Taliswomen

The poisoned chalice is hooked up by the gloved hands of administering angels. Even clad in latex their touch transcends the banalities that spew from daytime radio; [...]

by Lorna Shaughnessy

For Pura

The handful of dolls you gave me
come to the day-ward in my pocket.
Each face embroidered with her own humour,
each huipil, woven in Chiapas, tells a story,
each woman bald beneath her bright headscarf,
the tell-tale sign that marks us all.

The poisoned chalice is hooked up
by the gloved hands of administering angels.
Even clad in latex their touch transcends
the banalities that spew from daytime radio;
some one thing
inviolable.

Lorna Shaughnessy

Lorna Shaughnessy has published four poetry collections, Torching the Brown River, Witness Trees, Anchored, and Lark Water (Salmon Poetry) as well as a pamphlet, Song of the Forgotten Shulamite (Lapwing). In 2018 she was awarded an Artist’s Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland and in 2021 an Agility Award to fund the making of short poetry films.

Her monologues on the story of Iphigenia were staged in Cúirt International Literature Festival in 2017, in the Heaney HomePlace in 2018. This was subsequently adapted for video in 2021 and screened in the Winter Warmers Festival Nov 2021.

She lectures in Hispanic Studies in NUI Galway and translates Galician, Spanish and Latin American poetry. With Keith Payne and Martín Veiga, she co-edited the anthology of Irish and Galician ecopoetry, A Different Eden (Dedalus Press 2021).