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heirloom | Anne Casey | Issue 3

i never troubled about living or dying

the devil

may care of my younger days

seeing my feet teeter on more than one smoking

ash volcanic edge howling at the blood

red sunrise

eyes always on the horizon

impulse fuelled jumps off mountain tops not

this unwanted text prompt

laying its lead apron on my chest like

a paw-pressing feline testing the steadfastness

of my internal architecture not

this reminder of the flawed material

bequeathed by my female line

miswritten encryption like

the unwritten inscription on

my love’s crinkle-browed

self-inspection at each small digression

this faint shadow

passed on from his father

to whom he is sometime brother sometime

stranger or another

and now i am older finding this undeniable

desire to abide for awhile

unbidden gift

handed down

from my

children

Originally from Ireland, Anne Casey is a Sydney-based writer/literary editor with work widely published internationally. Her second poetry collection is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2019. She ranks in The Irish Times‘Most-Read’ and has won or been shortlisted for poetry awards in Australia, the USA, UK, Ireland and Canada.


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