Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Poem Beginning With A Line By Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary,
it keeps me solitary, stumbling inside paranoia.

My anchoritic needs are not a bow to religion,
they are as prosaic as any modern-day hermit’s:

who is there to trust with the black of my heart, when
some trample, some steal what’s mine for their own?

A Cézanne Nude

I stand as still
as a fruit on a plate,
my breasts are plums,
my behind a peach.
Monsieur says if I move,
he will pulp me,
so I hand him
my daguerreotype
and leave the door open
on my way out.