“…a poem is a way of happening, a mouth.” (W.H.Auden)

You Murdered My Longing, by Rachel Coventry

And because poetry is so close to longing,

it sickened too. Now, in my notebook

I write a recipe for couscous.

I will cook it for you, pick mint

from the garden, let it simply be mint.

Watch you eat, wordless and content,

until I can’t help myself but express 

the sudden chill of an October evening;

find myself speaking, Precarious lover, 

is my longing merely sleeping?

Rachel Coventry’s poems have appeared in The North, The Moth, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, The Shop, and have featured on RTE Lyric FM. She has just completed a PhD in Philosophy from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her debut collection Afternoon Drinking in the Jolly Butchers (2018) is published by Salmon poetry.