Two Poems by Victoria Kennefick

Plunder

In the lecture theatre, I sit in the dark
            (there will be slides about Visigoths).
You stroll in; odour of unwashed socks and Lynx
            from your thick sweater
roomy and woolly with sleeves that go way past your hands –
            you sit in front of me, my pupils expand.
You have a cold, your wee face pale, your concave chest
            wheezing; you need a tissue, a couple
of tissues, a full glorious box, but you don’t have any,
            you messy thing.
You sneeze and I wish I knew your name, I mumble
            ‘Goth Bless you,’ hope you’ll hear.
You run your sweet nose over a loose cuff; I want
            to tug the folded tissue from my bra,
tap you on your bony shoulder, my warm breath on your nape.
            And as the spoils of Visigoth pillage
project on-screen in Boole One,
            I’d blow your nose.

Seven Sunflowers Regard Me Kindly

You dropped seeds in earth’s sockets.
You may as well have buried
slivers of glass;
bites of sun that fell into the parched soil,
I never thought that they would grow.

I watched hose-water dribble on dry patches
by your feet.  Shadows
loom at the wall;
a faceless bouquet of you, elongated by the sun
insisting on the back of your head.

Out of the seed,           the first root;   the radicle cuts its teeth.  The tap root
glows secretly beneath,           a stem emerges from plume. Simple leaves
blade through,            heart-shaped, course-toothed; they dangle
from a rough stalk – thick as a wrist.
The strength of that,    the intention    to break ground –

I’ve been inside all this time, watching
from behind the windowpane;
how the angle of each floret
is oriented toward the next, a pattern
of interconnecting spirals; the golden ratio.

These giant pupils look down at you,
gawky faces that follow
the sun’s trend, 
their leaves nip your t-shirt.
I step into the light,
open my petals.

Victoria Kennefick is a poet, writer and teacher based in Co. Kerry. Her first collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press), has been shortlisted for the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her pamphlet, White Whale (Southword Editions, 2015), won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Poetry Review, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry News, Prelude, Copper Nickel, The Irish Times, Ambit, bath magg, Banshee and elsewhere. She is an Arts Council of Ireland Next Generation Artist and a recipient of a WORDS Ireland fellowship.