I too have been to Blarney
and done the thing,
the kiss. With a line of other paid-up kissers behind me,
each waiting
for a turn, I leaned out backward from the castle parapet
into nothingness:
one touch of lips to stone, they say, and you’ll be eloquent
all your life.
My eyes were shut, so I didn’t see the upside-down abyss
between me and the world below,
or small figures on the ground, or any garden archipelago
of green . . .
but clutching the iron safety bar, I brought my mouth
to that damp stone,
whose country roughness had been rubbed away by lips
of every shape
and hue and tone. I want things from poetry
that it could never give:
power to undo, to mend. To compel forgiveness
and forgive. I know
kissing the Blarney Stone is just a thing to do
to say you’ve done,
but I thought, Give me
a silver tongue. Reader, if you’re there, help me
play the fool
without becoming one, so I can be something more
than a lover from afar;
something more than a small-town mayor
in a dictator’s tie;
something more than a centaur at the wedding feast
with a horse’s heart
thumping a few feet below
his human one.

“An entrenched strangeness exists in James Arthur‘s work, derived not from linguistic hijinks but from common observations . . . his tone is casual and confident, the effect slightly off-frame or out of focus, yet constantly arresting.” – The Believer