Poem of the Week: Olympia

You look down from the shelves,
a photograph in black and white—

Hughes to your right hand, Heaney
to your left. I sit where you sat—

sifting through sheets in search
of your signature. Is it true

you were afraid of the sea?
When it gets dark, I find myself

afraid of you. I sweep your work
back to the source, to the cold

of the carriage return, the slap
of the keys against the ribbon

as I push each letter back
to Olympia. You look down

from above as I punch
out the weight of each word.

We workshop well
into the night.

Judy O’Kane’s pamphlet, Olympia, is published by Clutag Press. She holds an MA in poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast and a PhD from UEA