Last modified on Mon 24 May 2021 06.29 EDT
Lucifer Takes a Break
transluce. He rolls a cigarette, crimping a white tip
and dark tobacco carefully within the rustle of thin
paper and remembers, as he snaps a match lit,
a time before: just an instant.
There was darkness there, but warmth.
Yes, gorgeous warmth … a ‘shh’ pressed
to his lips before he was handed down.
The whisper of white noise … voices?
He remembers, how long the fall was, how sheer, how short.
He sips the coffee, thankful for its bitter sweetness.
Barbara Smith is an Irish poet whose latest collection, the intriguingly titled Ann Askew on the Kafka Machine, is published by Eyewear Publishing, part of the Black Spring Press Group. Smith’s range of subjects is broad, her perspective often gently feminist. She enjoys challenging such male-dominated themes as the vicissitudes of growing up in rural Ireland: see, for example, her potato-peeling takeover of Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh in the poem