Trust

D.S. Maolalai

we're all drinking down

by the window. I'm at the bar.

to pick up a plate

for the group. potato chips.

at our booth an old

friend's new husband

is telling my fiancée

that maybe instead

they should run off together

and leave us to sort out

the paperwork. and he says that he likes

how she drinks down her whiskey.

that he likes how she looks

in that dress. I am told this, of course

on the following morning, and we laugh

at his confidence / feel bad for her /

debate over whether to tell her.

and the thing is, I'm not even

worried. and the thing is, it's never

been like that before.

D.S. Maolalai fue descrito por un editor como "un poeta cosmopolitano", y por otro como "prolífico, bordeando en la incontinencia". Su trabajo ha sido nominado trece veces para el premio Best Of The Net, diez veces para el premio Pushcart, y ha sido publicado en tres colecciones, recientemente, en "Noble Rot" (Turas Press, 2022).

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I hear them scratching

D.S. Maolalai

she's complaining about rats

again in her dropped kitchen ceiling.

we've had the boys out

twice last week to block

holes and lay poison

in clam plastic dog-

proof box cases.

I hear them scratching.

I heard them scratching

again last night. I know

you don't believe me but

I hear them.

I believe her. she leaves out saucers

for the bluetits and starlings.

from her patio in tallaght you can see

the undeveloped dublin mountains:

blue everywhere. everywhere else

there is traffic – roads and fields

pending the building of houses.

I would leave food out as well. I tell her

to stop leaving food out. she tells me

she will when she's not there

to watch them. she won't.

I wouldn't either. I wouldn't.

D.S. Maolalai fue descrito por un editor como "un poeta cosmopolitano", y por otro como "prolífico, bordeando en la incontinencia". Su trabajo ha sido nominado trece veces para el premio Best Of The Net, diez veces para el premio Pushcart, y ha sido publicado en tres colecciones, recientemente, en "Noble Rot" (Turas Press, 2022).

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Mushrooms and the places they grow

D.S. Maolalai

for several days the room

stank like an armpit –

musty as mushrooms and the places

they foetidly grow. we lay out

in bed, sweat staining my low

thread-count linens,

sticking like swimming-

trunks onto our bellies and waists.

we watched condensation

roll over the closed windows

as the opening petals

of flowers, the wet tongue

of dew. I remember her leg

moving over my upper;

a treeroot, a curving-

boned rock, banking downward

and earthy. flies came

from the kitchen, where we’d left

piles of carrotpeels and stacked

empty glasses so as to save

the on water. we were not slobs

or vagrants: the whole town

was like this – some limit in place 

on the water use during the heatwave.

and I had no AC. and still

we were managing. we lazed

like wild animals, in heat

beneath trees on some hill

in some sunlight, kinked muscle

and the swampish soft

comfort of company,

too tired by choking

on thickened air even to fuck.

D.S. Maolalai fue descrito por un editor como "un poeta cosmopolitano", y por otro como "prolífico, bordeando en la incontinencia". Su trabajo ha sido nominado trece veces para el premio Best Of The Net, diez veces para el premio Pushcart, y ha sido publicado en tres colecciones, recientemente, en "Noble Rot" (Turas Press, 2022).

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