Dodo Eraser

This office is sending me crazy

this office is sending me
crazy. these people I see every
day make me sick

as a bear. jelena sits on the stairwell
through lunch making calls
to her husband. they may get divorced.

eddie’s been talking five years
about quitting. he’s planning to get married
next year or the year

after next. victoria never
says anything, but she sits with michelle then
who never shuts up. everything I know

about each of these people
is sending me sickening
crazy. we recently moved from baldonnell

to the citywest business park. the coffee
is better here. more options for lunch. the sunsets
are more or less the same.

Torture

my sister’s getting married
in october this year. she’s asked me to write her
a poem. and a friend of my wife
asked me also – the following january.
I haven’t done either, or one
which could do both the job.
it’s a difficult thing to be honest
in a way that reads comfortably
about love of that sort in a crowd.

guys – I can’t do it if it isn’t about
DS Maolalai. even the poems
that aren’t about me
are about me in different
ways. Roisin, I love you. Ilaina,
you’re alright as well. and Kevin
and Karla: you both have made
reasonable choices. will that do?
I don’t think that will do.

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DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)