Adjective (April)

In my dream, language reaches the point of no return. This miasma of immemorial memes loses my attention. Adverbs fold in on themselves, ‘ands’ unjoin what they brought together. Full-stops look ludicrous in their millions, scattered like atoms, or zillion planets telescopes cannot perceive. There are colourful adjectives for this feeling of losing language, adjectives not repeated in polite company, but adjectives too are dissolving as loss sets in, or chaos, or a bad coffee. Expletives self-delete. There is only us, attempting forgiveness, reaching out, somewhere where nouns are non-sense and verbs are in the past. April is history, asleep.

Adjective (February)

Medbh McGuckian’s adjectives are words we know, or thought we knew. “It was a fragrant December,” when survival of planetary life depends on bees. Medbh might say things differently in Lenten February. “A grey trembling flame left the ceilings/ in profound darkness,” could be going out. “A skintight coat of mail,” sounds impossible before we notice her “coat” is the overcoming of desire. An artist paints a “night-scene, marked by his opalescent touch.”  She knows how it is being a poet, “brave in the next-to-nothing of a line.” Writes of “the churchish skyline,” which isn’t even a word, until now.