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24th January, 2025

Friday Poem – ‘Pepper’ by Siobhán Campbell

Close up photo of a pebbled shore with waves lapping in from the sea.

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Pepper’ by Siobhán Campbell from her collection Cross-Talk.

Pepper
Scallups was your word for sliced potato
fried in a medley of lard, scooped
from the corners of pans we kept
and cooled to save the solid sards,
flavoured with whatever had been cooked,
a week of smells in one Friday dinner.
At the shoreline you would skim pebbles;
flatties hipped and skished the water.
Scallops you would name the shells,
that long thin one, brown and doubled over
a white infill. Later I learned, a razor-shell.
Up at Clonallon graveyard you caught rabbit,
skinned them alive with a special knife.
They kicked to scald but you were fearless.
A pink whiteness would be tendered bright
in a pan where scaul becomes a rabbit paw,
its descender die still missing from the dinner.
We’d watch you fold in scallions with the mash
as if you made colcannon. I know, if they read
your DNA, it could take years to isolate the point
at which you learned to say the a in salt
the way it made a holy sea of spice.