Audrey Molloy


To Die For

.
.
The cockroach that stays in the fruit bowl,
gorging itself, long after the sun has risen
and the house is awake, reminds me
of the blurry photos of that actor
from The Wire (what’s his name?)
snapped in Rome with Lily James.
Or the fisherman, Santiago,
in The Old Man and the Sea.

For certain things, a creature will give up
everything, even life: to land
a massive fish, steal a mouthful
of ripe peach in broad daylight,
or run a hand through a pretty girl’s hair.
One last feast on sweet flesh.

 

Audrey Molloy’s debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021), won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. Her latest collection is The Blue Cocktail (The Gallery Press, 2023). She has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and Poetry Ireland Review.


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