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Jessica Traynor was born in Dublin in 1984. Her poems have been published with two collections by Dedalus Press, Liffey Swim (2014), shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award, and The Quick (2018). She won the Listowel Poetry Prize in 2011, was named Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year in 2013, and in 2014 was the recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary. New work has been commissioned by the Arts Council, Poetry Ireland, and the Salvage Press. She has worked as Literary Manager for the Abbey Theatre and as Deputy Museum Director at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum.
THE ARTANE BOYS’ BAND
Da used to swing me over the turnstile,
to see the Dublin matches. I remember
the sight of my own legs, dangling.
I’d never see much of the game;
what’s left is the smell of men,
their coats steaming rain and beer,
being hoisted by my ribs above
the crowd, the pitch spread out
green and vast, the distance of it.
And every half-time the band
playing on the field, their music rising
and falling with the seaweed stink
that rushed in from the bay.
There’s the lads, Da would say,
and he’d wag his finger in a warning
that told me these matchstick boys
made music because they were outlaws,
each cymbal clash a cry of mea culpa,
and I imagined myself out there with them
in this rainy coliseum with my Da as Emperor
giving the thumbs down,
shaking his head for the loss of his son
to that criminal gang:
the bold boys of the Artane Band.