Six Poems by Mickey Corrigan

Boynton Beach, Florida

Image by DreamStudio

James Joyce in Dublin

Father a tenor, raconteur
man about the pubs
losing jobs, money 
hence the inevitable slide
from a comfortable home
with maids and a piano
cut glass, white tablecloths
to slobland, offal, trash
inkpots by seaspawn
cocklepickers subsisting 
on tea, bread-'n'-drippin'
the ten Joyce children
living by the slums

and "Sunny Jim"
nearsighted, singer, smart
voracious reader at school
the Jesuits and their strictures
appealed before he rebelled
with trips to Nighttown 
to visit the whores
to drink to excess
to exult in sin
in his frayed clothing
torn shoes, sailor cap 
singing for refills

so full of himself
unlike most Irish boys
believed in his future
in Paris drinking, writing
in bars, cafés, cheap rooms
hungering to be published
for another ten years.
 

James Joyce in Love

with Nora Barnacle
jaunty auburn-haired
maid from Galway
country girl, peasant 
not interested in books
spoke in riddles, prickly
stories of Catholic girls
he found enchanting

on June the sixteenth
on their first walking out
they strolled by the river
to the green gray bay 
behind the granite rocks
and he wanted more
for the next 35 years 
from crisis to crisis
illness and madness
poverty, fame and fortune.

Unmarried, scandalous
they ran off together
Zürich, Trieste, Rome
teaching English all day
tavernas, caffés all night
in hotel rooms waiting
Nora and the baby
Nora and two babies 
taking in laundry
ironing, burning
mad at her mate
drinking his pay.

She was his Ireland
limestone and grass 
harp and shamrock 
his rock, his muse
caretaker, queen
crowned heart 
turf and bog
his barnacle goose.
 

James Joyce's Ulysses

He wrote he said
to tell the truth 
about Ireland but
the publishers feared
libel, obscenity laws

but he had fans
he had supporters
he had benefactors
Pound, Yeats, women
with money paid the way
for his eye surgeries
and his books

he kept on writing 
half blind in dark rooms
on a voyage to the new
he pushed further out
for Ulysses, further still
for Finnegans Wake.

Some called his novels
the scribblings of a madman
while others named him
the greatest writer
of his time 
on the cover of Time
in exile in Zürich 
an eye patch, an ulcer
perforated, dead.

Ireland refused his body
as he had rejected them
when he made poetry 
his country, his sacrament
his truth, his life purpose
to reinvent his Dublin 
in the poignant details 
of everyday life.
 

Image by DreamStudio

Hemingway's Feast

Orphan Hadley met Ernest
with her family money
in a trust he liked her
red-gold hair in Paris
low rent, cheap food, cafés
a beautiful romantic city
for a foreign correspondent
training ground with Gertrude 
Stein, Pound, Picasso, wine 

drinking with James Joyce
traveling with Fitzgerald
to bullfights, fist fights
he wrote it all down
war time vignettes
his first novel a hit
he became the voice
of the Lost Generation
unpublished work lost
with Hadley's luggage.

Decades later, a fourth
wife told to repossess
two old steamer trunks
stored at the Paris Ritz 
full of his notebooks
a young man's struggle
to write one true sentence
his life spread out then
before him
a veritable feast. 


Hemingway's Key West

The famous author
wanted a chic wife
underestimated the power
of black remorse
trading in the old
for the writer 
for Vogue.

She called him Papa
gave him two sons
a home in Key West
with a carriage house 
for his studio 
a stand-up desk
a salt-water pool
a fishing boat
a lot of booze.

Key West had charm
frame houses, dirt alleys
Conch town characters
grits and boiled grunts
azure skies, sparkling
high seas and quiet
and he felt 
the death loneliness
at the end of every day
wasted not writing

at Sloppy Joe's bar
his fans found him
and Martha Gellhorn
hot war correspondent 
the red-gold hair 
he thought he loved

only later knew
if you lie with one
against another 
you'll do it again
as he left Key West 
far behind. 


The Old Man

Deep in the bush
two plane crashes
in two days, the first hit
a flock of ibis, the second
exploding on the runway
skull fractured, dislocated
shoulder, crushed discs 
ruptured liver and kidney
lost sight, hearing 
on one side lost
lucidity, memory
laughing while reading 
his own obit
in the national news.

Fragile, frail, aged
too soon he wrote
The Old Man and the Sea 
in eight weeks for Life
winning the Pulitzer 
the Nobel Prize 
while his mania slid
into years of depression.

When his father shot himself
many years before
Hemingway said 
I'll probably go 
the same way.
And he did.

~Mickey Corrigan
Poems from a collection of literary/poetry biographies of two major mid-20th century writers. 

Bio:
Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan hides out in the lush ruins of South Florida. She writes pulp fiction, literary crime, and psychological thrillers. Salt Publishing in the UK released Project XX, a satirical novel about a school shooting. Bloodhound Books UK published What I Did For Love, a spoof of the classic Lolita. Corrigan has published poems in literary journals, chapbooks, and collections.