Poems by Matthew SweeneyThe Coin
There is a bright coin on the street, probably a £2 coin, hopefully a £2 coin, but the traffic is relentless, like a river. Even when the lights stop it, a truck is over the coin. Should I slide beneath the body? But these lights aren’t red long, and the driver won’t know I’m down there, under his load of carpets, or chairs, or TVs. I’m thinking of what I’d buy with the £2 - a sausage from the market, with mustard, or a quarter pound of minced steak and a small onion, or even half a rye baguette. But what if it’s only a shiny 2p coin? I’d get nothing with that. No point in thinking like this, I say to myself, seeing that a woman has also noticed the coin and is poised to jump. I glare at her, inching to the edge of the pavement. So it must be a £2 coin, and I must beat her to it, at the risk of being run down by a bus. The lights are turning again. I’m a diver on a board, and I go, as a taxi screeches to a halt, horn blaring, with further screeches and wailing, but no smash. My fingers clutch the £2 coin, which it is, while my teeth bare in a grin for the woman and all the drivers who are scowling at me. I get to my feet and make for the market. The Hook My great granddad lost his right hand to a tiger. He bought a hook instead, then he emigrated to Salford to work on the excavation of the Ship Canal. Any navvie who laughed at the one- handed man got the hook in his face, so scarfaces sat in the Salford bars every evening and toasted the hookman who refused to join them because he didn’t like the beer. It had been better in India. He had his father dispatch cases of his locally infamous poitin which he slugged alone in his bunk while reading dark tales by candlelight, then he’d drink a gallon of tapwater so he’d be right as Mayo rain for work. My great granddad lost his right hand but his hook attracted photographs, and at each snap he extracted a fee which allowed him to retire at fifty but he stayed in Salford and opened a shibeen, which he called The Hook, and he travelled once back to Mayo for lessons in the making of poitin. |
Matthew Sweeney was born in Lifford, Ireland. Sweeney’s latest collections of poetry include Black Moon (2007), The Night Post: A New Selection (2010), Horse Music (2013), and Inquisition Lane (2015). He has also written poetry for children: The Flying Spring Onion (1992) and Up on the Roof: New and Selected Poems (2001).
A recipient of the Cholmondeley Award and the Arts Council England Writers’ Award, Sweeney has held residencies at the University of East Anglia and South Bank Centre in London. He teaches workshops and classes in the community and has served as poet-in-residence at the National Library for the Blind (UK). |