The next morning we met at the Lough, Aisling
and me, without the men. How relaxing.
Drenched as in pitch or ashes, the silhouettes floated by,
bred in Australia, nevertheless Irish. The mutes
might bully them, coral-billed as Audrey’s signature
Breakfast at Tiffany’s shade. We strolled behind the huge
wobbly wheels of the carriage. More fragile, stranger
than the cloud-like others. An emerald dream of money
had lingered, so it felt good to be awake
in the rain, her speaking Gaelic to the baby, waves
of babble soothing my limbic system.
Last night, at dinner, a male professor explained his
productivity as her nipples expressed milky flowers.
White marble of municipal buildings, statuesque obsidian
swan reflections sunk in the basin. What nouvelle
cuisine had arrived clattering from a gaggle of waiters?
Some frazzled egg adrift in the beet’s magenta?

Paula Bohince’s fourth collection, A Violence, will be published by Princeton this autumn.