Anniversary

Another blast of confetti
from the parade float, bunting
from some one-shop village
with a church, called Kilmuck.

Local occasion commemorating
one or other of the helpless rabbits
history bloods its lurchers on.
Laughing boy on dad’s shoulders,

mother withdrawn and scrolling.
For three nights the sandman
has bivouacked elsewhere
and tendered barely a grain,

the country doctor’s flummoxed.
Does it hurt when I press here
or here or here? Have you anyone
else to chat to about this?

Well, that’s your choice.
Wouldn’t recommend it.
And how’s Cormac getting on?
I sat the Leaving with him.

–Dean Browne

Dean Browne received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. Recent poems have appeared in London Magazine and New York Review of Books. His first collection After Party will be published by Picador this year.