Three poems-by Kitty Donnelly

Manic
 
I dash beneath the arch,
down past the boarded Legion.
 
Rain comes down in streaks.
The drink has failed to execute its tricks.
 
Now ordered lawns lapse to a tangle of fields and woods
where hungry feelings stir desire:
 
Dangerous as diabetic thirst, as fire
pulsing for oxygen.


Psychiatric Nurse in January
 
Spring feels far away. Distractions of the everyday
neutralize magic. Trees are blossomless.
Weeds crowd spaces snowdrops should poke noses.
A dull drizzle dirties Castle Hill
where the sinister, lopsided monkey-puzzle
looms in my dreams of coroner’s courts,
wrongness in abundance.
I ready my work-bag for Monday’s shift, my plasters
all too small.
 
 
​The Cat that Comes and Goes with the Mist
 
We know when it’s coming,
ears to the ground like Red Indians –
its drum-drumming
like hooves up the track, pawing the earth.
What started as anger – that red roar on the plains –
returns as fear now, fear
shifting like sands.
It’s worse when darkness falls.
Its hunger’s a palpable
gnawing in the chest,
a heart digesting itself.
Light torches, stoke fires,
take to high ground.
It loses interest. Sun will rise. 


( Kitty Donnelly is a nurse and a poet. Her poems have been published in Acumen, The American Journal of Poetry, The Fenland Reed, The Dawntreader, Mslexia and has work due out in Sentinel Literary Quarterly and Granta amonst other publications.  kittydonnellypoet.com )