I’ve got this gut feeling that inside somewhere after Maurice Riordan there is this hairy creature, a fenodyree busy naked with its chores a nimble mower of rough hedges shouldering stones one way or another with a melancholic wail when my body crumbles like a tholtan, maybe it is released from its unchosen home to herd loaghtan sheep on foggy nights. Perhaps it’s a buggane, a huge hairier ogre ripping the roof off Sunday School beliefs, a bull with tusks glistening red eyes torched with rum until I’m gone when it shape-shifts out of my corpse into silver snauanee, into ferrish mist.
tholtan ruined cottage
snauanee web-like covering of the ground on a dewy dawn
ferrish faerie
Notes:
‘I’ve got this gut feeling that inside somewhere’ is from Maurice Riordan’s The Jailbird.
Fenodyree is a short, dark, uncouth, supernatural creature, usually portrayed as naked but covered with body hair. Sprite-like it is helpful to humans and can perform tasks requiring enormous strength and endurance.
Buggane is a mischievous creature with a mane of black hair and torch-like eyes. Arch and naughty, bugganes chase and frighten people and are adept at shape-shifting, and are often an evil magician’s slave.
(Manx) Loaghtan is a rare breed of sheep native to the Isle of Man. The sheep have dark brown wool, except on their faces and legs, and usually four or occasionally six horns.
Simon Maddrell writes as a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV in Brighton & Hove. Since 2019, over a hundred of his poems have appeared in numerous publications including Acumen, AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Wales, Propel, Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, Under the Radar. In 2020, Simon’s debut chapbook, Throatbone, was published by UnCollected Press, and Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition. In 2023, The Whole Island and Isle of Sin, were both Poetry Book Society Selections. a finger in derek jarman’s mouth marks 30 years after Jarman’s death (Polari Press, Feb. 2024).
Amethyst Review 