april's fish

Here, for the most part, are wry and honest observations of love, from listening to dead electricity to instructions on how to build a father. Alison Dunne begins with a moth and ends with a goat— everywhere between roams an aching herd of  being only human. This is a place where there’s subtlety at work, drawing the reader into complex situations, on the border of acceptance and wanting to let go. Time and again there’s a sense of recognition, in poems that are forged from flesh and blood, that pulse with emotional honesty.

Berserk
 
In that barn of a place
where our children
ran and played, sweated,
cried, ate chips
and drank from plastic cups,
I was almost tearful,
knew the arrangement
of my features troubled you,
told you hormones
were the reason I felt sad,
and you accepted that.
But running with the hormones
in my veins, with the blood,
was something deeper:
the toxic knowledge
I’ve fallen out of love.
 
There in that bright play
with a costumed bear,
undrinkable coffee,
and ketchup,
you looked at me,
looked in my eyes
with that intense look you have
and said I love you.
 
And there in that garish barn,
for the first time,
since you said it for the first time,
I did not answer you.
I could not lie.

Bio: Alison Dunne presently awaits the sale of her novel Eco Pops. Her work has been published and broadcast on Radio 4 and she has read her work at many venues including the Bloomsbury Theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe. april's fish is her first chapbook.