Cassandra Voices

Author: Michaela Brady

  • Poem: Take me to Éire

    Take me to Éire

    Please take me to Erin
    For I am twenty-seven;
    Reassurance I am in my prime
    Dwindle in the idle time.
    So take me to Erin when I am ready,
    When the everywhere that I have been
    Weighs like waves upon me.
    Let me meet her in the pause of night,
    When the dawn is burning
    And a murder takes its flight,
    And I, no longer yearning
    For the grassy seats of kings,
    Endless paths of peat and song,
    Rest my life upon the wind,
    And in an Otherworldly blaze, pass on.

    Feature Image: Lough Glenade, County Leitrim.

  • How I Remember Her

    How I Remember Her

    I glared that first night as she vaunted perks
    And spoke in winding roads; uncouth she pried
    About my grade and cut. Around her stride,
    I feel as though I’m drunk. I miss her quirks.
    The nights we stargaze drag on. I should work.
    I see her down the bar, then on my floor.
    Embracing tears outside her dawn-lit door,
    I waste my time deciphering her smirk.

    She trembles when I pet her hair,
    She conceals what I have learned to love.
    With every fight I lose her brazen flair,
    Reveal a girl who claims life’s unfair.
    But she’s a worrying one, a single dove,
    A dress-up doll that yearns to care.

    Featured Image: Louis Jamnot (1814-1892), Le Vol de l’âme

  • Poetry: Gratitude

    Gratitude

    “Hate it here? But why?”
    I’m sick of your confounded cry.

    London is Open—
    But when is a kind word spoken
    At 8 AM when elbows stab your side,
    A slouching drunk swallows your Pride,
    And grinning altruists shiver and wait
    For you to blink and take their bait?
    And so we move in clogging thuds,
    Weave through drying gum and blood.

    London, what are you doing?
    Are you even awake?
    “City that never sleeps”? I’m suing.
    You plagiarize for tourism’s sake.

    London, you pander to the saints,
    Resign yourself as relatively quaint.
    You barely know where you end,
    You hardly care when around the bend
    The streets are piled with shoveled debris;
    You gentrify, refine, on your austerity spree.

    I want to love your complacency,
    That languid beauty in every face you see;
    You have extolled diversity.
    You lack sincerity.
    If Broadway bleeds, the West End is dry—
    Not “if”, that’s exactly what I mean by

    Passionless, reserved, ancient, tranquil;
    I repine, I whine, but still I’m thankful.
    As I dissociate on your timely Underground,
    Elton’s voice sings, “for the people I have found.

    Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poetry: Michaela Brady

    White Bay Park

    And cows trod on thickened sand,
    Bow their heads beneath the sun.
    It’s as if this summer was planned,
    With days that cannot be done.

    That sun implores, infects my sight,
    Surges fire through greying sea,
    Through my heart and through the night,
    Perennial, I am allowed to be.

    Could I spend an eternity here?

    If I lassoed eternal dusks,
    If you were caught as well,
    All our present woes would rust
    In Atlantic’s alabaster swells.

    But life will change, not just the tides.
    I cannot say when I’ll be back.
    You cannot know what you’ll decide.

    Could eternity wait for our return?
    I cannot trust a view revived
    To last a lifetime I have hardly lived.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poetry: Michaela Brady

    Uaigneas (Dán do m’athair)

    Crows befriend the bread-handed boy,
    Squawk and battle for a bite.
    Metro wires hiss and wheeze,
    Spite the hills and sun-soaked fields.

    New York blinks its bloodshot stare,
    Recalling you and I were there.
    From azure deli doors,
    Whiffs of baking bread
    Flirt with slow-cook sunburn.

    But now I can be anywhere;
    Western cities groan the same.
    Riding through a London green,
    Gliding through the shadowed dawn;
    I’m convinced it’s just the same.

    But where are you when I awake?
    Where are you, voice beneath music,
    Brimming with stories owned and rented,
    Debates and schemes for woodsy walks.

    Bottled up in bucket seats, we watch
    As worlds of millions catch the day,
    Battle for statues to recall their names.
    We’re facing west to Hudson, south to Thames.

    Do you have a friend these mornings?
    Do you choose to drift and dream?
    Yes, it’s just the same.
    And never is again.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini