TURLOUGH

David Nash

Water with its moon in Libra:

now you see it,

sudden water, where yesterday

you’d happened

on a desire path

home, which would have halved

the time it takes. Now with water,

doubled. Doubled water – 

the lake you see before you now is

the lake you don’t

inverted, the water table

with its legs in the air,

an underground overed,

a frown upside-downed.

You roll up your jeans

to ford or afford it, and exactly at waist

height you are one of two things:

an anchor tethering sky

or the lake’s space programme.

This water one day

will leave land in its wake.

You will stand in

a grass meniscus

while the water, untroubled,

summers in closure.

Now you don’t.

David Nash is a poet and writer from County Cork, Ireland, who lives and works between Europe and Chile. His poetry has appeared in various publications such as The White Review, The Stinging Fly, and Pilot Press’ Queer Anthologies series. His art texts have appeared in numerous exhibitions and art books thoughout the UK and Ireland, most recently for Wolfgang Tillmans at IMMA. His first children’s book, Bajo Mis Pies, was released in Latin America in 2020, as did two translations of books on the social and cultural history of Chile. He writes a column for Harper’s Bazaar Korea and Elle Korea, and other essays have appeared in the Irish Times. His first book, The Island of Chile, came out in September 2022 with 14Poems, and his second, as yet untitled, will be released by Dedalus Press in 2023.