Patricia Walsh’s poem: Expanding South


Someone exceeded their rations again,

I can tell, blowing the unknowing glance

Not leaving the common place alone

Fashionable tirades rowing gently down the stream.


Not to worry, the hammerhead got what it deserved

Purchased to folly the catch cry of exclusion

Allergic to the dead zone re-surged to derision

Escape from an affability now your only hope.


Scraping past beloved, the neurotic decision

No results for the present mar your trade

The fear of agreement resuscitates sorely

Contradictory hurt no longer running its course.


Never out of material, at best a blizzard of odd

Not disrobing on cue, laundry a staggered

Chores manifesting themselves, earning the space

That the sandwiches up to speed get the runaround.


In the end, indifferent.  Pitch past pitch of dissent

Plain sight agendas punctuates the miserly

Attraction on the job, a drinks explosion

Surfeit of charity a walking sore.


Absent through the times, the better mislaid,

The boiling sight pervades the rotten core,

Recorded in bad times, rustling immemorial

Declaring another poison through this heartbreak.


Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland.  She has previously published a range of poetry in publications across Ireland, the UK, and the US, and one collection of poetry, Continuity Errors,  with Lapwing, and two novels, The Quest For Lost Éire, and In The Days of Ford Cortina, in 2013 and 2021 respectively.  She lives in Cork City. A further novel, Hell for Beginners, is scheduled for release in 2024.

Leave a comment