Drowning in Sorghum We were fourteen when the Gorman boy drowned feet first & sunk to the tip of his crown in sorghum that was the way he’d shouldered out his birth too a footling breech, set adrift now in a burying log & so slight that he had even slipped through seed you said to me ‘that box would be near empty … were it not for his mother’s tears’ in the weeping heat & loud silence of the chapel my eyes remained dry-trained to the back of you your hair restrained to that tamed lick of a cow & your nape naked on the penitence of the pew I had suffered decades of rosaries to be this close later while the cousins keened, we slipped behind a stone me fourteen & you lifting the chaff of the day from my lips it was me who fell then letting my anchor loose letting my breath be taken like I was drowning in sorghum Cáit O'Neill McCullagh
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