Máiréad Delaney
Ex tracts
(25 of 70 - the full work will be featured in the publication (im)possible performances)
Ex tracts
Intervals/intervening in
160-ish yr old structure
The Embers,
a public house
Abandoned
(Matrilineal)

Before I sleep
I bike down the peninsula
to the water
Two places: power wires, a cow barn.
I stop under the wire towers and hear them spitting
Outside the barn where bats roost
I make the same spit with my lips and teeth
Electricity
animals wing out, diving me.
Curious
The cable swings down
flung eel
flying wire
Tangles with me and the bike.
The cycle’s forward motion, the wind,
put me in the knot before I see
I’m wrapped, unwrapped, yards down the road
With no understanding
Look back, up
search grey sky, the wind,
for cause, explanation
light fades
In minutes
I discern the slim black cord
a line moving, looping, in dim air
Lightbulbs burst when I kick the ceiling down from above
Sometimes, when lightning strikes
Breathing stops but the heart keeps beating
whole body shocks
Introduced at the inner thigh
To hop a fence.
wheel a leg
over
wire runs through—
A jolt
meted out
a pulse
the other leg
touches down
Lichtenberg figures: In skin.
lighting busts in,
explodes blood vessels,
leaving pattern: a fern.
Of course
there is difference
Between heartbeat
and electricity
The first warp-spasm—
unheard of
every knuckle, angle, organ—
a tree in flood
a reed in stream
body
Makes a furious twist
inside skin
1

1

A crowd
Dances
Or it__
Fields
Where once
No more
There used to be
dancing here
There used to be
dancing plagues
Collective
somatic
release

forgiveness

When I arrive
Vaporous second ceilings drop
The house pulls apart under my hands.
Woodworms have pulverized the furniture
Chair legs appearing solid crumble at a touch
I walk rooms
Turn everything to dust
pads on my fingers
pulse
each easy touch
a final push
disintegration
cobwebs let go
Detaching
yet intact
Corrective drives wreak their own harm

This summer I missed—
a framing nail—
the tip of my index finger,
pneumatic force,
FAST
I touch tunneled things with the tunnel in my fingertip
digit: perforate instantly
worm: gnaw
footstep: split the ceiling
To cleanly cut or break a fragile thing
requires moving—
FAST


Pulling up the wood floor
to find a horse’s skull
2
This is normal
Placing a capacious head under the boards of a dancing floor
so dancers’ feet sound a hollow boom
The road in front of the house slopes to the river
The ground
Has begun
Open water
2
In the corner: hump of the piano.
larger furniture resists crumbling
Every time I break something down,
Every time I slam the floor,
To every dissembling blow,
The piano extends
a drone
interior neck of flower
Shaking ladder
sky, bone socket
unaccompanied
Socket sounds
seeing blue—
steel bathtub
strapped on a speeding car
drain hole in the wind
Doppler effect:
bathtub passing you
You, standing in a field.
3
Empty the mouth made tiny by the field.
The opposite of causality
Reverberation
Foramina
3

Building:
full of woodworm
Infestation:
live
Their fine dust:
frass
Grown beetles click
a mating call
a click is not a call
It is—
At night
The clicks— impacts— turn up
tick time
remaining
with the watching
vigil
anticipating
A wake
the beetles seek—
desire-tapping the walls—
more life
more teardown
Extermination:
Poison
high-pressure spray
Electrocution
attract and zap (incomplete)
Freeing the house, 2-3 weeks
(structural damage)
Oxygen starvation. 8 weeks.
house hypoxic

When I see buildings collapse
whatever the final demolishing thrust,
however weakened by biting machines,
it seems they decide
In one moment:
to give way
Surrender
go diffuse
The little creatures
Burrow wood
leave dust
click their bodies:
raise, hit their heads
on tunnel walls
Slam! Love me— Slam! Love me
the building softens
Teaching the body to spasm—
The theory being
small tremors
(thaw)
Prevent a larger freeze, crack
Galvanism:
Innervate
Configure
And yet, of course,
Heartbeat
Legs and hips work easily,
dance, fuck— heels drum.
The common face: flickers eyelids,
caverning jaw. Neck twists.
rarest: torso— arms
numb (no fighting)
spasms force Preparatory Position:
Frog. legs crooked/bowed
Melt!
They demand it
What I have done
What have I done
building _______
Twists inside skin

1. Kinsella, Thomas, and Le Louis Brocquy. The Tain. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
2. Ó Súilleabháin, Seán. “Foundation Sacrifices.” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 75, no. 1, 1945, pp. 45–52. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25510484.
3. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Penguin Books, 2014.