Streets
South William Street’s
Too good for me
So I stroll gaudy Fade
Up demure Dame
Cross old Thomas
Down to coy Anna Livia
I stroll
The yawning night-time streets
The points of a compass
The margins of an opus
I stroll
Cross a city sucking life
From the river spirit’s veins
Across windswept bridge
From a drowned city raised
Capel’s light glitters hot
In sex-shop pink neon
And tall Parnell
Takes long strides crosswise
Past O’Connell’s great spike
Like a curse in the night
The size of a religion
That carves our division
The streets are a maze
But the city’s so small
They all know your name
There’s blood on Moore
And more on Mary
And down around Grafton
They got ‘em some bodies
Curled up on themselves
In the most expensive doorways
Not a breath of air
Between bawdy Harcourt
And glitzy Camden
The buzz of last chance
Hums electric nightlife
I stroll
Yawning night-time streets
Walking the beat of dirty pavement
I stroll
Yawning night-time’s reach
I see
Streets fluid beneath lights
And legs bright without tights
I see eyes alight
At the sight of a taxi
And dream of fumbling in backseats
From the backstreets of Dublin
Bernard O’Rourke is a writer, actor and journalist from Dundalk, Ireland. His poetry and short stories have appeared in The Irish Literary Review, The Pickled Body, Burning Bush II, Flashflood, The Linnet’s Wings, Number 11, Outburst, and Wordlegs. He also featured in 30 Under 30, an anthology of short fiction by young Irish writers published by Doire Press. You can find him on twitter (@guyserious), where he mostly makes bad jokes and talks about movies he’s seen. He lives in Dublin.
