Two Poems by Catherine Noonan

Bangkok 2010

Unable to crawl with one leg to three

Stumps, the beggar level with Siam’s traffic fumes

Somehow moves past the electronic doors

Of Giorgio Armani

Pink, plastic cup hard between his teeth

Eyes ask.

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Fast

The world is too near and not enough.

The world is all flyable and incurious

More faces I’d rather forget save one

But I’ve toured that to a thin mystery

Souvenir shopped it for memories giddy or tender

Ordinary and dreary now we no longer visit

And memory falls blank in on itself

-I was counting on the memories-

Without them I cannot walk in the world

Not that the world is any loss

The world can’t wash up my dead

The world can’t govern my speed

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Catherine Noonan is from Kildare, Ireland. In 2005 she completed an M. Phil in creative writing in Trinity College Dublin. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, 10×3 Plus, Avatar Review (featured poet) and a Trinity College anthology. She is currently working on her first collection, Dead Pirates.