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Red
I am growing in this dress.
I plunge my wide curves
to the taut edges and
lift my shoulders to the
raspberry red,
I almost trust the seams.
Soft on my rounded stomach,
my breasts full,
my charcoal deep eyes.
I am growing into this dress,
it is wearing me, moving
me along the street,
clutching and gathering,
in around my rib flesh.
Soon I will be this dress.
Some evening
with laughter lines
with less clutter in my head,
we will melt together.
But not this evening,
this evening is only practise,
this evening on
Grafton Street’s cobbles,
this is only dress up.
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Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Feeney has published three poetry collections, including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise (Salmon Poetry). Her debut novel, As You Were (Vintage & Biblioasis), won the 2021 Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’ Brien Prize, The Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize (UK), and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Rathbones-Folio Prize. Feeney’s work featured widely on Best of 2020 lists, and she was chosen by The Observer as a top debut novelist for 2020. Her short story “Sojourn” was published in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, and she also wrote the multi award-winning drama, WRoNGHEADED, commissioned by the Liz Roche Company. She lectures in poetry at The National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is also a founding member of the Tuam Oral History Project.
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Roderic O’Conor (1860–1940), Seated Woman in a Red Dress, 1929 (oil on canvas).
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Author: Terence Winch
