Rita Ann Higgins

/Ireland, 1955

Rita Ann Higgins (1955, Ireland) is a poet, playwright and editor. Higgins has published 10 collections of poetry and a memoir. She left formal education at 14. As an adult, in National University of Ireland Galway she received a Diploma in Gaeilge and a Diploma in Women’s Studies. Higgins was granted residencies, recieved awards and was a judge in several fiction and poetry competitions. She also participated in prison workshops in Ireland and UK, and did voluntary work at promoting positive mental health. Higgins is a member of Aosdana, the Irish association of artists.

Poems

/ He Sings Happy Songs

At three in the morning
in a goof from the cold
you try to feel your toes.
The voice in your head says,
where the fuck are my toes?

Rent freeze, toe freeze, heart scald.
More Joseph and Mary moments.
No room in this doorway love,
when is the baby due?
Try the side of the tattoo shop.
You and Mary might get lucky,
It’s a good skipper if you get in
before the sprinklers come on.

The sprinklers come on
and drench your sleeping bag.
What fool said,
homelessness is a state of mind?
He thought he was a poet,
a fool poet I’d say.

The rent is too high –
try that doorway but mind the sprinklers
that’s what I tell them.
They activate them several times a night.
You can dodge them if you never sleep
and you’ll never sleep in Dante’s doorway
looking for your toes,
not in a wet sleeping bag anyway.

Forget the one beds –
unless you rob a bank to pay the rent.
Ging-a-ling raises the rent
because he can and he will
and he’ll do it again.
Ging-a-ling sings happy songs.

/ Morsus

On the morning
my father died
the fridge
was so empty
you could hear

a crumb drop.

/ New York

The Korean
who runs a flower shop
in Brooklyn says,

‘Every day
people come in here
and steal from me.

They say,
when they are edging out
with my flower basket,

C’mon c’mon man
my wife just had four babies,
what can I tell you
I look at her
she gets pregnant.

Try taking this from me man
and for your trouble
I’ll give you a bullet
in the head.

Although
all Koreans love a song,
I never say,
Have a nice day
I always say,
Take the flowers.’

/ Shades of Truth

(for RMCC)
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal
than a drunk Christian.
Herman Melville

I might write a poem today,
a watertight poem
where words may dovetail
or even do a handstand.
It could have people in it
or the dead fox
I saw on the way to Costello Lodge,
or the man and donkey
I saw on the way back.
It could have miles of sea and seagulls in it,
Galway seagulls,
unfussy, they go straight for the jugular.
It could have a tablecloth
from the White Star Line in it.

It could have Nantucket in it.

It could have The Spouter Inn in it.
It could have Ishmael and Queequeg
wrapped twice around each other
in a bed made from whale bone and sweat.

If I add the sailor and harpooner
locked in a loving embrace
all the pitch long night
with the harpooner’s breath
hot on Ishmael’s ear.

It will be different then,
the whole tale will be damned,
tossed asunder
in maelstrom, skylark and yaw.

/ The Power of Prayer

I liked the way
my mother
got off her bike
to the side
while the bike
was still moving,
graceful as a bird.
We watched out for her
after Benediction.
It was a game –
who saw her head-scarf first,
I nearly always won.
The day the youngest
drank paraffin oil
we didn’t know what to do.
All goofed round the gable end,
we watched, we waited,
head-scarf over the hill.
Knowing there was something wrong
she threw the bike down
and ran.

She cleared fences
with the ailing child,
Mrs Burke gave a spoon of jam,
the child was saved.
Marched indoors
we feared the worst,
our mother knew
what the problem was.
‘Not enough prayers
are being said in this house.’
While the paraffin child
bounced in her cot
we prayed and prayed.
We did the Creed,
a blast of the Beatitudes
the black fast was mentioned,
the Confiteor was said
like it was never said before,
Marie Goretti was called
so was Martha,
we climaxed on the Magnificat.
After that it was all personal stuff.