Renting by Brian Tierney

A free concert of insects singing when the light withdraws

Renting

by Brian Tierney

Dogs barking do you hear me do you hear me yes I do
the abridged version, sun having shone all day on their chains.
Late-lunch squirrels lathing loquats
with their buck front teeth and carrots

disappearing from the community garden for seasonal soups
no one likes to eat, least of all me. Unless there is good country bread
of course, and there is, often,
even if there’s little else in the house
to have. Simple black tea or green or white or green

beans and garlic. Mondays monkfish. Cheese and apples from the market
stalls selling ponytails of sage and premium coffee
we can’t afford and sometimes splurge on.
Your lipstick drying on a porcelain cup

by a line of  bruised apples. A free concert of insects singing
when the light withdraws and the air is cooler
and we prop the screen door open to the world and the boundary
that was false and never there is proved not there

between us or anything. You me the half-concealed palm out back
we fucked against once when our landlords were away,
and which no one owns or ever has, least of all
landlords, who even when they do can’t own a tree

Poetry (May 2023)