Judy Wells Poet

Berkeley, CA
jwellspoet@att.net

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Everything Irish, 1999

EVERYTHING IRISH ABOUT ME

IN A NUTSHELL

My mother's church in San Francisco was called St. Brigid's, my church was called St. Catherine's, I was told I had the map of Ireland on my face, said "Mither, I want me mush" when I was a kid, my best friend in kindergarten was called Kathleen Ahern, I went to parochial school, wore a navy blue uniform and beanie, had priests called Monsignor Burke, Father Cushnahan, and Father Coffey in our parish, my smart girl rival in Catholic school was Marleen Dunne, Paul and Philip Murphy, the twins, were the milk boys at school, Darragh Flynn could run faster than me, I collected holy cards, hoarded silver dollars in my sock, was sexually repressed, committed minor sins but still thought I was going straight to hell, took the "pledge" when young, I think, I forget, I had an alcoholic uncle who was the family secret, I had very pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair, my childhood enemy was Marylou Mahoney down the street, her mother thought I was the ringleader against her daughter, I wore green on March 17th, said I was "English, Irish, and Scottish" when asked what I was, I went to Mass every Sunday, knelt down before the radio for rosary recitation, I sunburnt to a crisp, had a spinster schoolteacher aunt called Agnes, I never thought of going to Ireland, but went to France three times, my mother was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, feisty politico, go-straight-to-the-top type woman, her son was favored over three daughters, I love potatoes and sweets, and often feel I'm starving--that's everything Irish about me in a nutshell--except I'm always running late, love to chat, and I am a poet.




Everything Irish

by Judy Wells

1999

Scarlet Tanager Press

P.O. Box 20906, Oakland, CA 94620

ISBN 0967022401

$12.95

ORDER INFO: www.scarlettanager.com

6x9,perfectbound, trade paperback

126 pages

Cover art: An adaptation of the initial "D" from Collectio Canonum, Cologne Cathedral Library, Germany. Copyright at Classic Designs, Ltd., 1992; reproduced with permission by L.J. Young pubsher, The Mills, Blarney, Co. Cork, Ireland.

Cover design: Judy Wells, Dale Jensen, Scott Perry

Book design: Scott Perry of Archetype Typography

Back cover photo: Olivia Eielson

Typography: Archetype Typography, Berkeley, CA

 

Judy was featured at the 2014 11th Annual Irish-American Festival, "Crossroads," reading from Everything Irish and other books.

 


 

WHAT WE FORGOT

 "Beware, beware, Mac Conglinne,

 lest the gravy drown thee!"

 The Vision of Mac Conglinne

12th century

 

 For 4th and 5th generation

Irish-Americans          

 

We forgot our language

We forgot the land we came from

     had rolling green hills

We forgot our songs

We forgot our stories

We forgot we were cattle people

We forgot our voyage tales

     where the West didn't mean

                            only Death

     where the West meant

                Tir na n'Og

     The Land of Youth

     where there was no decay

We forgot the islands of women

The land in the sea

     surrounded by sea horses

We forgot the sea

     was a plain of red flowers

which Manannan mac Lir

     thundered through in his chariot

 

We forgot we ever had a vision

     of a silly land of surfeit

     where we rowed on a lake of milk

                           skimming cream

     where castles were made of

                          butter and lard

     and our palisades, of bacon

We forgot we had cheese gates

                          and cheese stepping stones

and a voracious demon who slipped

                                   inside our mouths

                         in an apple

whom a cleric called Mac Conglinne

             enticed from our king's gullet

by enumerating

                       all the things

the demon liked to eat--

          curds and whey

          and milk and lard

          and bacon and mutton

          and buttered rolls and mead

until the demon couldn't stand

          it anymore and leaped

                      from the king's throat

and there were lands

          where you could eat a bird's egg

                     and then sprout feathers

and lands where the fragrance of

          crimson trees satisfied your hunger

and lands where multi-colored birds

          blue, crimson, and green

                     sat three in a row

          and sang away your grief

and Yeats tried to tell us

         but only a little

 

And we tried to forget in America

         We wanted real bacon

                           in our bellies

         and we wanted shoes

         and then we wanted fancy red-flowered hats

         and we wanted an education

so we could become lawyers,

and nurses and school teachers

so we would not have to be domestics

         and serve roasted birds

to "our betters" who would never sprout

                                             feathers

 

Never fly as we did

          with the knowledge of our tales

                           over seas of red flowers

                          over seas of red flowers

We forgot, we forgot our tales

         and remembered only

                          dark seas

                          and coffin ships

We forgot our seas of red flowers

         and Manannan mac Lir on his steed

                              galloping to meet us

         where we were

                   Queen of the island

                             with 17 daughters

                  Queen of the island

                            with 17 daughters             

 

Copyright 2015 by Judy Wells.



 

LIGHT AS THE HOLY GHOST

 

Father Cushnahan

who could rip through a Mass in about 20 minutes

once slid back the confessional door

and burped

in my ear.

I wonder now

whether he kept a bottle of brandy

in there to keep him company.

And was he the one

who laughed at me

when I finally dredged up

my decade old mortal sin

because I was flying overseas

and didn't want to go straight to hell

when the plane went down

over the Atlantic?

And of course the sin was nothing really,

your classic "I told a lie in confession."

I pretended I missed Mass on Sunday

when I had nothing else to say

but once you've told a lie in confession

you've really done it

because it's a sacrilege

and then you go to Communion

with a mortal sin on your soul

and you've just compounded your guilt

and then you do the same thing for 10 years

till you're a Mother Lode of mortal sins

and by God, you better confess

before you ever take an airplane trip

because you're bound to be on the doomed plane

with Satan at the helm

so even though Father Cushnahan

burped in my ear

and laughed at me

and only made me say about

5 Hail Marys

and 5 Our Fathers

for 10 years of sacrilege and guilt--

the same penance as if I confessed

I was mean to my sisters--

I sailed out of that confessional

light as the faint scent of booze

on Father Cushnahan's breath

or the Holy Ghost

ready for any flight

anyone wanted to put me on

and this is the power of religion

and this is what makes you a believer

and this is what makes you a poet.

 

Copyright 2015 by Judy Wells

 


IF A BIRD ENTERS YOUR HOUSE,

SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE.

                Old Irish superstition

Last summer on the Aran Islands,

on that great slab of limestone called Inishmore

we awoke to a great whirring

in our room.

Dale looked behind the curtains and found

a bird beating its wings between

curtains and window pane.

He shooshed it out.

"Don't worry," he said.

"It didn't really get into the house."

We were about to embark on a pilgrimage

to Northern Ireland,

once more in quest of my ancestors.

We searched for the dead

not knowing the dead was with us all along.

 

In America, on my return, my sister Nancy

said matter-of-factly on the freeway

as her husband drove us from San Francisco Airport,

"Agnes died on July 22nd while you were away."

I heard the bird beating her wings

between curtain and window pane,

the message half-delivered,

my aunt's soul

making that last, hard passage

leaving human body, reluctantly,

reluctantly, for life

on the other side.



2015 Copyright by Judy Wells


 

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