1
JUSTIN said I’d been seen passing a joint on Patrick’s Bridge
when I thought I was pure invisible. Escaped. But sure
Knocklong was only twelve miles away. Johnny O’Hare
turned up at a Twenty-First party on Coburg Street –
two thirty-one-year-olds were holding it, ten years late. He said,
Hello Imelda! & I said, I don’t know you, & turned my back
in my wet-look yellow anorak under the navy sky.
Drowning out home, holding seánces with red-haired Donny &
Dora & Carl near Wilton shopping centre. When Science
became a stranger to me, boiling panic took root.
Cork city & Knocklong merged. When one was above ground,
the other creaked underfoot. Justin’s black tar eyes running
everywhere, ‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ said cunning old Fury.

2
SOMEONE was singing about not knowing much about
a Science Book. And what about the French she took?
Ah she’s good at French, Agnes said when I walked in
...