The Tuesday Poem: Surprised by Joy (whatever her name is)

after William Wordsworth

Just found out today, I’ve a sister not

named Purity who doesn’t live in Gravesend, Kent

or hate cats, or scream when she finds

a tarantula in the corner of the shower

but cups it in her pinkies

finds for it a cottage in the Cotswolds,

visits it there in the holidays;

who doesn’t light farthing candles

to the three-in-one god

of Proper Order, Common Sense

and ruining other people’s Christmases;

or have a signed photograph of Rod

Stewart she looks at not

nearly often enough;

who wasn’t shocked

when they took Ken Barlow away

or found human remains

under the school principal’s

clean shaven lawn;

who’d gamble not one Drachma

on the afterlife but believes fanatically

in a place called

Wait While I Get My Cardigan.

A no longer but once

young lady about whom,

right now, for legal reasons,

I can say no more than this.

Kevin Higgins is co-organiser of Over The Edge literary events in Galway City. He has published three collections of poems: The Boy With No Face (2005), Time Gentlemen, Please (2008) and Frightening New Furniture (2010) all with Salmon Poetry.