‘Lullaby!’ by Victoria Kennefick

She lay down like a lamb
in the end. In my fists
my hair, pulled out in clumps,
wilts. I listen to her breath 
steady in the cot, sweet as milk. 
Lock-jawed, light-headed, 
I want to drift. All is quiet, 
all is quiet, you hear?

But cars growl like monsters 
under the window 
(what are you trying to do to me?) 

The tuneless hiss of radios slinks
under door cracks, through
careless open windows.

Dogs bound around the green, yap
in packs. I want to slice off their long, 
dangling tongues. Where is my knife?

Wind, enough! Cease tapping the blackout blind,
gossiping about me in Morse code.
I am a good mother.

Birds, not you too. Each peep 
stabs my palms. Don’t you have babies 
awake at 5am cheeping at such a pitch 
the very sky shakes itself awake, 
blinking, its bloody eye open, 
ready or not? I bite down 
on a towel. My baby, my baby, 
she’s wide awake now.

From issue #9.5: spring/summer 2020

About the Author
Victoria Kennefick’s White Whale (Southword Editions, 2015) won the Munster Literature Centre Chapbook Competition and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere.