from Transmissions After Midnight

Bog Disco (throw back)

It should have been the old bloomeries of love

during the slow-set: disco lights like Morse-code baubles

roaming our sequins, skirts and shirts

but some smart aleck two plastic parish seats away from me

belches and says: “Boom. It’s the erection section”

so I make tracks swift, double-door into a true breather of a night.

The Plough, dazzling points floating in the sky.

Moldy

Bottle of Buckfast drunk, smoke cleaned eyes

and a bulbed-lip smile.

Sex demands at 4 a.m., after the slowdown

of the party. See here now, I carried matchsticks,

sticky floors, swear remnants up four flights of stairs

for you. I do disturb your sleep with the smell

of want but you know to take one patient look,

to wrist-pull crawl me into bed

and wait for the conk-out any minute.

To honour, like a gentleman, the promise you made:

“It’ll be better in the morning, love.”

Break-up

You always hear about the difficult heartbreak,

but never really about the sheer jumping joy

of breaking up with someone

you couldn’t stand anymore.

Emoticon

The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who’s there?

What would Berryman’s Mr. Bones think of this:

the use of smiley faces? They’re all out in the Club.

Sometimes, they make me want to gag face

but I click-colon-bracket and watch television

after midnight, wearing an excellent and delicate mask.

Elaine Cosgrove grew-up in Sligo, and now lives in Galway city. She writes both poetry and shorter fiction, and has a special interest in digital poetics and collage. Her work has been published by Spontaneity, Icarus, The Bohemyth, wordlegs and The New Binary Press – forthcoming publication in Colony and The Penny Dreadful. She was ‘highly commended’ in the Gregory O’ Donoghue International Poetry Prize 2014. Elaine has an MPhil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She organises ‘Wordhaus Night Galway’ – an evening that showcases pioneering craft, ideas and venture. Tweets @laineycos  Web: http://elainecosgrove.tumblr.com