Two Poems by A.M. Cousins

Cowhouse

In the beginning they had one cow –
a tough little heifer that could kick
like a mule. She says she used to park
my pram at the cowhouse door
while he taught her how to strip the milk
from the teats until it squirted, rattling
a tune on the sides of the bucket.

As the herd grew to an assembly
of docile, big-boned Friesians,
a temperamental roan and a grey cow
that was almost blue, I was deployed
to the kitchen to supervise the others
who had arrived – stealthily, unbidden –
to yoke my young shoulders.

Once, I left my post and slipped outside
to stand covert at the cowhouse door
– just close enough to smell the warmth
of beasts and dung – and watched them
go about their work in the sanctuary
of one frugal, low-watt light-bulb.

My mother’s voice was girlish, regaling
family news and gossip. And he sang
for her – My feet are here on Broadway –
and when they laughed together
like I had never heard before
my little heart was pierced with a yearning
that can still ambush and desolate.

Saorstat

On one of those hot summer forenoons,
between the Troubled Times and the Emergency,
my father found a penny outside the mart.

Backed by the harp of Saorstat Eireann,
a proud hen – with confident wings
and abundant tail feathers – sheltered
five chickens and promised better times to come
for some, if not for all.

He remembers considering the mission-box
on the nun’s table, its slot – snugly cut
to fit a penny – over the picture of a hungry child;
but his small palms still smarted from a scalding
encounter with the good sister’s strap,

so, when his father matched the copper
with another – the price of a bag of liquorice
twists – he forgot the nun’s black baby.

He thinks on these things now,
as a young woman – with liquorice braids
and the brightest smile he has ever seen –
coaxes him with spoonfuls of semolina
and calls him her darling boy.

A.M. Cousin’s poetry collection Redress (2021) was published by Revival Press and is available here.

Learn more about A.M. on our Contributors’ Page.

(Photo: jm whalen/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)

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A. M. Cousins

A.M. Cousins grew up on a farm near Kilmore Village, Co Wexford.Her poems can be found in various literary journals including The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, Aesthetic Anthology and poethead.com.Her poem Not my Michael Furey won the FISH Poetry Prize in 2019 and her work was shortlisted in The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Competition 2015, 2016 and 2019. Anne is a regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany on RTE Radio 1.Her first collection of poetry, REDRESS, was published by Revival Press in March 2021.