SurVision Magazine / Alicia Byrne Keane

Nightshade

When I cut open the pepper
there is a silk staircase,
a healthy windpipe.
I no longer feel so incisive
now I have been replaced
by the fibrous dialogue of seeds.
I am happy, immaculate-celled.

There is a boiler closet near my bed
and every now and then it flares with noise.
When someone uses the bathroom sink
a raincloud deflates near my left shoulder:
we siphon warmth from an argument
painted in small, unobtrusive colours.

Thinking as a bud feels different,
clearer and hungrier
with my waterway neurons.
I pick up a scrap of paper
drifted on the windowsill,
turn it over to see
the smallest picture possible,
a raspberry pillowed in leaves.
I realise this is the tab from a jam jar,
some pretty part
for sealing freshness in.
I can write all this, somehow.
My fingertips are still normal sized.

Alicia Byrne Keane is a final-year PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. Her poems appear in The Cardiff Review, Entropy, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, The Moth, and The Berkeley Poetry Review; she also has work forthcoming in The Colorado Review.

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An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English. Issue Eight ALYCIA BYRNE KEANE Nightshade When I cut open the pepper there is a silk staircase, a healthy windpipe. I no longer feel so incisive now I have been replaced by the fibrous dialogue of seeds. I am happy, immaculate-celled. There is a boiler closet near my bed and every now and then it flares with noise. When someone uses the bathroom sink a raincloud deflates near my left shoulder: we siphon warmth from an argument painted in small, unobtrusive colours. Thinking as a bud feels different, clearer and hungrier with my waterway neurons. I pick up a scrap of paper drifted on the windowsill, turn it over to see the smallest picture possible, a raspberry pillowed in leaves. I realise this is the tab from a jam jar, some pretty part for sealing freshness in. I can write all this, somehow. My fingertips are still normal sized. Alicia Byrne Keane is a final-year PhD student at Trinity College Dublin. Her poems appear in The Cardiff Review, Entropy, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, The Moth, and The Berkeley Poetry Review; she also has work forthcoming in The Colorado Review.
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