Priorities

by Aoife Riach

When the tides come pounding on the glassfront office block,
overwatering the potted plant till its leaves blister and burst and
mouldering the freshly vacuumed carpet, who will we scold for 
opening the window? Wading through sea-swaddled stationery
bobbing past the laminator, and swamped boxes of headed paper, 
in pours our inexorable end. Refusing to grasp the gravity 
of the gravity that floats filing cabinets along the ocean floor
of polystyrene cups and post-its, still my head snaps up. Strung to
the scald of flesh between your jumper and jeans as you reach
and carve the waterline. Your shoulder thrust to glass. Forcing it
shut, stemming the flow, granting us a sodden surplus minute.

 

Aoife Riach is a queer feminist witch with an MPhil in Gender & Women’s Studies. Her poetry has been published by College Green Journal, Impossible Archetype and other magazines. Riach was a 2019 Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate and her poem ‘Vancouver’ was selected for the Hungering curation of the Poetry Jukebox. This poem was first published in Channel Issue 1.