The Notorious case of Robert the Painter, by Leontia Flynn

I once lived in the house of an infamous death.

Time and the tidal nature of the streets

– Baltic, Pacific, Atlantic Avenue –

had almost washed it off,  but late that summer

my mother remembered hearing of the murder.

When he had choked her and hit her on the head

and stabbed her four or five times with a carving knife

the killer caught the public imagination

by scalding the woman with hot broth from the stove.

He walked away through the wire-tense post-war streets.

At night in the ashes of my own affairs

I dowsed each room for signs of macabre frisson

but the past remained dust.  It would not stir at the thought

of her votive lamps, of the floor where her dentures fell,

or her roses in the garden, blooming yearly.

Credit: Leontia Flynn

By Emily Bouché (QUB Student)