Illustration by Charlie Blodnieks and Dora O’Neill
If I could bring back Seamus Heaney
maybe then I’d have a lover
a real loverman for me,
perhaps he’d even be my boyfriend
and if we went over to Ireland
I am sure it would be magic—
Maybe I’ll bring back Seamus Heaney
maybe then I’ll have a lover.
I can smell us lying there upon the grass I feel
it always to be true, the muscles of his arm, the chafing of his stubble, soft, gentle in the light
of an Autumn sun through rotting leaves, of bitter breeze and the scratchy rag
he calls a blanket that we lie beneath—
We are so lonely on the soil.
And could he love me, do you think,
with white hair snowy on the manger
with love lust falling through the pilgrims
and all his sweaters wrapped around me?
It is a drip feed to the cannula—
Those are his lovely words, not mine—
It is a panic disco nightmare, lovely
Heaney please be mine.
Robert Mayo is a senior studying English literature and working part time in the Columbia Writing Center. When he’s not writing, he likes to do improvisational comedy, or buy books he won’t have the time to read.