Heimlich's Manoeuvre

Paula Cunningham

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781906613839
• eBook ISBN: 9781910367292
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. This first full collection sees Paula Cunningham reflecting on her upbringing in Northern Ireland, while casting a clear eye on family history and friendships. Its memorable short sequences include 'Fathom', which centres on her father, alongside many varied shorter pieces, humorous, erotic and always surprising. "She has formal gifts in abundance…when her eye is on her native Ulster, magic and frightening things happen." Paula Meehan Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Her pamphlet A Dog Called Chance was a winner in the Poetry Business Competition (1999). In 2011 she won the Hippocrates Poetry Prize (NHS section) and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Prize. She has also written drama and short fiction; a short story appeared in the Faber Book of the Best New Irish Short Stories in 2005. She now lives in Belfast, where she works as a dentist.

Changing Rooms

Have I told you how I

was the last in the class

to get one; how I was teased

for a year; how I knew

when I got one the teasing

would only get worse;

how I longed for and dreaded

it in equal measure.

My mother’s whispered lie

she needs a bra;

the Misses O’Reilly’s dextrous eyes

sizing me up:

30 their damning verdict

A A

cup.

From under the counter

little by little

five plain boxes

stacked and floating

flat on my upturned palms.

Our procession facing

the shuttered changing

room; my mother & Miss O’Reilly

hovering; the prickle of white

padded nylon, the deep pink rose

sewn on where the cleavage

should be. A pink fog

closing in, its crimson pall.

*

And did I ever tell you about my friend

who, furnished with a bra

in another town,

in a family of sisters,

never having seen one on the line,

wore her new bra for months

before her mother spotted it,

black on the bedroom floor?

Her mother, it transpired,

hung them at the back

of the airi...

Table of contents

• Finding the Well
• Geography and Sweetshops
• Cats – a Retrospective
• Ceremony
• Mother’s Pride
• Banquet
• Hats
• Fiction
• Changing Rooms
• A Dog Called Chance
• Sometimes Dancing
• The Question of Punctuation
• The Cloudhouse
• Notes from an Ear
• Losing the Keys
• Salvage
• Bane
• The Chief Radiographer Considers
• Amalgam
• Too Dear
• Broken Couplets
• Skin
• Aubade
• Because
• On Being the Least Feminist Woman You’ve Ever Met
• Seeing Things
• Seed
• Astronomy for Beginners
• Driving North
• At First Our Letters
• The Birds of Sri Lanka
• Fruit
• Earthwish
• Gist
• The Hyacinth Under The Stairs
• Fathom
• Notice
• A Ribbon for Anne Mc Alarney
• Notes on the Poems
• Permissions
• About the Author