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  • The Charming Nancy
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The Charming Nancy

Miriam Gamble

She is out there somewhere,
creaking in the swell
of the green lough water,
oozing sugar
and black-market nicotine
into the river’s vein.

She stirs herself into
my morning coffee;
she is in the smell of money
and clean cotton sheets.
At night she sweats
into my bones
a sugar-island melody,
her blanched dead rat-
a-tatting on my dreams.


Miriam Gamble

from The Squirrels Are Dead (Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2010) 

Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

ships & boats
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Miriam Gambleb.1980

Miriam Gamble was born in Brussels, grew up in Belfast and now lives in Edinburgh. 
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