuelled
By the fundament of unwanted responsibility
For life support systems
Passenger in a three decade no

Rupturing my own to save it — ended hers

There is no way, despite
Myriad of attempts to
Avoid what is ordained
In family mythology...
//

...She has eaten porridge from the pot for so long
She has forgotten that she does it
Her neighbour, out while she eats, reminds her
Pot scraping rebounding in the walled garden
Mortifying
She reaffirms her commitment
In the liminality of the kitchen
The last ignominious mouthful
Soothed by the moka pot
Her second favourite
Despite what they tell you
There are favourites
The porridge pot, his
Now—spoils of divorce
Her grandmother
Fed her dog in a saucepan
He had the shed to himself
Had himself to himself

He loved that pot... //
...Loneliness is not to be trusted
It will insert itself without conscience
I meet mine in the fat poets wife
His impotence her loss
Her scorn is of sisterhood
Mine is of adipose craws
I am blessed with a man
Who lets me have secrets
I keep lonely to myself
There is a smell from the hearth
Of poems tarnished by desperation
Yielding to fire ...
Siobhan Potter works as an artist-writer-psychotherapist in Limerick, Ireland. Her practice documents experience. Siobhan has poetry published in both audio and print. In March 2020, she founded ‘not the time to be silent’, an online Arts response to social distancing. Siobhan was selected for #IrelandPerforms by Culture Ireland.

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