Adam White is from County Cork
in Ireland, but lives and works in France at present. His poems have been published in Ireland by The Stony Thursday Book, Skylight 47, and the National University of Ireland's SIN newspaper, and in the U.S. by Miller's Pond. His first collection of poetry, Accurate Measurements, is forthcoming from Doire Press, Connemara. www.doirepress.com

Adam White

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Winter Visit

She will only say the new stove
was delivered and fitted for
a song, that the coalmen prove

novel, labouring on the yard's steps
and cramped path bearing bags, nursing
them overhead and down onto their breasts

to feed the bunker half a ton.
But I only see her lugging
buckets, the skin round her thumbs

react to dust, hear on a cold
morning what the doctor said about
porous hip bones and then behold

my mother stoking up a house.