A portfolio of poetry by Rory Finnegan
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My Mother's Singing

1/4/2015

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When we weren’t listening it
would be the loudest, or in the
shower through the walls that
weren’t quite thick enough.

I would catch you in church
when everyone else was
singing too. My brother and I
would sit in the pews while you
stood and softly sang along,
unaware that we were
old enough to notice
the beat you tapped onto
the wooden benches.

Best of all was when we
were sleeping,
or when you thought we were.
I would lay beneath the sheets
with your hands in my hair and
let your melody wash over me,
lull me awake with the desire to
hear more.

Your words were never enough
because they were always too much.
But in the rare, private moments that
I found you singing,
I would wish you were bold
enough to let me hear you.

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I Am The Artist

1/4/2015

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Inspired by Anne Carson

I once woke in the darkness
to find you sleeping next to me
on the far side of my bed,
your sharp black outline pressed
firmly against the wall.

The hard breathing of your bad
dream cracked into the
darkness and for the first
time I felt deep within me
the primal urge
to hold you,
to blur with
my soft body
the dark pencil lines
the night had traced
around you,
erasing the fear
I found there.

Now through the sharp dry sleep
that accumulates in
the bleary corners of
my eyes, I find
only the
dark outline
of an empty shell.


~Rory Finnegan
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Receiving a Text from Your Ex

1/4/2015

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I thought I’d forgotten
what it felt like to love you.
How easy it was, like
leaping from the side of
the sea into soothing water,
like the snow sliding away
beneath a sled. How easy
to love you.

Forgetting was the inverse
like—two
bodies curled around one
another for the
first time, for the last time.
Swimming ashore
was never forgiving,
climbing snow
was never gentle.

But I had forgotten,
I thought I had forgotten,
until you returned with
the cruel words that made
waves crash backwards,
snow fly up into the sky.

The inverse, again;
you were always giving
me inverses.
How much you could
hurt me still, with words
that remembered loving you.

~Rory Finnegan

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2014

1/4/2015

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They say it’s hard to hide yourself
these days, from the government
or justice or the in-laws.
What with the more cautious precautions
and the latest technology,
and all.

They say it’s hard to find the plane
that dropped from the radar,
blind to all one hundred and sixty-two
of its people hiding, sliding
softly into a sea where they
won’t be found.

They say it’s hard to be innocent
when you’ve killed a man, 
and yet he’s innocent,
and we look on as this country’s racism
sails him away from
the choppy dark waters of 2014.

They say we will find you, 
a bursting threat, and yet 
when we want to be found,
the clock will make its rounds
too quickly.

And what if I were to 
lose myself tonight?
Lose myself in the drink, 
in the heartache, in the words,
in the years that go by 
faster if you force them.
Would you find me?


~Rory Finnegan
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A Far Cry From Here

1/4/2015

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A wet and warm
December in rural New Jersey
awaited me,
made me a stranger in my
own home.

I didn’t wake to white
when I woke that first Wednesday
morning, but instead
the gray skies and
mild temperatures
that weren’t meant for here.

I looked out the window and
wondered where the white
Christmas I'd expected had
wandered to, where the 
welcome I'd waited for
had wound up.

How silly that weather can
throw me so easily
from my feet,
from familiarity.
How silly that weather
can give me such unease,
as if the change in it
was somehow personal.

I wonder, 
how could I have left my home
and let the comforting cold 
leave with me?

I ask,
how now can I choose between this
new North and the South
I’ve only just begun to love?


~Rory Finnegan
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One Way Ticket from Charlottesville, VA to Philadelphia, PA

1/4/2015

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Last time I traveled away
I found solace in the growing night
that rushed past me as my rushing train 
passed, not stopping for pictures
or bathroom breaks
or even the best views.

Through fogged winter windows
I watched the leafless trees 
of Virginia go by until it was too dark
to see the little towns we slid through.

Hours later I looked
into the lights of coming cities
and was slammed by
the realization that I didn’t belong
in one, that the dreams I’d had for
so long were not founded 
in reality.
And on the nearly empty train
I felt rising in me the emotions
of childhood that never quite left.
I cried for the town I’d just met 
and had already
fallen in love with
as I rushed along metal tracks
farther away from it.

The train I’d allowed to take me
took me deeper into cities,
into a future in which 
a city loomed likely, and I thought,
love, why is it
so easy to fall into?

~Rory Finnegan

(See the poem I wrote on that "last" train ride here, for context.)
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Self Portrait at 19

1/4/2015

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after Gregory Orr’s Self Portrait at 20

I stand beside myself and
see how others see me.
Long hair like a waterfall,
a flimsy shield
in which I can hide myself.

Because my skin
is the color of milk,
I know: this is not as
unlucky as it feels.

Because my round cheeks
have not always been round,
I know: this is mine to undo
as I have done.

                             And yet,
it was not the sight of myself
but the way you looked at me
that gave me the courage to
do what comes next.
I stood outside of myself for
so long before
stepping back in, 
ready to embrace
what I found there.


~Rory Finnegan
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First Date

1/4/2015

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The sun sinks like an egg yolk 
on the horizon, into the black
pan of night.
Beneath, we sit side by side,
eyes stuck to it,
each acutely aware of the other.

In my memory it cracks
against the line of land,
spreading.
Its dredges reach us
and you tell me
you could do this again
tomorrow, and tomorrow,
and tomorrow--isn’t it
beautiful?—and the whites
of your eyes glow when you
turn to me, 
like the whites of egg no one wants
but that serve to
fill them up just enough.


~Rory Finnegan
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The Broken Girl's Nightmare

1/4/2015

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For Jackie

Tonight, she will sleep to climb
the stairs again.
Long brown hair falling down
her back as she runs up.
The boys are behind 
her always,
long snakes winding
against and along the walls.
The door closes quickly;
she has gone in,
a snap of light
whipping across her face
before it’s sharp black and
they’ve gone in, too.

He was smashing,
she thought, and still,
every night,
there he is, smashing
into her across broken bottles,
her long brown hair
stuck to the liquid 
pooling there.

Wishing to fall through
the floor but only going up,
always, always,
carried on snakes,
she glides up those stairs.
This dream is her broken record,
and she keeps breaking. 


~Rory Finnegan
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Negatives

1/4/2015

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I used to take your picture
so that I could keep you.
Now, the curling streams
of images spread themselves
out on your floor
beneath your dry hands,
catching with paper cuts--
you’ve taken you back.

Still I’ll remember how
you once gave me the pleasure;
looked into the lens,
eyes wide,
allowing me yourself
in the only way you knew
I knew how.


~Rory Finnegan
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The Valley

1/4/2015

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Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you
from the top of the Blue Ridge
near 20 miles away, I would stand
between two peaks, 
sun rising,
looking out and down

Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you
and I would shut my eyes,
two half-moons
blocking sunlight
like the mountains,
wind lifting my hair,
sprawling my hands out into
it, listening

Oh Shenandoah, it’s far I wander
always, there are things
in the way of light--
but still I dream that 
I could stand up
high, feeling,
breath catching on

Oh Shenandoah,
away, we’re bound away.


~Rory Finnegan
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Teenager, In a Tutu, At a Bar

1/4/2015

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10/31/2014
The white tulle circling my waist
keeps me caught here, in this in between,
a nearly empty drink clutched in my left hand.
A new one is poured and in a moment
I am young again, suddenly back at

my first ballet recital:
tutu wider than I am tall,
hands resting on
the sheer size of it,
red cheeks
pinched with happiness

or, Halloween, age 8:
the skirted mermaid’s tail
my mother had sewn for me,
the felt scales of it
beneath my tiny hands,
the glitter on my eyes
too heavy

or that family vacation:
the Maui sun setting behind me,
dancing on the beach with
my hands in the long plastic grass
that trailed from my
narrow hips,
the real flowers
around my neck slowly dying,
the adults looking on.


~Rory Finnegan
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Household Graffiti

1/4/2015

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We are not those with
frames of pictures that
line the windowsills.
At night our string lights 
hang themselves between the scribbles 
and figures we’ve sprayed
onto the walls in place of
the portraits our parents
would put there.
The windowsills are empty
but for our spray cans--
we are not those who 
appreciate the ordinary.


~Rory Finnegan
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The Last Candle

1/4/2015

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The first 
last time I felt your hands 
on mine was before the heat 
broke and autumn exploded 
in front of me.

Beneath 
the warm glow 
of our birthdays I gave you 
a book—a warm touch,
our hands meeting briefly,
passing quickly through
a flame like children’s do
before the wick burns
through. 

The frost
that came later that week
whispered to me
in my troubled sleep,
soft and extinguishing,
the candle’s gone out.


~Rory Finnegan
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The Way It Is

1/4/2015

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Is that how it is with birthdays?
Counting down the years between
then and now, birth and death, 
a footnote reminding me
that with each day I am
closer to dying
than the one before.
See how time is peeling off of me
the little girl I used to be?

Look me in the mirror,
look as I get older and I do
not continue to bloom.
Soon enough the process
will reverse itself and
I will collapse inwards,
the veins on my hands
popping out from where
my skin has sunken in.
Watch as time breeds inside of me
the old woman I’m soon to be.


~Rory Finnegan
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For My Yoke Is Easy

1/4/2015

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Her fingers splay out like roots on the bright white sheets, 
yanking at the
yellowing tubes that
bloom like broken flowers from her arms,
gently covering the parade of scars that 
chop at her wrists.
In the corner, I wallow in my own unblemished skin, 
wishing that I could 
bear the blunt 
of her axe, that 
my own life
could be cut away 
so that hers might 
grow again.


~Rory Finnegan
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Medal/Metal

1/4/2015

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There is something 
too heavy about secrets.
Yet still I take yours in my arms
and handle with care
or try to, try to keep
your fragile secrets from
shattering.

I used to keep them stowed away in
glass jars on the windowsill
like fireflies. But secrets aren’t
meant to be left as if
preserved,
as if to someday
lose track of. 

So I wear them like medals
around my neck, catch
them glinting in the sunlight,
proud that what are yours
are now mine too.

When I hold the medals in sweaty hands,
the weighty metal melts between
my fingers like glue, caught
in the spaces that before were
empty, sticking to me
like your secrets
have stuck me to you.


~Rory Finnegan
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Remember

1/4/2015

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I remember watching one yellow rain boot float away
as I stood beneath a sky colored charcoal-gray.
I remember my dogs in the corner, shaking like I thought I ought to be.
I remember losing power; the candles my father then lit.
I remember when they went out.
I remember bumping into my brother in the hallway. Screaming.
I remember falling asleep to the bright strikes that lit up my room when
no one else was left awake. I could see them even when I shut my eyes.

It flashes in my mind—this flood of emotions 
that came with my first thunderstorm.
I remember the rain. 


~Rory Finnegan
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Gone Missing

1/4/2015

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Squeezed between friends
on a stool like a pedestal as
the night grows old,
the floor feels like it’s shrinking, like
I’m shrinking, wasting away and
wasted. 

Perhaps this is how she felt,
lost among the ones she loves the most,
changed by the taste of hard liquor
that burns into brain.

Did you watch them pour the 
drinks like I always
do? Or did you forget this once?


~Rory Finnegan
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Go

1/4/2015

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When I’ve run out of the words to say to you,
but the light is still green,
I keep on going.
A green light means go and I’ve always
been one to follow directions.

I wait for a stop sign that never comes,
or the yellow glow of a “warning”.
In my head, they’re there, but in
front of me all I see is a road that
stretches for miles and we’re
cruising,

for now.

But I’ve been in one too many
accidents to let this one end with
the front end of your car crumpled
against me.

The endless green lights make my
heart race and I can’t tell if it’s a side
effect of speeding or something 
else entirely. 
I want nothing
but to put my hands over yours
on the wheel.


~Rory Finnegan
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Dormitory

1/4/2015

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The room smelt of last night’s Chinese food.
Socks were strewn about in mismatched pairs
and I wondered why you’d needed so many--
we’d only been here a week.

I thought, a twin bed is far from romantic 
but I took the leap anyway,
your bed was lofted so high
that coming up from the ground was 
strangely exciting.

And so I perched on your comforter with your pillows
between me and that hard plaster wall.
Here we were, surrounded by socks and
books and fluorescent lights and friends,

falling in and out love, 
becoming new people,
becoming people,
becoming. 

I came to your room to
sit with you on your high twin bed
and laugh at the too bright-lights
and your smelly Chinese food,
I came here to your room to become 
your friend,
and here I have become so much
more than that. 


~Rory Finnegan
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Rugby Road

1/4/2015

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The mattresses are piled
high on the curb
in the morning, sagging
together in a sorry heap
as if they, too, got
wasted last night.

Perhaps they’re left to burned.
Tonight, will we watch
the flames dance with the
blaring music, dance
in the distance between
not enough sleep and
too much alcohol?

Perhaps the frat boys
have got new beds,
ready to stain fresh mattresses
with the crudeness
of what happens here at night.



~Rory Finnegan
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Imagine

1/4/2015

0 Comments

 
for Katie

The bittersweetness of
watching her hang the pictures that
are meant to be yours,
of watching her closet fill with things
you wouldn’t like,
makes me wonder how much
different
it’ll be here, without you.

Here is not the here 
I had imagined but I know that I’m 
the lucky one,
so in love with this place
I call home
through every obstacle
it may throw my way.

Though the walls we’d almost shared
are filled with a stranger’s life,
there are walls not far away 
waiting to be made yours,
waiting for you like everyone here
who loves you.

As my own new life is truly beginning,
the bittersweet realization
that yours has been set back
leaves my heart aching,
wishing you were here
to fall in love
by my side.



~Rory Finnegan
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Redeye

1/4/2015

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Caught between timezones
and gliding among the clouds,
the wings of the plane 
keep me grounded.
Reminding me that I do not
belong, that
I am not a part of this sky.

But sometimes, it is so easy
to look past
the harsh metal of the wings
into the forgiving darkness
of night.

The stars, always clearer up here,
make dreaming that much easier.
As the world spins below me
and I fly against the current of the clouds,
the stars shoot by, waiting
to be wished upon.


~Rory Finnegan
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Family Vacation

1/4/2015

1 Comment

 
We should have known it 
would be like this.
From the first flight to the cancelled
connecting one, it was a typical
family vacation—complete with
bickering and cramped plane seats.

When we arrived, and the luggage was
lost in the sea of bags left in Denver
across six hours of real sea,
we knew this was a bad sign.

When we woke up with sunburn
because our sunscreen was lost with the bags,
everyone was to blame and no one was
owning up to it. Above, the sun floated
innocently in the sea of clouds.

But then the luggage finally came,
and we began to soften
as the tradewinds
whipped up a forgiving breeze.

And we sat together and watched the sunset.
Remember? How cliché, the sun with its
watercolor sky and the sea’s reflection of it.
We went to bed that night with pictures
painted against our eyelids,
the soft brushstrokes of 
sunsets and I’m sorrys.

~Rory Finnegan
1 Comment
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    Who am I?

    I'm Rory - UVA poetry grad working in the business world but trying to keep my love for writing alive.

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