Nine Lines
This is all I can spare.
What did you expect
Amongst the stones of your heart?
There was only ever this.
Some afterthoughts left out
Going stale overnight.
The door key is mine now.
The bottom of the stairs too.
This silence is sweeter than words.


The Act
My brother knows how to jive.
I saw him dancing in the back yard.
A shifting grace across the bare ground.
His suit jacket flapping.
When men dance like that
They want to be their fathers,
To stop all other movement.
It is an act of delirium.

Joseph Horgan lives in County Cork. He won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2004.