for Signe Lury
You wake up to the primary school bell, January blowing through the window
unlatched overnight when lust’s bronchioles gasped for air. Outside,
ants dissect leaves, children tread gravel and drizzle to reach the classroom,
confiding yesterday’s marital disasters, dreading how far the summer break is,
excited by the looming voyage of prawn cocktail crisps into their mouths.
Inside, the curtains lurch in several bruises of blue as she rises,
camouflaged in slumber, begging for five minutes, please,
to which you accede: how could you not when love dares to defy time?
The alarm is snoozed every hundred heartbeats
as her index sculpts your face like plumage, not chisel.
How can you surrender to the calendar when salvation is here,
immemorial like lava slithering to the sea,
gazing at you at the opposite end of a wrinkled pillow?
Rafael Mendes is a Brazilian-Irish migrant whose work has recently appeared or is upcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Wasafari, gorse, and Poetry Salzburg Review. He was part of Poetry Ireland Introductions 2023, and his pamphlet, The Migrant Dictionary (Howl New Irish Writing), was a co-winner of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Pamphlet Series 2025.