The Politician’s Wife
admires the spangle
of fresh confidence
in his step,
the words plucked
from absent conversations,
his hands, their movement
as lips start to quiver
and how the camera
finds a face
she has never seen.
After a career in business Maurice Devitt completed the Poetry Studies MA at Mater Dei in Dublin, focusing on the poetry of James Wright, John Berryman, Charles Bernstein and others. During 2014 he was runner-up in Over the Edge New Writer Award, short-listed for Poets Meet Painters, Cuirt New Writing Award, The Listowel Writers’ Week Collection Competition and selected for The Cork Spring Poetry Festival. Over the past three years he has had 80+ poems accepted by various journals in Ireland, England, Scotland, the US, India, Australia and Mexico. He is a founder member and chairperson of the Hibernian Writers’ Group.
well done Maurice. a well constructed and expressive poem
Devitt’s poem neatly reinvents itself in the last lines as the politician’s wife herself becomes the admiring camera that has been admiring his parts. Admiration is an old complex word now fresh and relevant!
I admire how this one sentence poem suggests so much about personas – we are left considering how we react to these two people – what our assumptions are; what the possibilities are. I’m always glad to have a chance to read one of Maurice’s poems. Thanks!
Reblogged this on cjheries.
Super poem, Maurice. So much in so few words. I love how you’ve used ‘spangle’.