‘Rime/Ripe’ by Alicia Byrne Keane

At the top of the inhalation
there is swoop & confluence,
a peak forest-soft from above.

I had a fight with you
in my head & made it spindrift:
maybe somewhere

in the narrowing bend
of flu-season there’s a frozen river
underfoot. Maybe I am likeable

when a compound word:
today I found a late ambering
we couldn’t classify,

downloaded that app
that’s like Shazam for plants,
found the entry for

‘orange banana tomato’. Now,
that is just three existing fruits,
I thought. That is just inadmissible.

New terms refused, we let skin
become patina-glittered in a future,
find itself an evergreen mouth.

From issue #11: spring/summer 2021

About the Author
Alicia Byrne Keane is a PhD student working on an Irish Research Council-funded thesis at Trinity College Dublin. Alicia’s work has appeared in The Moth, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, and The Berkeley Poetry Review; further work is forthcoming in The Colorado Review.