Poetry: ‘I have these cherry woolen gloves for you’

Cody Spotanski is an emerging writer from St. Louis, Missouri. He is currently an undergraduate at University of Missouri-St. Louis, studying English.

Cody spent a summer studying in Galway as part of the Irish Studies International Summer School 2015. Below are two poems inspired by his time here.

 

 

Listen Little Sister

 

I have these cherry

woolen gloves for you.

They were knit with

warm Irish hands for

you. Wear them and

touch only good things.

Travel, and touch the

whole world. Wear them

and hold my wrist.

Grow old and wear them thin.

 

 

Collisions

 

She lasts an eternity,

her hair wet with coastal rain.

We trip and plunge in our dark painted coats

toward Róisín Dubh,

Lower Dominic Street.

 

There, drunk, she dances into the drummer,

cymbals laugh hectic and give pause

but the guitar keeps the pace,

naked and abashed now.

 

I think of her older sister,

that tricky whiskey

and that backwards kind of sin.

 

Another song starts,

I sit still and forget about my stillness.

I sit still and collide with the sound.