GOWP Two

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Contents

Editors’ Introduction Contributors

Notes From The Editors

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Fiction (Dislocation)

Greensleeves by Lucy Montague-Moffat The Drone Days Are Over by Tadhg Hoey Arthur’s Moment by Shane Hulgraine A Rather busy Man by Simon Glynn His First French Kiss by Rose Servitova Katie by Lucy Montague-Moffat

Is There Anybody There? by Sarah Kennedy Morning Wonders by Des Garvey

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— 3 — 95 — 98

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7 11 36 45 57 63 64 78

Poetry (Isolation)

Late by Stuart Paterson

— 5 Old Professor by Matt Prater

— 9 Concentration Moon by Jason Roycroft — 35 Oil On Canvas by Dave McGinn

— 44 A Blathering-Bladder About Valparaíso by Pearse Murray

— 54 Hijra by R.M. Francis

— 55 This Illusion by Alice Kinsella

— 58 Boxes of Smarties by Alicia Keane Byrne — 61 "1

Orb Photography by Matt Prater

Numbers by Alan Keane

Those Nights by Anna McGlynn White On Grief and Reason by Jason Roycroft An Instance Of Remorse by Maryam Ali Song by Kevin Graham

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72 74 75 77 84 94

Art

GOWP by Rob Mirolo

Late by Rob McGon

Thumbprint by Cóilín O’Connell

Companions, In My Little World by Katie Kidd Orb Photography by Cóilín O’Connell I Bring You News of Great Joy by Eve Woods

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6 10 49 72 95

Interviews

GOWP Meets… Rob Doyle by Christian Cooney and Tadhg Hoey

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GOWP Meets… Dimtra Xidous by Maryam Ali ! ! ! ! !

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— 85

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Welcome to GOWP Two: INSERT CLEVER SUBTITLE HERE

GOWP Two is the second zine published by The Group of Writing People, or GOWP. GOWP zine exists to provide a platform for young and emerging writers, both in Ireland and abroad. This issue of the zine is particularly close to our hearts as it was made possible by crowd funding. We are profoundly grateful to all those who funded this zine — you’re all legends, and your show of confidence in us is deeply appreciated. We hope that we have created a piece of work worthy of your generosity. Really, you’re all the best.

Turning to the actual contents of the zine, we have work from what we consider to be some of the finest young writers working in poetry and short fiction today. We’ve also got two new instalments of our ‘GOWP Meets…’ interview series, with Rob Doyle and Dimitra Xidous respectively. Rob’s

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novel Here Are The Young Men was published last year by the Lilliput Press to great acclaim from both readers and critics alike. Rob is a serious talent and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak to him. The interview itself is insightful and often very funny (watch out for Rob’s particularly hilarious description of what he considered Dublin to be during his teenage years). Maryam caught up with Dimitra to discuss her recently published book of poems, Keeping Bees (Doire Press), amongst other things. Dimitra is one of the freshest and most exciting voices in Irish poetry and the interview is one of the zine’s highlights.

We don’t want to go into too much detail about the creative work in the zine — we think the pieces are best read without any lengthy introductions. But that being said, if any of the following scenarios appeal to you, GOWP Two might very well be the publication for you: an ex-priest experiencing his first intimate kiss; an award winning icecream man with ambitions to be a film star; Pat Kenny being accused of a very heinous crime; a woman who has come to prefer the company of cacti to other human beings. These are just a handful of the strange and wonderful things described in these pages.

Also included is art work to accompany some of the pieces. We were very glad to be able to team up some of our favourite writers with some of our favourite young Irish artists. This collaborative aspect of the zine is something we’re particularly proud of and will be doing much more of in the future.

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We really hope you enjoy the zine. ! ! ! !

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Late

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It's long after midnight, cold, damp, French fog slinking up from the Loing With shrugged wet shoulders And I have cheap red wine, an old baguette, Stringy Dutch tobacco & the internet.

The lights in the other rooms are out.

Their inhabitants aren't Scottish, They're sensible & wouldn't stay up late To muse on evocative fog, nibble gingerly On back-fridge Brie & how the ducks Sound on the river at half past 3.

They aren't Scottish, wouldn't understand That awful need to be awake when Everyone & everything the world Over's far beyond the pale of history And late.

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Stuart Paterson

Rob McGon — Late

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Greensleeves Lucy Montague-Moffatt

I do Loop-the-Loops, Super Splits, Wibbly-Wobbly-Wonders, Choc Ices and of course 99s. No one ever buys Super Splits anymore, I’d say that has been the biggest change in business. I used to sell out of Super Splits. I used to have arguments with customers about how many Super Splits I was buying in. I don’t even know why I still do them anymore. I suppose it’s cos I like them, I’ve got a soft spot for them. I’m hoping they do a comeback.

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I’ve been an ice-cream man for nearly fifteen years and I feel I’ve done it all. I won Best Ice-Cream Man in Dublin in 2001 and 2002. I was chairman of the Ice-Cream Man Association for five years and organised the best ice-cream man Christmas party there ever was in 1997. Well, I can’t say that myself cause I organised it, but that’s what everyone says.

They even gave me a trophy that says ‘Best Christmas Party 1997’ on it. I keep it in my van, beside the raspberry syrup.

I don’t feel like I can’t do it anymore, it’s not that. I just feel like I’ve peaked, I’ve reached all the heights in this career path that I ever wanted to. Straightest Whippy of 1998, Slowest 99 to Melt of 2005, and Most Original Placing of a Flake 2003. I’ve won them all, and it’s been fun. But it’s time for something new. Something that will challenge me.

The world of ice cream manning used to challenge me. Every day was a new test. How fast could I clear each neighbourhood? Could I keep my clean record of not knocking over any children? I hit a dog once but that doesn’t count, he came out of nowhere. And a cyclist, but I wasn’t on duty. If the music isn’t playing it doesn’t count, that’s my motto.

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So I’ve decided to become a Hollywood actor. I’m selling the van and moving to L.A. This is the next step, it’s so obvious.

It’s my time! I’ve put an ad in Done Deal and I’m waiting to hear back from someone. It’s a great van, I’m sure she’ll go for a great price. An absolute queen she has been. She used to be called Ann-Marie, after my wife, but after she ran off with the milkman last year I didn’t think it was very good karma to keep the name. The week she left was the week I sold the least amount of ice-creams in my career to date, so that shows you. A badly named truck gets you nowhere in this business.

I spent all my savings on the flight, bloody expensive. I’m going in two weeks. That’s enough time to tie up all the loose ends. Someone will buy the truck. I mean, she’s a gem, how could someone not buy her?

I’m going to get an agent and start auditioning straight away. I know I have what they’re looking for. Sure, if that Tom Cruise can do it, and he’s a bit mad in the head, then why can’t I? I keep thinking how funny it’ll be when my face is on a big billboard for a film here, and all my old customers will look up at it and tell their friends that I used to be their ice-cream man. Maybe Ann-Marie will drive past it and miss me. The van, not my wife.

I’ll miss her.

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Old Professors

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Do not take him for an easy A. Do not mention the Serbians.

Do not compare the situation to the Bajorans on Terok Nor. Do not do twice things he says he does not like. But take him.

Do not expect to talk about America.

He left what did not love him, and now he lives here: do not ask for any other evidence. In fact, just shut up altogether. Nothing in your quiet life (and it is quiet) can prepare you for a moment like the moment in his lecture when suddenly you realize that the figures of his mythos, unlike Odysseus or the Monkey King, actually did pass through that town in the aftermath of Pointblank, or that he did truly witness, as a boy, the firebombed bones a-smolder, and even after so much life between that this life might seem some wholly other incarnation, that there are still little stigmata in his tongue when he talks. Also do not find it at all surprising if he grades you with a thumbprint.

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Matt Prater

Cóilín O’Connell — Thumbprint

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The Drone Days Are Over Tadhg Hoey

men who had camped next to them. Ole! they’d shout, high-fiving them whenever he or his brother scored a goal.

He hadn’t thought about that in years.

The bus arrived after a couple of minutes and Sean watched as the auld ones made their way out to the edge of the curb, waving furiously at the bus for fear the driver wouldn’t see them.

As it slowed to a halt and stopped, the driver asked the women to stand back, that there were people getting off. A man — who could only be described as having been plucked out of Synge’s The Aran Islands — climbed down the steps of the bus slowly, a stick in his hand, and a look which seemed to say, where the fuck am I, plastered across his face. He looked about wildly and then scampered off in the direction of the town. Sean’s eyes followed

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t was pissing rain in

Carlow when he got to the bus stop. Pissing, and the bus shelter full of glum looking people waiting to get the first bus out of town.

Apart from last night, he had only ever been here twice before: once when he had passed through en route to a rave in Cork three or four years ago, and before that when he was six visiting his aunty down in Athy. He remembered little about either time, just his dad having bought him a wrestler — The Undertaker — and then going to Carlow for the day with his two aunties. But that was years ago now.

Waiting for the bus he recalled that day with fondness. The following summer, he camped down in Kilkenny where he and his brother played football with a group of travelling Spanish

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him to the end of the road and watched him disappear around the corner.

The bus driver was an old man who had a single strand of hair plastered sideways across his head. A very large, dirty-looking freckle stood next to the lone strand.

What can I do for you? he asked.

Naas, Sean said, extending his hand with the ticket in it.

The driver pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, scrunched his eyes and nose together, dashed a line through the ticket with his pen, handed it back to him and nodded.

Oh yeah, do you know are there any buses going from Naas to Maynooth this morning?

The driver sat back, puckered his lips and drew in some air. Tcch, he said.

Jaysus, I don’t think so. Only ourselves, I’d imagine — but that’s not till four tis’avenin, cocking his head back seriously.

Oh, right. No bother.

Thanks, I’m sure I’ll find something anyway, he said.

You could try the train, young fella. You might be better there, I’d say.

Sean nodded and moved off down the bus, conscious of the old women now looking at him.

Taking a window seat halfway down the bus, he threw off this coat and put his knees up against the seat in front of him. He was determined to get some sleep before class. It had been a long night and he hadn’t slept much. You don’t get much sleep on mephedrone, and the kind of sleep you do get is a very frantic, manic sort of sleep.

Much like the conversations you have on mephodrone.

Last night was a blur.

Imagine ten colours on a palette being roughly mixed into one another; then imagine trying to distinguish one colour from the mix — that’s what happened to his thoughts when he tried to recall any one particular

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thing. He’d come to this strange town to visit his friend Bob whom he hadn’t seen in some time. Bob studied here. They’d drank in his house before they went out.

Images of last night danced behind his closed eyelids. One of his oldest friends from home had been there and Sean could picture himself standing in the kitchen talking to him. They racked out lines of drone while dozens of people he had never seen before danced around the kitchen.

Then he was chatting to some girl, thinking he could probably get off with her if she stopped talking for even just a second. Some incredibly friendly guy came over then and put his arm around her, introducing himself as Matt — her boyfriend. Sean talked to them for awhile, told them he needed to go to the bathroom, and disappeared upstairs to find more drone.

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Afterwards, at the club, he spent most of the night talking to a girl he’d met, as her and her friend did shots at the bar. He stood by awkwardly by as the pair got progressively drunker, whispering to each other and chatting occasionally to him. He felt like leaving, but also felt that he’d been with them too long to just walk away — and, besides, he had nowhere to go. So he stood there awkwardly obliging them with the occasional shot of tequila, whacked back with a line of salt and wedge of lime, laughing at their jokes about people he didn’t know. The lights came on just as the drone was starting to wear off, and turning to tell the girls he was going, he saw that they were already ready to go. The blonde girl — the girl of the pair who he’d made eye contact with most — came over to him, touched the zipper of his jacket and asked if he’d like to come back to hers.

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Beginning to drift, he wonders about that girl Claire whom he had met last night. He was so drunk by the time they got back to hers that he began to wonder whether they had had sex at all. He had definitely woken up with no clothes on, but he kind of remembers noticing she was wearing pyjamas. Was she still in bed? Did she have college today? Where did she say she was from?

Would she know it was him who had drank the last of the milk in her fridge?

After he crawled out of bed unnoticed, with that just-up, surreal numbness in his head — the kind you get first thing after a night of a lot of drink and drugs (that, when thought about hours afterwards, feels like a dream) — he went downstairs and poured himself a bowl of cereal, and ate it while walking around her kitchen and sitting room, trying to discern as much as possible about this girl — with whom

The last he’d seen of Bob, he was walking out of a chipper with a Santa hat on his head, a can in one hand, and a bag on chips in the other. He tried calling him from across the street, but his voice was drowned out by the screams and drunken cries of the lonely, so he watched on as Bob disappeared into the crowd.

It wasn’t even Christmas.

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Just as the bus begins to pull off, some guy runs up and starts banging at the side door, shouting. A few seconds later, a man in rags with cuts and filth covering his face strolls past Sean, cursing and shouting at nobody. Paying no more attention, Sean takes a jumper from his bag and props it between the seat and the window.

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he had spent the night with — from the items which filled her house. Keys. Make-up.

High heels. What’s in the fridge? Lime and coriander hummus, beans, Ballymaloe relish, butter and milk. On the fridge, a card saying On Your Twenty-First Birthday, signed by maybe twenty people. Another card read, I can’t believe you’re leaving us Claire xoxox. Sean wondered where Claire was going, or maybe this was it — Carlow — this was where she had gone.

A collage of photos from parties and nights out hung on the back of the kitchen door. There were dozens of pictures of Claire with people Sean didn’t know, doubtless would ever know. One of the pictures showed Claire with a badge on that said 18. She looked slightly younger there, and her hair was a different colour, too.

As he washed the bowl and put it on the rack, Sean noticed another picture, a picture of Claire

with some guy. A goodlooking guy, and it looked pretty recent. He had his arm around her and she was smiling. Her smile seemed strange to him — it was beaming with a sort of contentment and sincerity he wasn’t used to. He studied it for a minute or so, trying to understand if it was maybe a boyfriend. It was the only picture with just Claire and a guy; all the rest had several people in them. Yes, she looked happy, and Sean guessed that it might have been an ex. But he would never know.

He felt sad all of a sudden, not knowing this about her, and feeling as though he might have misjudged her last night. He looked at his phone. Quarter to ten. Would she still be in bed? Or would she be up, wondering where that guy from last night had gone?

This saddened him more, and he tried to think of her as still asleep, still thinking he was there, with her, watching the blanket

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covering her shoulder rise up and down as she silently breathed in and out. What if — FUCCCKKKKKKKK SAKEE, came roaring from just behind him.

Sean perked up, conscious now of the madman who had moved down and was sitting somewhere behind him. He looked up ahead. No one else had seemed to hear him. Looking over his shoulder confirmed that the mad man was now sitting directly behind him. His hand was grabbing the side of Sean’s seat, and Sean could see a Supervalu bag on the seat. Six cans of Dutch poked out of the bag.

Fuckinn scumbagggg! roared again from behind, this time with more venom.

Fuckin Pat Kenny. Pat Kenny, he whispered, is A PAEDOPHILE!

He had screamed the last part, and Sean could feel himself sinking into his chair, hiding from the disgusted ocotogenarians

who were leering at him. The elderly woman in the seat opposite shook her head at Sean. He just looked away.

Does she think it was me?

Does she think I’m with him?

He felt a headache kicking in all of a sudden and when he took a deep breath, the weight of last night’s excesses throbbed through his mind — the halffinished conversations, the being caught staring at yourself in a mirror in the bathroom of a club (lost in a mephedrone daze), the voices in his head, the promises he’d made to old friends, the awkward looks he’d exchanged with those two girls. Everything was dark, and it began to rain again. He sat up to get a look of the road ahead — a seemingly endless, unbending road to Naas, surrounded on either side by lonely, flooded fields. Jesus christ, where am I?

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the sun sat like a beached whale looming over the strange town they call Naas.

Only for the fact there was a hospital in Naas, I doubt there’d be any reason for anyone to come here, ever, Sean thought. It’s a slightly bigger version of the classic, lonely, claustrophobic town you might find in any given county in Ireland. Except with a hospital. And a McDonalds beside the busstop, which Sean found particularly strange for a small town.

It was five to eleven, and the sun was shining in his face, making him suddenly afraid. He had never been to Naas before, and he felt lost, like that time he had gotten lost in Dundalk shopping centre when he was seven, and was found by his mam wandering around crying, ice-cream dripping all over his coat.

But he wasn’t in the LongWalk Shopping Centre now, no. An image of that girl leading him by the hand towards her house flashed

I doubted if I should ever come back.

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When Sean woke up, the guy behind him had finished four of his six cans, and had decided to share his thoughts about Pat Kenny to the entire bus.

You’ll see! You’ll fuckin all see! he screamed, ending his strange tirade as he sat back down in his seat.

The bus came to a halt just outside Naas, letting an old woman out. Sean took this opportunity to move seats.

He looked back once he had sat down, and the man was raving away to himself, opening another can. Well for him, Sean thought. Well for him.

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The rain had stopped by the time the bus pulled up, and

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across his mind. She shushed him as they went upstairs to her room. He watched silently as she put on the bedside lamp before taking off her heels and leaving to go to the bathroom. That was where his memory of last night had stopped.

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numbers, which was exactly what he was looking for, but it had begun to weigh on his mind now and left him feeling perturbed. These kind of things normally never bothered him. Water off the duck’s back, his friend had once said.

He needed to stop thinking about her, about last night — about everything. He stood up and wandered back towards the centre of the town to look for the train station, his mind groggier now. I need some painkillers, he thought — anything, to just numb this feeling. It was bright now, and the streets were full of people doing whatever it is real people do on Wednesday afternoons. He came to the end of the main street where a junction gave way to three different roads.

Sean stopped and stood there for a moment, looking at the signs for Dublin, Carlow and Galway, pondering which way the train station might be. He wondered how far his actual

After a half an hour of wandering, Sean stopped and sat down outside a church. He needed a moment to think about what he could do. There might be an internet cafe around to check bus or train times.

Checking his pockets, he realised he had less than five euro — barely enough to get a train anywhere and effectively ruling out an internet cafe. Why hadn’t he planned this? Why hadn’t he checked train and bus times on the laptop in that girl’s kitchen? He wondered whether she’d be awake by now, what she’d be thinking.

They hadn’t exchanged

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home was from here — his home back home. At that moment, a guy walked out through the doors of McDonalds, sparked up a cigarette and leant against the wall beside where Sean was stood. Sean looked at him for a moment, but turned away before their eyes met.

Y’all right, buddy? came a voice from behind Sean.

Startled, Sean turned to face him. Yeah, man. Just, eh… a bit lost, is all.

Where yih from?

Not from around here. Living in Maynooth, though — need to get back there, but I don’t know where the train station is.

Me neither — true Dub, he said, punching himself in the chest with the hand which held his cigarette, ash falling on his Nike hoody. No train station here, son. No — nearest one is in Sallins.

Oh, I didn’t know.

Thanks. Sean let the conversation go dead and pondered his prospects.

So Maynooth, yeah?

Ah yeah, Maynooth, he said, smiling fondly. Mantra, yeah?

You’ve been there before?

Yeaaahhh, he said.

New Years eeeee-vehhh….

2011. Yep. 2011. Fucked if I can remember it!

He burst out laughing at this and patted Sean on the back. Ah yeah, fucking Mantra! Got reefed ouveh by the bouncers. Some big fuckin baldy bastard! Here, you, you were fightin, he shouted, scruffin' me up against the wall. The guy in the Liverpool jersey had become very animated all of a sudden, giving his best bouncer impersonation.

Deep voice, pointed finger — the lot.

Yeah, well, fuck Mantra anyway. Showereh cun—

Darren! Darren, will yih come om, for fuck’s sake!

Am gun be late Darren! Yih know Tasha does get busy at eleven and am not waitin’ around for another fuckin

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day tih get me hair done, screamed the blonde in the pink jacket behind them, who was stood at the door of McDonald’s, leant forward across a pram. The kid in the pram looked about three and was wearing one of those hats that Dappy from N-Dubz wore. It was grey with illuminous green stripes down the sides, and it was barely on his head.

Dih yih have me coah? he asked, accusingly.

I fuckin have your coah now come om!

The guy turned and looked at Sean.

Sean nodded without saying anything.

Oh yih, yih. Yih, so, keep goin’ on this way till yih geh to the main road — yih’ll know warri mean when yih get there. Keep goin’ on til yih get to a petrol station.

Yih get there, cross the road and go through an estate.

Follow it through and keep goin' straight when yih geh’ouh. You’ll walk down a long road for about twenty minutes, keep goin till yih get

to a roundabout, roy? Stray on over the bridge and yih’ll see signposts for Sallins stray ahead. I’m away. Nice meetin yih, buddy. Safe one on your travels, yeah?

Cheers, Sean said.

Appreciate it.

No wurries. Keep the peace! he shouted, turning his back and making his way towards his girlfriend, before they disappeared off around the corner.

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Salty, copperish tasting phlegm dripped slowly down the back of his nose into the back of his mouth, down his throat, souring his stomach as he walked out the long road towards Sallins. A few dark clouds looming overhead, but overall the skies were still clear, he noticed, as he dodged some of last night’s puddles.

Claire, wasn’t it? Cars sped past, some splashing water onto the footpath. Salt copper dripping, souring.

Headache worsening. What

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was your name again?

Right, Claire. No one around. Sallins 4KM. Something beginning with M. Almost there. Just going to the toilet - be right back!

Going to miss you Claire xoxox. More drone. Where am I? He felt like he’d been walking on this road for hours, like he’d known it all his life. Did that guy give him the wrong directions? In the distance, he could make out a rise in the road, a bridge.

Fucking seagulls everywhere — why are they out this far?

This is the last time.

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He paused and looked around the empty train station, gazing out over the enormous car park which sat next to it. The sun was shining in his eyes again and he lifted his hand to his forehead, shading it from the sun. Cars sped by on the motorway; a man walked his dog over the by-pass bridge; a single seagull flew overhead. The sounds of all yesterday’s parties droned through his ears. Images of people from barely remembered nights flashed before his eyes. He was still a long way from home.

I shall be telling this with a sigh.

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GOWP Meets… Rob Doyle

The “Proteus” chapter of Ulysses has long been one of my favourite scenes in literature. It’s June 16th 1904 and a broody young Stephen Dedalus, back from his miserable stint in Paris and now teaching in a school in Dalkey, stands on Sandymount Strand, pondering the protean nature of reality and the apparent meaninglessness of existence. Fast forward almost one hundred years to June 2003 — this is where Doyle’s Here Are The Young Men begins. Two young lads — Matthew and Cocker — sit, having just finished their final Leaving Certificate exam, on a beach in Dublin looking out at ‘the fuckin Poolbeg Towers,’ downing cans, smoking spliffs, and reflecting on the futility of it all.

‘Poppers would be good… It’d be good if we had some poppers,’ Cocker notes.

‘But we don’t,’ comes the reply.

While we can’t imagine Stephen asking Buck Mulligan for poppers, it’s clear that some themes in fiction don’t change.

Here Are The Young Men, published last year by Lilliput Press, tells the story of four young men, and their dealings with teenage angst, atrocity porn, video games, cans, yokes, spliffs, snuff films, and an over-whelming sense of anomie that seemed specific to Celtic-Tiger Ireland — told through hilarious and often profoundly disturbing prose. It is, in short, a fantastic read.

We loved it so much, that we made it our business to seek out the man himself for an interview. We arranged to meet him in Mulligans in Stoneybatter for a few pints on a rainy Friday afternoon.We got a small booth up at the back, ordered three pints of stout, and talked for hours. Magic mushrooms; E.M. Cioran; the benefits of antinatalism; Nietzsche’s On The Genealogy of Morality — these were just some of the things we’d spoken of before we’d thought of

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turning the recorder on. As the afternoon progressed, Rob spoke to us about his travels, his love-hate relationship with Michel Houllebecq, the writing process, and the growing diversity of independent literary publications in Ireland, amongst other things. You can read the entire interview below.

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Interview

GOWP: We thought we might start by asking about your early reading and literary influences.

Rob Doyle: When I was a kid I was a huge reader.

As a child I would devour everything — all that Stephen King sort of stuff. Then I started reading all the adult, serial killer sort of stuff. This was when I was really a kid. All my Dad’s books — I devoured them. He was into pulpy sort of novels — airport paperback thrillers full of obscene violence. I don’t know how I was allowed read all of those books. And then I stopped reading for a few years. A few years later, when I was a teenager, I got violently into reading again. I started reading anything I could get my hands on. I was reading a lot of the obvious big ones, then — a lot of European literature, The Beats — the sort of books you should read at that age, Burroughs, Kerouac and what not. Then a lot of drug writers: Hunter S. Thompson and all those people.

Some of them I’ve gone back to in recent years and some of them are still good. Also a lot of European writing — philosophical fiction like Camus’s. I had sort of extreme tastes as a teenager. I was listening to a lot of punk music and reading Primo Levi. Holocaust stuff; Existentialist philosophy. I was mucking about with Nietzsche, who later became a

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massive influence for me. Just a lot of angry literature. I remember reading Eldridge Cleaver’s book Soul On Ice. He was a Black Panther radical who went to prison and was, by his own admission, a very disturbed man. It’s a furious, lyrical, brilliant book which I suggest reading. So yeah, I was reading everything — I was a very open-minded reader as a teenager. I hope I still am today. Later on I got into philosophy and didn’t really read any fiction at all. I was reading people like Sartre, Baudrillard, Camus — all the French guys. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard…

G: You’ve mentioned Schopenhauer before?

RD: Yeah, Schopenhauer. A really beautiful writer.

All those guys, and psychoanalytical writing as well — R.D Laing, Freud. For a long while I just wasn’t that into fiction. I just wanted ideas — I liked getting straight to the point.

G: All the philosophers you’ve mentioned are also renowned for their highly literary style.

RD: Yeah, the very best writers — like the very best philosophers — defy strict classification. It’s unfair to just call them a philosopher or a writer — they’re not one or the other, they’re neither. My latest obsession has been E.M Cioran, the Romanian philosopher. Have you heard of him?

The other day I was demanding that my flat mate read him.

Maybe I was a bit heavy handed, but there you go. Beckett rejected him as being too pessimistic, which might tell you something. He is sensational as both a writer and a thinker.

His style is so great that you don’t really think you’re reading philosophy at all — it feels like reading great literature. He takes everything to such an extreme that it becomes amusing.

His writing is an experiment in extreme thinking. He’s kind of

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the last philosopher — the bloody end of the western tradition. He’s a huge influence these days.

G: Does the psychoanalytical stuff you’ve mentioned still hold weight for you?

RD: I haven’t read Freud in years. But he’s a great writer, a great stylist. I went deep into him for a year or two.

But it’s been years since I’ve felt inspired to read him.

Psychoanalytical theory in general is a sort of useful lens to pick up temporarily to look at the world through. But I tend not to dwell in psychoanalytical lens all the time.

G: It’s a tough place to be.

RD: It is. And I did dwell in it for a few years, but it started to make me feel sickly — not quite healthy.

G: Kind of like Rez?

RD: Yeah, he’s kind of a victim of his own self analysis. I think Psychoanalytical theory is interesting, but I don’t think it’s the last word.

G: A lot of people have mentioned your MA in Psychoanalysis. Do you feel that it had a big influence on the writing of the novel?

RD: I think it would be a drastically bad way to write a novel. I think any good writing should be a direct wellspring of your own intuition, insight, passion, feeling and experience. And if you filter that through someone else’s theory then you’re going to lose something — it just wouldn’t work for me. Maybe it’s there in the background, fuelling your insight into human nature, but if it becomes a theoretical filter through which you funnel all this stuff… nah, not for me.

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I still have respect for psychoanalytical theory and its contribution to the 20th century. I binged on it for a while, as I tend to do with things. Then I sated myself on it and backed off a bit. I was going to become a psychoanalyst — that’s what I wanted to do. But then I went away travelling and the more I thought about it and the more life experience I had I started to think about writing instead.

G: You’ve taken on a role as editor for the Colony literary journal. How are you finding the work?

RD: For the most part I found it satisfying and fulfilling — and also challenging, but in a good way. It was when I was still living abroad that Dave Lorgan — who was a guest editor at The Stinging Fly a few years back and actually published my first piece — told me he was starting a new journal and asked me if I’d like to edit. I got really into it, but I didn’t want to edit the fiction. So I did the non-fiction. With that I’ve had a great time because it means finding people who interest me and commissioning them to write articles for us. We’ve only had two issues and the third one is about to come out. I’ve had great fun finding excellent stuff.

G: There’s seems to have been something of a resurgence in small, literary magazines and journals in Ireland in the last few years. Have you experienced much of this?

RD: It’s very hard for me to know [about it]. You have to keep in mind I only moved back to Ireland a year and a half ago. Before that I had been living abroad for years, totally removed from any sniff of any literary world. I didn’t know anything about what was going on in Ireland. I suppose I always had a fairly begrudging attitude towards Ireland — there was nothing here. It was basically an

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ignorant prejudice, but I felt like I didn’t have any outlet here. Now I’ve come back and in the last year it just seems that — on a personal, subjective level — the game has changed so much. There’s all these new journals and the more established ones like The Stinging Fly and The Dublin Review — which I love. I really don’t know what it was like before. I know the likes of Gorse and Colony are really new — and I love it, I fucking love it.

G: It’s exciting.

RD: It is. Everyone knows that Ireland is full of writers, that it’s a literary country and always has been. But what has been lacking here is maybe an openness to the wider world.

An openness to those experimental outcroppings.

G: What comes out as an ‘Irish novel’ is filtered through the prejudices of what publishing houses think an ‘Irish novel’ is. Would you agree?

RD: There’s an aesthetic prejudice there, class filters, etc. — there really are. It did seem like there was something missing [in the Irish literary scene]. And now suddenly it’s not a bad place to be. It’s that thing: if you don’t like what’s going on, do it yourself. It’s like the punk rock mentality — make your own world. There’s things like The Penny Dreadful which started off as a zine and now it’s a really cool journal.

They [TPD] just brought out a book of poetry by Dylan Brennan (author of Blood Oranges), who is a guy I’ve gotten to know. He’s a poet and a bloody good non-fiction writer.

He wrote a few pieces for Colony. You’re going to be hearing about that guy for years to come. He’s very good.

It’s exciting that all this stuff is happening because suddenly someone like me needn’t feel so alienated anymore.

[Writing] for someone like Gorse or Colony I can follow my

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impulses and write [what I want to] without having to think that it might never be published. Now there’s outlets for writing stuff of quality that doesn’t fit into the template of the Irish short story or whatever. I use to find this city deathly boring; I used to be bored out of me nuts here. I felt like I was in the armpit of the universe. But now it doesn’t really feel that way.

G: In an interview with Gorse you described Here Are The Young Men as a Trojan horse for the Irish literary world. Do you still view it that way?

RD: In a way. It wasn’t written with that in mind. I think that would be a really bad way of going about writing a novel. When I wrote that book it came from a place of real passion and a desire to express [something]. You’re not thinking about where it fits into this, that or the other. But then when I had finished it I started to see — having written the book as honestly, passionately and viscerally as possible — that maybe I had done things differently. I don’t want to make any irritating, grandiose claims for it, but at the same time, having finished the book, I began to realise that it was in many ways everything the traditional Irish novel was not.

This is a bit of a truism, but it’s exactly the kind of book [about Ireland] that a reader like me would have wanted to read.

G: The novel has been received quite warmly by the mainstream press. We were wondering if you had any conflicting feelings about this?

RD: No, absolutely not. Someone had asked me a similar question at a time when the book could have gone either way, and I gave him the same answer: no. Despite all my bravado, I wrote this book and I believe in it. I think it

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has serious things to say and I want it to be read and discussed and thought about, by as many people as possible.

The book has kicked off and that is what I wanted to happen.

It couldn’t have more in line with my own desires.

G: The mainstream media seems to have mostly seized on the more sensational aspects of the work: the drugs, sex, violence, etc., perhaps to the detriment of the more philosophical threads that run through the book.

RD: Maybe, but to be honest, I don’t know. I think, like any book, readers are going to bring their own set of ideas to it. I’m not so gloomy about that because I’ve had plenty of evidence of readers who took it very seriously.

There was a reviewer in The Sunday Times who went deep into the philosophical implications of it. It was a wonderful review for me. There’s been a couple like that. People will read it and maybe come away thinking that it is a visceral novel about youth, and there’s others who will come away thinking ‘there are actually deeper rumblings going on’. This is a novel about people adrift in an exhausted society and an exhausted culture with no abiding values. There has definitely been sufficient recognition of the deeper themes of the novel for me to feel I haven’t missed the target. Any bastard can write a book about extreme violence and brutality, but that’s only one element of this book.

G: We thought we saw some connection between the ending of the novel and the ideas expressed in your essay ‘Appetite for Depletion’. You talk about the almost suffocating influence of Houllebecq. The ending of the novel could perhaps be seen as overcoming some of the problems you discuss in the essay.

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RD: Interesting — possibly. The more I love a writer, the more of a tense and ambivalent relationship I have with them. I find him overwhelmingly terrifying, yet I love him and I love his books — I’ve reread them many times. I find with an author like Houllebecq — and Nietzsche as well — that it gets personal. At some point you have to grapple them down and beat them to death. You can’t be consumed by them — not just in a literary sense, but in an existential, personal sense.

You know, the stakes are high — it’s you and the universe, and you only have one shot at it. I feel there are no conclusions. About a year or two ago I got really worried about myself on a fairly deep level. I felt I had reached some sort of impasse where I had cut myself off from all nutrients, all redemptive [forces]. My own addiction to scepticism had taken me towards a sort of spiritual suicide. All of this sounds horribly grandiose, but it’s real — it’s what’s going on for people. A year has passed and a lot has happened in that year, not just outwardly, but inwardly, too. I just don’t feel ready to jump to a conclusion and say ‘the world is utterly deject, abject and entropic’. When hope springs up and the will to resist… [interrupted by the arrival of another round of pints] Life is always in flux and whenever I’m worried I’ve reached an impasse, I switch on and I realise it’s maybe dishonest to convince myself, as I have in the past, that the world is just a black hell. I don’t think that’s the truth. It’s a flux. This essay that I’ve been working on for the last few weeks for The Dublin Review is about psychedelics, but it’s also about the urgent questions of human existence. It’s like Cioran, the philosopher I was talking about. He’s brilliant, but people write him off as a nihilist and pessimist — which he is. He has no interest in anything other than the raw, urgent spiritual

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questions of human life. Here I am hurled into this universe — I have no idea where it came from, what do I do with this, what does it mean? There’s a wonder beneath the darkness.

G: We thought that maybe we detected some influence of Easton Elis in Here Are The Young Men. Clay from Less Than Zero and Kearney from your novel both encounter snuff films. While Clay is somewhat repulsed by the snuff images, Kearney finds inspiration in them. Was Easton Ellis on your mind while writing those sections?

RD: No, not at the time of writing. It did occur to me later on, because I have read the novel.

G: The novel is entrenched in masculinity, which goes against the grain of much contemporary fiction. You definitely ran the risk of being dismissed as a retrograde, angry male novelist. Did this occur to you at the time of writing?

RD: Not at all. When I was writing that novel there was a passion behind it. It’s a novel, so it is fiction, but I think a lot of people will read it and realise that it’s coming from an authentic place. That was the way it was going to be and to hell with any of this ‘white male’ criticism. It didn’t come into it all.

G: Jen comes across as one of the true sources of redemption in the novel. How was it writing her character?

Did you find it more difficult than the lads?

RD: No, it wasn’t. It came very naturally actually.

That part of the writing came very intuitively and organically.

Instantly she was a character I really liked. Despite their [Matthew, Kearney, Rez and Cocker] flaws I kind of liked all

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of the characters, but she was easy to get along with. I probably fancied her a bit myself. In my interpretation of it, she has more substance, even integrity, than a lot of the lads in the novel. She’s grounded and she’s solid and she’s more mature. Sometimes that’s the case. I don’t want to generalise too much, but I remember when I was growing up there were girls around and they always seemed more solid and mature than the lads in the group. Nothing was calculated about it, but maybe some of that experience seeped into it. I’ll be honest with you — and this isn’t to reduce the novel to a personal, autobiographical level, because I think that’s the wrong way to go: it reduces the fiction of the thing — in my life, easily the most stabilising and positive influences have always been my relationships with women. They’ve stopped me drifting off into my own ruination. In the novel there’s a lot of material that could be called ‘misogynistic,’ so I am relieved that no one has come along and accused me of being ‘that’.

G: Drugs play a huge role in the novel and not a very positive one for the most part. In fact, many of the problems the lads experience — depersonalisation, confusion, angst — can be linked to their excessive consumption of drugs. Rez’s drug use leads him down a path of stoned solipsism; Kearney seems to use drugs as a way of severing his last remaining ties to the quotidian world. Would you be comfortable with the novel being interpreted as something of an ‘anti-drug’ tract?

RD: Frankly, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that.

Someone even recently suggested that it was an anti-video game novel, or an anti-pornography novel. And to me, and I say this sincerely, generally I don’t have any moral or ethical issues with drugs, video-games or even pornography. They’re

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complicated issues, but I think it’s far more interesting than any black and white moral thing. I hate the idea of being perceived as a preacher against any of those things, I really do. I think one of the good things about writing a novel is that you don’t have to accept any sort of moral standpoint at all — you can just describe it. I’ve written this novel which is about a bunch of characters who I can easily imagine from the people I’ve grown up with and observed living in Dublin for 23 years, before I left. All of this was based on observation, introspection, imagination. It was descriptive rather than proscriptive. If people read it and saw it as an intentional anti-drugs tract I’d think they’d have missed the point. If they read it and thought, ’these characters are quite extreme, they take a lot of drugs and drink a lot — what are the ethical, spiritual and existential consequences of this?,’ I’d be on board. It was never intended to be a polemic against drugs or pornography. I tend to be a bit phobic about art that’s preachy about things like that. The moralistic novel? All that be a good citizen stuff? Fuck off. It’s not my vision of what aesthetic practices should be. It’s just descriptive, that’s all.

G:How do you find reading at a time when you are writing? Do you find that the last book you’ve read has a big influence on what you’re writing?

RD:I think they always do have an massive influence, but it never really bothered me at all.

G: Finally, we just wanted to ask you about your general approach to writing.

RD: At the moment writing is my primary thing and — at least at this moment — it’s making a living for me. To be honest, I hate the idea of sitting there and forcing yourself to

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write. It’s not my approach. Most of the time I have projects that I’m working on, essays and short stories. I’ll get up, have a cup of coffee and sit at the the desk with the laptop. I use to do everything out longhand, but I’ve overcome my superstitions about the difference between the two [different ways of writing things down]. Usually it’s a mess at first, but I write what I can. The first thing that comes out of the fingers or the pen is never very good. Then I generally spend the evening editing, but obviously life intervenes sometimes. A lot of the time there’s other shit going on. But when I’ve got a clear patch and something to work on. I try to spend as much of my time reading as I can. I think there’s something to be said for that, in a way.

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Here Are The Young Men can be bought in all good bookstores, and his new collection of short-stories, This Is The Ritual will be published in 2016 by Lilliput Press and Bloomsbury.

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Words: Tadhg Hoey and Christian Cooney ! ! !

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Concentration Moon

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Soon, we’ll see the glaucous, watery moon and the messes of abandoned technology which festoons that jugged eye and its gunpowder smudges of Maria. The dirt and rock, much like Hades dry sere, is a broken photographic plate pressed in saltpetre. Its geological unravelling occurs in the evolutionary development of a spermatozoa’s eye. Under this moon’s natatory light, a pentatonic scale climbs and descends, a particularly beautiful species of tonoi, in the diatonic mode; someone’s chops are being flexed. The night’s starry dissonance develops early this time of year in this hemisphere, but there, in its volcanic sink, dark as coal, silica glitters in the bare sunlight, diamonds amongst rust, a sliver of cold, white bone.

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Jason Roycroft

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S

Arthur’s Moment Shane Hulgraine

caling the gate took no

effort. Usually he clipped his heels but this time landed squarely on the concrete. A singular vault and push off followed by a per f ect landing. He worried that the joins, fused to the wall by rust, might shatter and kick him free. Instead, he’d landed on his feet for the first time and Arthur’s heart missed a beat. He listened to it. Thuddump… Thuddump… until it went back to normal.

Traffic had begun to build on the narrow road that dissected his village.

Impatient drivers festered in their vehicles as signage displaying generous speed limits mocked their sluggish progress. They crowded the uneven sur face, whic h varied greatly in quality, by the time Arthur arrived home from sc hool. He had a mission in mind but at three o’clock time was already

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escaping him. He knew it would be dark soon and a depressing stillness would overcome t he da y. The prospect of that stagnancy pecked at his spirit like tormented hens in a tiny coop. Choosing to ignore it, Arthur arched his back and purred in the wind. He dusted down his front and pretended to be somebody else while he prowled the footpath.

He knew that he was s h o r t a n d u n p o p u l a r, classmates moc ked his oversized head and the howling gap between his teeth, and he had been told his matted hair looked like dried straw. Not that day, however, for the first time Arthur had something to be proud of and he had never looked better. His strut told the world as much. He wore brand new shoes, crisply ironed trousers, a shirt – with no funeral, christening, or mass to attend – and best

of all a woolly jumper. It had elbow and shoulder pads with thick grooves in the fabric that pointed down the chest. He had wanted one since he found the black and white photo of his father taken by the old factory. The jumper made his father larger than life, resembling a burly fisherman tending to business ashore; his bald head dazzling the camera lens. Arthur tugged at the ends of his sleeves and dared the world, the indolent traffic, and the convent girls perched atop the wall at Cabbage Lane.

They were crows t hat punished anyone that passed with shrill judgement.

“Chec k out t he new threads on Arthur,” one cackled.

“Going to a wedding in the caravans like yer Da, are ya?” mocked the other.

“Sure if it’s in the cat it’s in the kitten.” They pursed their pointed beaks in unison and he reddened a little. A passing car almost splashed his heels and the crows

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cawed like unmanageable infants.

“Ah you’ll be on the wrong end of a clatter if you go home all mucky,” one said.

“Yeah, nice knowin’ ya, Farter; everyone knows yer Ma’s a bleedin’ weapon,” said the other.

They laughed and laughed but he pushed on.

He refused give them a reaction.

!

Frail masonry turned to rubble under his weight as Arthur swung safely onto straits of flattened grass. He steadied, tried to stay clean as dust tickled his ankles. He spotted the old station ruin across the water. It was a weary structure built from rock taken from nearby mountains. It overlooked the canal and train tracks but was losing the fight for aerial dominance with surrounding alder and chestnut trees. His brothers assured him that the place was haunted, but Arthur knew better. He’d camped out nearby one

night hoping to glimpse a wailing spirit. Instead he had to listen to middle-aged drunks brawling over n o t h i n g i n p a r t i c u l a r.

Growing up to become like them was scarier than any haunted house. He kept moving.

After a while he searched his schoolbag for the flask of orange cordial. He took a long draw and heard baking parchment crinkle in his pouch. Thick cut slices of his mother’s homemade soda bread. Three kinds of flour, buttermilk, and yoghurt. Too good for the likes of him, she often said. He thought better of digging in as he had some distance to go yet.

Stubborn weeds appeared from nowhere and their tendrils scraped the pinks of his ankles. The ground was matted with them, there was barely any grass left. He fought through and thumbed a small coin.

He was determined to enjoy the moment when the train would reshape its face and turn it into something more.

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He could smell the rustling dirt, feel rattling carriages stir his spine, sense the danger of metal grinding on metal. It was going to be brilliant. For now, however, he could not be distracted by bothersome weeds or misshapen coins. He would soon come close to the Grove.

He remembered moments when those kids made him sad. Teasing him in line before classes, holding him back on the school bus until his stop was long gone, chasing him from his bus stop to his house for no reason whatsoever. Arthur’s mother said that it wasn’t him the Grove boys hated; it was the idea of him. It made him feel angry, inferior, but he dared not challenge her.

“Close your gob or a bird’ll nest there and try being less bloody tragic all the time,” she would tell him.

His mother had become cruel; she did not seem to like Ar t hur anymore. It seemed as though nobody did, and everything was

worse since his father left. It felt impossible to outpace her shrill words that filled the viscous air until a spluttering tannoy cut through them. It sounded distant, was too early – had to be some other announcement. He picked up speed. The icy wind carried rain on its breath and Ar thur took refuge at the lowest point of Cagney’s Field where it fed onto the canal bank. If he continued onward the land would rise and lead to an overlook right by the Grove.

Hostility between t he Grove boys and his family had always existed alongside their zeal for cruelty. They squirted bleach on his school uniform, threw his schoolbooks into nettle bushes, and he suspected they had set fire to his family’s hen coop. They were tainted children that hated him because his family was poor. His brothers told him as much. He thumbed the coin again and years of dirt buoyed him on as it rubbed against his skin. He

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took on the life force of others that touched the thing. Arthur followed the route until soft muck turned into a network of erupted roots. They glistened in the drizzling rain and were too slick to traverse safely. The last thing he needed was to have a spill, find himself in the centre of a thorn bush; or worse, muddy his new clothes. He was too focussed for that. Further ahead a fallen tree blocked the path.

“Ah shit,” he shouted, but immediately corrected his volume.

Profanity met with wallops and a hungry night’s sleep at home. He was also aware of who might be listening.

Bells chimed a couple of stations away. That would be the cargo train, which was of little interest – Ar thur required an audience. The commuter train would follow that one. He had to make a snappy decision. Cut back and wing it as far as Fellworth Close? That would work but it would take him back to his starting point and

then along the main road. It would be too dark by then.

The only obvious way to reach to the bridge was to go through Cagney’s Field.

Through the Grove.

!

N i g h t fi l l e d t h e s k y quickly. Cinders, weightless and dreamy, found life in a greyness that was turning s o u py b l a c k . T h e w i n d carried with it sounds of laughter and easy music and there was a circular redness in the sky as though some unknown divinity was keenly focussed in the space above the Grove. He approached a line of massive trees and ducked behind yet another that had toppled. Although he’d heard sordid accounts of what went on during their bonfires, he could not help himself. He had to learn more, see them on their territory, find out what made them so much better than him. At that moment Arthur forgot about his new clothes, fell to his knees and obeyed his curiosity. Crawling closer to the heat, he observed

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girls pulled close by the boys’ sides. They drank from cans and relaxed among themselves – all of them watching the blaze. These were not girls he was used to in his village; they wore long, warm-looking coats with cotton sweatpants, furry boots, and spoke with an eloquence that seemed alien. He wondered how the crows would evaluate them.

The Grove boys socialised as if it came naturally and he recognised a few. They wore short sleeve shirts, chino pants, and dec k shoes.

Effortless cool. He watched them for a long time and yearned to sit at that fire beside them, taste their kindness, and feel accepted for once in his life.

Arthur’s clothes soon felt uncomfortable and charmless; they itched, and he was aware of the extra length for his limbs to fill.

Suddenly they had lost their veneer and he saw them for what they were – things that were robust, made to last, old fashioned and dull like

him. He looked at the Grove kids, craved what they had.

He wound forward, t hrashing t hrough mud, moss, and stone. He despaired at their perfection, wanted to hurt them for it, but he observed a sweetness that he barely recognised.

They were simply nice to one another. Arthur would never know the warmth of their world; that was the biggest blow.

The mud-covered hand that blocked his cursed teeth made him realise the filth he’d crawled through. He was wild looking. The longarmed jumper had snagged on a branch some way back and he was matted in sludge from the waist down.

Scraggy hairs burst from their combed constraints and he could only imagine the dumb, poor look on his freckled face.

As he pulled away there was a commotion at the bonfire. Shadowy figures were closing in on it like the creeping spectres that haunted frightened

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children’s bedrooms. His brothers and their friends stormed towards the Grove kids. They t hrew beer bottles, howled, surrounded and attacked them as they sat. The older boys reacted instantly while most of the girls fled. One tumbled into a copse of bushes. Arthur b a c ke d u p f u r t h e r. H i s brothers had lied; these people were not the monsters, his own family were. He wanted to get as far away from there as possible. Arthur sped back to the area where he’d seen the fallen tree on the banks.

Backtracking was not enough, he wanted to cross the canal and reach the tracks so that they could not catch him. He moved down the banks until some old crafts, abandoned after that year’s raft race, presented the only possible route to the train tracks. Normally he would never have considered this crossing but the unnerving intensity of looming violence made up his mind. A blood-curdling

scream gave him the extra courage he needed and Arthur took a chance that the rafts would support his wiry frame. He just about stumbled across.

The ruckus pursued Arthur no matt er how f ast he moved. The unsteady rafts sent some kids toppling into murky canal water. They called for help, but Arthur kept moving until the only place to go was up. He climbed a mound, tugged hard on whatever he touched. Spindly grass as sharp as knives, brambles, brittle branches, and slippery stones all passed t hrough his fingers. His hands dug in silent terror as they grappled muck and thorns that made him want to weep. Soon he reached the top of the mound and was able to catch his breath. He was missing a shoe, his trousers resembled confetti, and there were no hands skilled enough to mend his jumper. With his clothing reduced to tatters, Arthur knew that he was in big

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trouble.

The darkness made it hard discern which gang was giving chase. He edged bac kwards on t he slic k ground. Being captured by either mob, or going home in that state, meant a beating. He would wait on the higher ground until they passed and then think of what to do. His head hurt.

He covered his ears and shut out their war cries the same way he did his mother’s nastiness. He waited, and when the danger dulled to a harmless echo, there was finally silence.

Frozen to the spot, Arthur looked up. The rain was heavier now but the sky had become oddly bright. He sensed calm in the turbulence overhead and wondered if he might have succeeded in fending off the threat for good. He searched the sky in the hope of spotting some lightning.

Arthur took no notice as the coins began to jingle in his pocket. He was too fixed on the peculiar, silvered night

sky. It was so bright but he could find no moon. He soon heard the hiss and trumpet of an angry beast. His legs trembled and Arthur groaned fear fully, remembering where he was.

He was going to put a coin on the train tracks — turn it into something bigger, and use it in one of the carnival penny pusher machines. He removed his hands from his ears and faced the source of the oncoming roar.

Everything became dark and still.

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Oil On Canvas 

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Oil on canvas; the gold-rimmed relics of past genius in bright, high-ceilinged rooms; perfect silence sets the contemplative mood, while scattered benches foster cultured reflection.

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I wander through these ancient halls, eyes meandering from portrait to stunning portrait; and yet, an internal vacant rattle echoes; I battle the rational monologue, justify my distracted mind; lament my artistic deficit; resent observers as they pace from canvas to elegant canvas, with conspicuous nods of understanding, interpretive whispers.

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I make my escape with sunken heart, finding a tranquil oasis; close, but far from the deluge.

There’s a perfect bench in shade, and a pool with six fountains; giddy birds chirp behind, as a cool breeze shakes leaves from exotic trees.

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Here I put pen on paper; oil on canvas. ! !

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Dave McGinn

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T

‘

A Rather Busy Man

Simon Glynn

‘You see Norman is a pincushion, and Bernard is a San Pedro…’ his is Norman,

and the tall one to his left is Bernard, and in the corner is Stephen. Stephen is my best friend.’

I feel my eyes widen involuntarily as more and more blinding light from the many glass panels in the conservatory pours in, illuminating everything. I nod and smile, try to look nonchalant and composed, despite everything going on around me. But instead it comes off as if an invisible puppeteer's hand has entered me, dear jesus, from below, and is jerking me around in grotesque movements that plumb new depths of social discomfort.

My feet shuffle across the bonecoloured tiles in a kind of paranormal ballet and my eyes dart uncontrollably around this cramped space of just me and Myra, trying to land on anything that is not a cactus. Nag Champa hangs thick in the air. Rosecoloured crystals of dubious significance litter the plant

‘Right,’ I murmur, awkwardly twirling the long silver stirrer in the cup of what looks like seaweed and cucumber mash; my bemused face is reflected back in some sinister swampgreen goop. It tastes like a wet dog. It smells like Holland and Barrett.

‘And the tall one by the window is Bert. Bert loves it over there. He really, really loves the sunshine.’

The midafternoon glare seems to crystallize the air around me as I struggle to process, no, comprehend the absolute horror unfolding before me.

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pots in immediate eyeline.

Enya croons solely in vowels in the background.

movements and neurotic disposition. I stare into the abyss of my cup of dark fluid; the viscous liquid contained within I can only imagine is some sort of pulped plant matter. I take a deep, long draught. As a clump of the cold and grainy mass slides slowly down my throat, I pray silently to the gods above for mercy, and that my cup contains, even slightly, some sort of alcohol.

‘Stephen is a beavertail cactus. That handsome gossun with the fuchsia petals cost me no less than seven hundred euro. It was repotted from the Mojave desert and flown over.

Special order.’

‘Wow,’ I blurt, trying to suppress my recognition of the unreality of the situation. ‘That’s a lot, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

‘For a cactus.’

‘All the way from the Mojave?’ I ask feigning interest.

Myra nods eagerly, rubbing her hands together and muttering away about chlorophyll and soil types.

Around us loom dozens of tall, towering cacti with pale waxy green skin, arresting tropical coloured blooms of flowers, arabesque patterns of ivory buttons. Other prickly creatures line the window sills and sidetables, some short and furry, extending like extraterrestrial carpets

Silence. Myra has now begun to taste and smell that vague sense of unease in the air. It creeps into her stare, worms its way into the atmosphere, and plonks itself like a big, fat stinking invisible elephant in the centre of the room. Her response to this is a dramatic increase in her own violent

"46

across swathes of soil. Most are vertical and match our height, sitting in terracotta pots and anchored in gravel.

I am suddenly painfully aware that we are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of menacing spines of varying length, width and nastiness. Some stand long, thin and straight, others are thicker, shorter and curled with barbed ends. I think about the Mojave, its arid sun, the blistering emptiness, the vast expanses of sand and occasional stones, and wish I was there.

Bert is a mutated phallus from some cavern deep undersea. Bert is the stuff of Jacques Cousteau’s wet nightmares.

‘And this stuff in my cup?’ Myra looks at me slightly confused, and she fiddles with her many necklaces of obscure stones and metals. ‘Is this also cactus?’ I ask.

‘NO,’ she shouts and blood rushes to her face.

Her posture changes. Her tranquil and aloof nature has now given way to a sudden aggression, I concede, I didn’t think Myra was capable of.

‘Don’t forget Bert,’ I interrupt, almost spitting a ball of the rancid substance from my mouth over Myra’s royal purple pashmina.

‘What kind of cactus is Bert?’

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she says flicking a lock of jet black hair behind a tanned ear. ‘I would never eat my babies, or drink them for that matter. What you’re drinking is aloe and spirulina. It’s great for your immune system.’

‘Bert is a totem pole cactus. He’s quite exotic, except I didn’t order him, like Stephen, I grew him from seed. I have a special place in my heart for Bert.’

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‘Oh, its eh, refreshing.’

uppity acid casualty.

Anaemic? Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Thankfully, I collect myself enough to remember why I’m here in this isolated cottage in the first place, somewhere in the Burren, the bog arse of nowhere. I wonder if there’s anyone beyond Bert and Stephen, or fucking badgers for that matter, that live in a fivemile radius of the house.

‘You don’t like it. I can tell.’

I nod, shamefully. Myra looks hurt by my accidental admission of its repulsive flavour and texture. This is strange. I’m normally an excellent liar.

‘You look like you could use it actually,’ she intones musically, ‘I thought that when you came in. You look sort of, sickly.’

‘If you could please show me the espresso machine, it’s a long drive back to Dublin and I want to get back on the road as soon as possible’ I ask, my patience at the end of its tether. ‘I’m really a rather busy man.’

Myra looks at me with lonely moonstone eyes and nods bashfully, gesturing towards the kitchen. She seems bruised by this.

‘Sickly?’ I enquire with subdued anger in my voice.

‘I dunno, anaemic or something.’

Anaemic. I pause and restrain myself. I have a nutritionist. A dermatologist.

I try and count to ten, make it to five, and feel my initial state of incomprehension transform into something more hotblooded and volatile. The gaul of this

‘The ad online said you wanted four hundred for it?’ She nods again, and the vitality and youth in her face that struck me in the

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!

Katie Kidd — Companions, in my little world

!

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conservatory has receded. A torpor and weariness enters her gait and demeanor.

you don’t know, online, being in their house..’

She seems to understand. I redirect the conversation as she fingers the buttons on her pashmina gingerly.

‘Yeah, I don’t really care. It belonged to my exhusband. Its such an eyesore.’

!

‘So what’s with the cactuses.’

I gaze at the machine, its pristine chrome finishing, temperature dial, pressure gauge, and I ask if I can pull a shot before I decide if I buy it or not. Myra plugs it in, this beautiful artifact of Italian engineering, a monument to Western civilisation.

‘Cacti. Well, I know it sounds kind of pathetic, but they’re company. They’re my companions, in my little world.’

‘Oh.’

‘Gary and myself never had children. They’re surrogates.’ Myra pauses and gathers her thoughts.

‘My angels. They can survive in the most extreme of conditions. The wrath of the sun. The dearth of moisture.

And yet they flower beautifully, against all odds.’

I am disarmed momentarily at this glowing gem of sincerity. We bask in the warm quietness of the moment and I wonder if I could ever love a woman

‘We’ll have to wait while the tank heats up.’

After a moment or two, a baritone whirr emanates from the machine’s steel tank.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry if I was rude, I have a temper sometimes, and it's sort of a weird situation,’ I stutter, ‘meeting someone

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like Myra. But she’s so bohemian.

murder holes. All this godforsaken beauty. You may as well be on the moon.’

‘You said you were a busy man. What is you do for a living? I don’t mean to pry.’

!

The machine’s red diode blinks on, punctuating her statement, indicating the unit is up to temperature. But neither of us move or speak.

The machine is peripheral now.

‘I’m an architect.’

‘And you live alone?’

We have transcended small talk now and her words seem to tumble effortlessly from her lips.

‘I must say, when I saw you at the door, I was quite taken aback.’

‘Yes, the Keystone apartment complex, Docklands. I’m not used to all this scenery and shrubbery. Plants and that.

Fresh air. Between work and home I’m surrounded by stainless steel, tempered glass, polished granite. Its nice to get a glimpse outside my bubble, it's so tranquil here, I suppose.’

‘Really? And why is that?’ I murmur softly, my arrogance unable to disguise my interest.

‘Well you struck me as a rather lonely man.’

!

A fly buzzes somewhere like a mechanical drill and it seems as if it crawls between my ears. I look awkwardly down at my sharkskin lapelles and then out the window. It’s one of those days where a fading moon

‘But the emptiness gets to you out here,’ Myra confesses, ‘its good for the body but so bad for the mind. All these sweeping expanses of stone, grikes,

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occupies the same sky as the sun.

‘No.’ She speaks no more beyond this. A swoon of shame. It is hot, it stings my eyes, my chest. My eyes are locked at my feet on the ivory tiles. I feel her eyes on me and I cannot speak.

Where is my silver tongue?

That bile coloured atrocity I drank earlier grows uneasy in its new abode.

‘Lonely?’ I ask.

‘Yes, lonely,’ she says, self-assured.

‘I’m successful. I’m young. I’m not lonely. And I’m a rather busy—’

‘A busy man, yes you mentioned that. And successful, with your four by four Land Rover and your Italian shoes. Yet I find you..,’ her eyes searching, ‘peculiar.’ My mouth is a desert. Myra continues, ‘I find it strange that as such a busy man you drove nearly a hundred and fifty miles on a workday afternoon to buy a coffee machine at nearly retail price, a machine that is sold, I imagine, in most shopping centres.’ Myra crosses and uncrosses her arms. She has the voice of a hypnotist on too much diazepam. I feel my mask slip, the weariness written in volumes in the bags beneath my eyes revealed and I press my hand on the curve of her hip and inhale deeply.

‘I said I was isolated and that you were a lonely looking individual but by no means was I implying anything. I’ve been up here too long I know, I haven’t heard a voice in days. But I don’t just want sex. I want company beyond plant life, I need a companion, a conversation for Jesus’ sake.’

My lips tremble but nothing comes out. Myra looks at me, eyes glistening, as if I’m to appease her loneliness.

My loneliness. She takes me by the hand. I squeeze the bridge of my nose. I try to count to ten but I can’t get the numbers straight.

‘You’ve got to thicken your skin,’ I begin slowly,

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‘be mean. Act strong. Like you said, even a cactus can survive in isolation, in exile of the usual world.’

My voice quivers as I say this, and I hear my fourteen year old self for a flash of an instant.

The faded moon has disappeared now, yet the lunar karst meadows themselves seem similarly otherworldly. Ominous clouds have gathered, each pregnant with a thousand raindrops. The gravel crunches rhythmically underfoot as I dawdle up the drive. Hawthorns just finished bloom mark the exit path of the house. Carried under arm, I feel the heat from the espresso machine’s water tank at my elbow and I hear the gurgle of the water held within sloshing around gently. Behind me stands Myra and on my back I feel her gaze still. The sound of Enya on the stereo grows faint and distant. As I enter my car, this cold and grey powerful machine, I think about the long empty drive home, tears in my eyes. Mojave: it rains.

‘Myra, you’ve got to be.. like a cactus.’

‘But I don’t want to survive, I want to live.’

I look deep into her eyes and I want to dive in. She reads this and steps away a little. I try to draw her back by the hand.

‘Listen,’ I say trembling, holding my pitiful soul together. ‘You’ve got to be mean Myra, a cactus, you’ve got to be a — ’

! ! ! ! !

‘What? A prick?’ *

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A Blathering-Bladder About Valparaíso

!

Quiet in my drink at the far corner of the bar this sailor walks in and hails me.

He appears drunk, and it is lunch time.

!

He asks of my desires as in ‘what will ya have?’

‘A pint,’ I replied and added ‘and a wish to see the Port of Valparaíso!’

!

‘Go ahead if you want but the place is not all what it is cracked out to be.

It is just another rag-tag of a city.’

!

I was puzzled at his response.

The very word Valparaíso has a lovely longing sound to it and he elaborates

!

‘Bin der, dun dat Der bin, dat dun Dat der, bin dun dee Port of Valparaíso.’

!

I have not been there, not done that, have been nowhere but here— staying put, in my small corner.

!

The sailor maintains his bottled condition.

The barman does not appear perturbed and I go back to dreaming of the Port of Valparaíso.

!!

Pearse Murray

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Hijra

! !

Padma thought dancing in Mother’s Sari was a private matter — Sunil had sent the whisper about the village until the whole cricket team wrestled at the window.

!

Left out from the tribe into Ardhanari’s limits — ever close to threats, thrashings, death.

!

Padma heads south, a guru has been heard of, and a new kin to keep with.

!

Taken in, s/he has mother superior to keep check, to feed, s/he lays calmly — but it is a rein.

!

Padma takes to the slab and receives nirwaan – the markings of a new caste with duties to undertake.

!

Sold out, there are tricks to be learned, even since the Raj recoiled there are suitors to please money out of.

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!

Left the tribe or left out from the tribe s/he is taken in to be sold out, to sell Rama’s gift — Raarha.

!

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R.M. Francis

His First French Kiss Rose Servitova

Avocados! That’s all he could think about during this, his first French kiss. Moist and slimy in his mouth except, in this instance, the accompanying frantic tempo of his kissing partner’s tongue — running amok like an eel in a cave. For fifteen years in the priesthood, he had wondered what French kissing would be like. Awkward, like a tween, he had practiced — back of hand, warm pillow, cold mirror but nothing prepared him for this — his mind racing but not his groin. What a mistake — the nightclub, the noise, the girl! It was time to suck his deflated heart up out of his Clarks shoes and back-track. Fate answered in the guise of a drunken, check-shirted, lad stumbling against him en-route to the dance-floor. “That’ll do,” he thought, exaggerating the push, half falling against this Kate, Katie or Katelyn, breaking the lock. Beaming, blonde and buxom, yet he longed to run away. “Nature calls,” she announced, prancing off into the crowd. Maybe she wasn’t coming back. Maybe she wanted to escape too. His ego could take it, but his nerves demanded whiskey. At the bar he stood by a slight brunette.

He was the perfect height to observe her cleavage from above. Her 90˚ chest, rising and falling, was mesmerising, hypnotic, comforting. It was too late when he noticed the mirror. It ran the length of the bar and she was watching him, a grin on her face. He burned with shame. She turned a confident and open smile towards his embarrassed face, starting a conversation to alleviate his mortification. She was kind — he could tell.

! !

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This Illusion

!

It can be pretty tricky in this gritty city to see clearly and think clearly when you’re feeling weary and you’re disillusioned with the vision you had of bright lights, and of late nights, of loose women in fishnet tights of stand up guys with lust in their eyes but it seems that you too believed the lies that we tell each other to keep the dream alive the dream of a hey day our day where we can say nay to the nay sayers and hate on these “haters” ‘cause we’re the ones young enough to put it all off til' later it’s still their problem now yes? our job for now is just to express how we feel about those issues that we don’t really understand and work shitty jobs for cash in hand then blow it all on late nights and waste our time on petty fights with people we ‘love’ to hate and fuck just to satiate our need for affection or attention or something like that whichever they’re the same at least then we’ll have someone to blame

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when we don’t feel the way we thought we would about them and ourselves and the lives we fell into the nights are getting longer but so are the days each melting into this blurred haze of booze and smoke and sweat and books emotional people pretending to give a fuck about your dreams your hopes, which it seems that even you’ve forgot and your thigh’s fucking freezing cause there’s a hole in your tights your boyfriend was drunk wanted to fuck all night but he tripped over the couch and threw up on the floor now the rug smells like vomit even more than before so you throw a towel on the ground and fall on the bed try to get the noise from your head of club music banging and crowds hanging outside the flat door smoking and squawking and looking for more to drink, to their night to their whole fucking lives looking for a buzz to help them survive it’s starting to seem like these years aren’t so great how did it get so fucking late

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in the day that was meant to be ours long and full of endless hours to loll, savour, nourish our minds and make the memories to keep us sane in later times yet that hand keeps on ticking pulling us forward to pick up our feet find something to go toward now the coffee is hot and his mouth is wet and the pillow smells like cigarettes the night isn’t young but it’s not over yet

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Alice Kinsella

Boxes of Smarties

!

If I still knew you I’d wink like ‘alright?’ passing by you at parties And when everyone else had unfastened their scruples If I didn’t have a mirror I could look in your pupils As youthful mindsets shone truthful under eyelids We’d be islands Joined by an insular peninsula of retina and iris.

!

If I still knew you I’d wink passing by you at parties And I’d know your thoughts were bright like boxes of smarties Amid these kids too arty for suburban upbringings Our brainwaves would be singing And familiar in our innocence (Like in that Hozier song) We’d get along fine like past times Instead of this nonsense of when was the last time Like, scrolling through Facebook chat after some more wine Like was it that, or that, or even that, that I said wrong?

!

But it’s like something’s looking after me ‘Cause I got in yet another minor car crash without a scratch on me And part of me just wants to let this stuff happen naturally.

Like, maybe I wasn’t meant to be in your life We glanced off one another with no visible damage So what am I doing acting like I can’t manage Now I’ve got this unshakable distaste And I’ve got this anxiety that syncopates my heart rate Now maybe I’m just not good at counting my blessings

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(After all I did Ordinary Maths) And now I even hate language With all of its he’s and its she’s and its this’s and that’s Because without our half-daydreamed partnership in crime I can’t like stuff anymore Floodgates are locked doors Now I can’t say hey, I bought rollerblades Or I saw graffiti in a train station that said your name Or when I walk on Thomas Street I see these ghosts of our last days.

!

Before we got storm-tossed And I got a bit lost I see these invisible footprints crisscrossed.

‘Cause now the light’s blue Shining from the window behind you And if I didn’t know the complicated stuff I knew Could I join you On what you call your nocturnal flaneurisms If it doesn’t impinge on your curious purisms

!

Could we count the lights of the office blocks still lit And watch the Liffey black and slowmoving and thick Like a void that reflects in a technicolour yawn All the neon and the litter and the lights left on And the tarmac glitter in the bruising dawn And the stuff that’s bitter and the stuff that’s gone.

!

If I still knew you, I’d wink passing by you at parties And we wouldn’t be those kids Good at denial And bad at eye contact Who still act like their future is a signed contract

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And we don’t want that

!

Or I don’t want that. ! ! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Alicia Byrne Keane

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!

!

!

!

!

Katie !

Lucy Montague-Moffatt

I’ve had loads of sex. I’ve had it with loadsa different people all the different ways you can. I’ve done everything. Upside down, on the side, handstand, frog stand, the lobster. I’m a pro. I’ve tried all the different types of kissing too. Washing machine, marathon, Eskimo, backwards. Listen, don’t try to tell me there’s a way of kissing or having sex that I haven’t done, because there isn’t.

And don’t get me started on boyfriends. I’ve had all the kinds. Bad ones, nice ones, skater boys, gay boys. Some boys will go out with you when they are gay so no one in school slags them. We usually hold hands and that’s fine with me because I’m always so tired from all the sex I’m having with all the other boys.

I’ve kissed girls too. Loads of them. Tall ones, butch ones, skinny ones. One girl was so big I couldn’t reach my arms around her so I held her bum. I’m really confident like that.

MAD. I would do anything. If you asked me to do something I’d just do it, without even thinking about it.

There’s this boy I know, he’s 16, same as me, but acts so immature. He hasn’t done anything with girls cause he’s scared which I think is SO funny. Sometimes I go right up to his face and laugh. He doesn’t like it but that’s what he gets for being a coward. There’s nothing scary about kissing or sexing or SEXTING or anything and I’d know because I’ve done it all.

Anyway, this boy, Dan, he was like “go steal that ball those people are playing with.” And I didn’t even think about it. I waltzed right over to the green and took the ball off them.

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They were a bit younger than us but that doesn’t matter cause Dan wouldn’t have done it. You see I’m not afraid of anything.

Once Dan and me went into the forest near our house and even though it was day time it got really dark cause of all the trees and stuff. Dan was so scared that he held my hand. I was being so brave that I didn’t even notice until we came out of the trees again. I can’t believe he was such a baby that he held my hand. He’s three months older than me, so he should be three times more brave than me.

Some girls in my class ask me who the boys I’ve been on dates with are but they wouldn’t know them cause they happened on holidays. One of them invited me to her birthday party. I think that’s so childish cause when I turned sixteen I didn’t have a party cause parties are for babies.

She told me I could come if I brought one of the boys I’ve had sex with, to prove I’m telling the truth.

!

Dan said he’d come with me but I laughed in his face.

! ! ! ! ! ! !

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!

H

Is There Anybody There?

Sarah Kennedy 

that they were quiet, lives.

e stopped beside

the gate of a field to smoke a cigarette. His warm breath misted in front of his eyes in the cold night air as he fumbled in his pockets for a lighter. The sky was clear, there were no clouds tonight, and the full silver moon lit up the silent, nocturnal world in which he seemed to be the only living thing. Nobody stirred outdoors tonight, and the silence was only broken by the occasional tiny sound of a dead leaf falling from a tree onto the road. He turned a corner and found himself on a sleepy, silent lane. He walked along it looking in every driveway at the cosy looking houses with curtains drawn and lights dimmed and he wondered about the lives of the inhabitants. He imagined

!

happy

He looked at a small yellow bungalow and thought that there was likely a young married couple inside, snuggled up safe and warm on a couch, completely oblivious to his presence. He put his hood up to guard his neck from the cold autumn wind and moved on. He walked slowly, observing each house in turn and speculating as to the goings on in each kitchen, living room and bedroom. In this house a father is tucking his daughter into bed, in that house a brother and sister are arguing, with their mother playing the exhausted mediator between them. Continuing down along the long and windy lane he noticed that lights

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were dimming, and some beginning to go out, in the houses. He sighed to himself, dreaming of the joy of being a part of one of those wholesome households.

it was doubtful that they would drive a rusted old hatchback. Theirs would be a shiny black Audi in pristine condition and a bottle green Range Rover, assuming it was a family living there.

Where were they tonight?

As he reached the end of the lane he came across a house to his left which he had not immediately noticed. It was set in off the road behind a rolling, well kept front garden. It was a large, looming house; it looked in the dark like it was three stories high and old, very old. There were no lights on inside. Could it be that there was nobody home? He walked closer, peering through the bushes that lined the perimeter of the front lawn. There were certainly no signs of life. A battered old car sat parked in the furthest corner of the driveway. He looked at it, wondering if it was just broken junk or if the people that lived here actually drove it. Surely not – with such a well kept house and garden

He stood at the roadside for a moment in the starlight, staring at the house. He felt a connection with it somehow. There it stood, set off the road and surrounded by its gardens, alone. It stood in stoic solitude and seemed aware of its own isolation from its neighbours. Where the other houses he had observed seemed warm, happy, peaceful, this was cold, lonely and tormented. It seemed to him that the house was a physical representation of himself, and that those who chose to live here were people like him, people who could understand him. This was not a happy home, he decided at length, although it gives the appearance of being

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one, this place has known anger and grief. He was drawn to this place. He wanted to go inside, to explore the lives of these people, these kindred spirits.

He would not do any harm, just a quick look and then he would leave.

following the small orange glow of her cigarette. He was terrified – he wanted to leave but was unable, he knew that the crunch of leaves underfoot in this silent night would draw attention to him. He could only hide and wait until she retreated back indoors. She looked up at the stars while she paced and he wondered what it was she was thinking about.

He imagined that she was sad, she was lost, she was lonely. She was letting go of the day she had had. She is releasing all her thoughts into the night, whispering them to the stars above, so that she can spend a peaceful night away from it all, inside by the fire.

He turned to walk toward the driveway when a light flickering on in the front hall caught his attention. He quickly crouched back behind the bushes and turned to look again at the face of the large house. As the front door opened, a stream of light was cast out halfway across the garden, and there appeared a silhouette of a young woman quietly clicking the door closed behind her. Walking a few steps away from the door she lit a cigarette and began to pace back and forth in front of the house without direction – an inky black figure against the navy black night. He stood perfectly still and stared at her, his unblinking eyes

She sighed heavily and the small sound travelled across the cold still night to meet his ears. She was sad, he could tell. She seemed small and weak against the strong and solemn façade of the house behind her. He felt sorry for her; he pitied her like he did

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himself. He knew that she, like he, had hopes and aspirations that were not coming to pass. They were both trapped, helpless in a life they couldn’t understand, like fish floundering and gasping for air on the riverbank. How do we let ourselves get to such a desperate point? He felt as if he had somehow gotten swept up in the current of life, but it was moving too quickly for him to actually be able to live.

unseeingly across the garden for a moment before moving to turn and continue her pacing. She walked about ten paces and then began to turn before stopping dead. She had caught sight of something by the road, or at least she thought she had. He panicked, she was staring right across at him, but he was frozen to the spot. He didn’t want to run away and scare her, or possibly get himself in trouble. She was still looking across at him – how much of him could she see? She took a tentative step in his direction, and then another before pausing.

She leaned forward to try and see better, to try and make out if that was a bush or a silhouette ahead of her in the blackness.

The girl put out her cigarette and, keeping it in her hand, walked back toward the front step. He stood up, planning to scout around the back of the house once she re-entered, but then noticed that she was still standing at the front door. He was now fully standing behind the bushes, hopefully not visible, wondering why she had not yet gone back inside. He saw her now lighting another. She looked up from her cigarette and gazed

He was terrified; terrified that she would discover him and terrified that she would not. He wanted her to keep walking, to walk across the lawn and approach him. She would

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ask him who he was and what he was doing outside her house at this time of night. And he would tell her everything, his whole story, right there across the bushes on this quiet September night. She would invite him in and make him a cup of tea and tell him about herself. She would speak of joy and pain and she would laugh and weep openly and unashamedly in front of him.

She would invite him to stay the night and experience the lonely comfort of the big old house; they would stay up until dawn engrossed in intimate conversation. They would tell each other the secrets of their souls, which would then mingle together and unite through conversation. They would be forever bound. He longed to see her face, to know more of what she was than just a shadowy silhouette in a silent night.

She was walking past the front door now towards the far corner of the house

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where a security light clicked on as it registered her presence. This flooded the whole garden with light, but did not reach past the bushes. Everything in front of him was illuminated, and he at last got to see her face.

Her hair was dirty blonde and her face was pale and plain. She looked as if she was about to give up on everything. He couldn’t make out any other details.

He felt like she needed him and he needed her. She was standing still and rigid like a deer in headlights, and darted her head from side to side, looking for intruders perhaps. She looked down at her cigarette for a second, then back in his direction, and then down, and up again. He tried to imagine what she was thinking. Is there somebody out there or am I just paranoid about being out in the dark alone?

Whichever is right, I’m looking forward to going back inside. Is there someone there? It’s hard to tell but I don’t think so, it’s

just the bushes. It has to be – who would come out here?

I’ll just smoke this really quickly and then go back inside. She was smoking quickly, and didn’t take her eyes off his position except to occasionally peer around quickly to see if anyone else was close by. Every now and then she walked a few steps towards him, once going so far that the security light turned itself off, causing her to back slowly and cautiously towards the house.

experienced. She gave a quiet cough, muffling the sound with her hand and then began to walk slowly back towards the front door, never taking her eyes off his spot, not even after the light turned off. She opened the front door and turned back to stare out for a moment before making a slight nodding motion with her head and walking inside, shutting the door behind her.

The hall light turned off once more and he was again alone in the darkness. Had she nodded to him? Was she acknowledging his presence?

He was impressed by her. He would have expected her to be driven back inside by fear of an intruder. But instead she was drawn towards him; perhaps by bravery, perhaps by curiosity. He relished this unspoken contact that he was having with her. They were both silently aware of each other, looking across the darkness in an attempt to understand each other. He was transfixed; a deeper moment he had never

He stood for a few minutes longer looking at the house, but it remained cold and empty looking. With a sigh, he turned and slowly began to walk back towards the village. He would return tomorrow night in the hope of seeing her again.

! !

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Orb Photography

! !

Maybe they're just the reflections of gnats or of other small arthropods flittering; or maybe they are Enoch and Elijah and other lost boys named for prophets at the end of the Second Great Awakening, who came to die at Gettysburg or Chancellorsville.

But whatever they are, orbs punctuate place: there are more of them at Jackson Square than a random Walgreen's, and more still over battlefields or cornfields or verandas than parking lots where no one's snuck sex or died.

When it is darker-than-purple dark, and deer are caught out humping under headlights by long haul truckers headed for the Ozarks; or above natural waters, or blighted homes, or wherever factories used to give good work but now their rust is just a playground for teenagers' radical parkour, these places and times are good for orb photography.

I make no great claim in claiming this, except that maybe some places have more place than most.

I have no standing theory on the Nikon host.

Matt Prater

! ! ! !

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Cóilín O’Connell — Orb Photography

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numbers are always wrong

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down late up early sandwiches packed. cling film. chairs creak skin weeps cotton comes apart white stains at edges of every pocket show weakness easy, gentle struggle.

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on the other side now, unlimited I miss the confines and the dependency they cannot destroy me with a look. greasy phone slips.

Always a planet to me, only you can and I hate to say it but they still cannot, and they have changed more than a haircut and a job.

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Don’t count changes because they do not exist.

Don’t count in numbers but count.

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Alan Keane

Those Nights

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Those lustful and luxurious days are but a freezing memory: ones that drown your senses, you’re senseless and on a road to nowhere from nowhere.

You’re brought back to the plait he put in your hair, only to pull it back and stare with those menacing eyes, at your thighs, your ripped tights where the rope burnt through.

That fading, everlasting mark left there to taunt you, and to taint your romantic inclinations.

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He made you choke.

He is that burning, a cloud of smoke that won’t go, that you take home, that makes you feel home, and who corrupts you with visits like a luring snake who’s weight stakes you down.

Your body and life both traded, bartered, for that one bite of that desirable apple held out to you on an unattainable platter.

What does it matter that your scattered brain wants this

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ardent, unpardonable demon between your sheets?

Why repent the nights spent with this hell-sent serpent, because you’re filled with regret?

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You want to regret, but you know — heart and soul — that you’d finish the apple and welcome back the devil.

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Anna McGlynn-White

On Grief and Reason

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It is too dark to read, so we sit in failing light, full of the harshness of winter, silent in our grief; I, waiting for you to plead ignorance that is blessed relief. You jump when the telephone rings, as if the words you would speak were formed around a Delphic stone held under the tongue, smooth and round. Omphalos, Earth’s navel, reason’s gift, religions fable.

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Jason Roycroft

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F

Morning Wonders Des Garvey

riday 11:22 am

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Jasper Coultry holds a crisp letter and quietly mouths an eternal fuck. His eyes close softly as he tilts his head slowly back. Inhaling dramatically, he notices what an exceptionally bright morning it is, even through his sealed eyelids. The sun is famously known to be a very rude thing, cancelling most of its appointments but having no trouble arriving locked and loaded at your door when you’re least able to accept visitors. The porch is strewn with takeaway leaflets, their Special One Time Offers long expired. The cat has pissed on many of the flyers, he notices, and the porch isn’t looking the best for it. Jasper kicks idly at them with his slippered right foot, causing one to momentarily glide before rejoining its fallen comrades in their grim bed. Housework done for the day, he notes.

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Without looking down, he pulls from his manky denims a wizened rollie and lights it. Much of the tobacco has fallen from the thin paper tube, so when the lighter goes near it about half of the thing instantly vanishes in a glow of small flames. He sucks deeply, causing the amber light to crawl apathetically towards the greasy brown strands of tobacco stuffed unevenly along the rest of the surviving cigarette. It evens out eventually.

Jasper does not like the letter in his hand at all. It bears the dreaded Harp insignia — the fuck maker. A logo that has brought fear to the many who receive the official,

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tea-brown envelope. He pulls deep on the smoke, unconscious of the white ash littering his bare, sweating chest with each tiny movement. After some time he allows his substantial, heavy head to lower. He peels his eyelids open, which make a small, moist sound at the point of separation, but no-one else is there to notice.

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Holmes & McCann Insurance

32 Mespil Road

Dublin 4

Jasper Coultry 43 Elmbrook Drive Dublin 7

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25th January RE: JobBridge National Internship scheme

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Dear Mr. Coultry, !

We would like to welcome you to Holmes & McCann under the JobBridge National Internship Scheme. We hope that this will prove to be a beneficial experience for you in assisting you toward your future career in Information Technology. Under this internship you will not become an employee or agent of the Company and shall not be entitled to any fee, salary, pension, bonus or other benefits from the Company. You will be bound by the general terms and conditions of participation‌

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As his eyes complete their unsteady observation, Jasper tosses the page aside and fumbles in his pocket once more.

He withdraws a packet of Polos that are half eaten but that resiliently wear their mangled cape of foil and paper wrapping. A minty supervillain maybe? Focussing long and hard enough to read the letter, Jender’s eyes are rendered pink with bloodshot.

‘Fuck off,’ mutters the man, eight times.

He enjoys the unusually low octave his voice finds. Slumping into his saffron armchair, Jasper exhales pneumatically and begins to throw the small, circular mints at his cat Púca who is nearby; strutting, and firing an occasional glare in his direction. The piercing stare of his feline companion, coupled with the sleek creature’s sinister omnipresence about the house, troubles him often. Jasper grunts as he notices the entire back side of his jeans are stained and encrusted. One day, not long ago — in his armchair and out of his head, lashing down cough-bottle and crying at the cat — he’d looked at her and sobbed ‘What have I ever shown you but a home.’ He thinks the cat is a little prick.

‘Shit you, Púca,’ he says now in a small voice. The cat walks towards the kitchen door, which the armchair does not directly face.

He thinks now of how quickly the months have slipped away since he lost his previous position as chief ‘computer monkey’ for the ultimately unsuccessful accountancy firm Longs, of Talbot Street. Heady days, he remembers fondly.

Why, there were some Fridays where lunch could stretch to as long as 37 minutes. The demise of that particular business had himself and his colleagues awkwardly patting each others’ shoulders, darting their eyes and murmuring something about being glad to be getting the redundancy package, sure when was that musical going to be finished?

The Candy Crush Saga. Yeah! We can finally build that

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gaming forum, you know, take it from the stuff of five-pint-talk and turn it into a five-point-plan for online domination!

Freedom to create! They left the office smiling.

Yes, 11 months had passed so very sneakily. Jasper wonders now what their names were. Premature furrows ripple across his forehead. The redundancy money had run thin like cheap dye in heavy rain. He had begun to receive welfare checks in the post and not really been bothered to bring it up with anyone. Would you? Working for an accountant had certain perks; he wasn’t about to piss them away for the sake of some other fool’s definition of morality.

He throws another Polo, which makes its way into his reasonably equipped kitchen, where it bounces twice before skittering to a new home among Mr. Muscle & the bauld magazines.

‘If only I had time,’ whinnys Jasper to himself. ‘Time to get my own work done…’

A further Polo shatters on impact with the wall. Lobbing his final mint with the athletic prowess of a bloated frog, he closes his eyes and decides to embark on his daily trawl through the reserves of his porter-addled memory. He never enjoys letting the cruel swamp of recollection slop back into focus, but it is expedient to his wellbeing to know who or where to steer respectfully clear of for the coming fortnight.

Ah yes — Dublin.

What have we here? Images of speaking too loudly.

Louder than the other people in the room perhaps. Doesn’t bother him. Bright, loud flashes of reckless guerrilla photography only add convenient, transitional dissolves to what is at best, a shaky filmstrip that remained from what was, at best, an indiscriminate night in The Halfdead Horse.

A rumbling belly laugh rises in perfect coalescence with the arc of that last little Polo’s flight. They both soar together in

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odd harmony. Mintyfresh and mirth, he thinks, pleased with his wit.

The mint lands, clicks and rattles amongst the kitchen tiles and what sounds puzzlingly like glass pieces. Jasper, the recently re-employed, sits up sharply, having suddenly remembering a great deal more about the preceding evening. It comes like a glaring lighthouse lamp. First the stolen but later, unabashed eye-locks from across the lamp lit smoking area. She has dark lipstick on. Then roaring laughing together, whispering about the machine in the gents and sharing cigarettes like old accomplices. In his kitchen nnnow, ripping open French wine and ruby blouse, both deep red and purchased for tonight. A blank space here… nothing.

Jasper grips his right cheek and eye socket with his left hand as if to crumple the onslaught of memories back into some cavity he cannot reach. He wants to rip his face off! He waits for the next terrible wave. All he can hear is her laugh, stretched now to a scream, echoing around some steep glacial valley. Probably in fucking Norway. It comes; vvvump! It hits him harder each time — he can smell blood now and feels faint. She is backing away, Whyyee? Mascara rivulets carve cruel geography upon her swollen face. The weight of wine and barbiturate upon him, he lunges.

Whyyee? What has happened?! Clothes rip, they are both crying, she is gone he is lying in a pool of red, and glass is everywhere. Jasper tugs at his eye socket, rocking. He balls up the polo wrapper with his left and squeezes it.

What have you done you fucking fool!

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*

Meanwhile, Púca the cat has investigated the strange white debris lying around, and has a light dusting of powder over

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her little black nose which stings her and makes her sneeze.

Jasper shrieks at it to stop!

‘Please Púca,, Fffuhckan Please..’. But Púca cannot stop sneezing, as much as the confused creature wishes to. Each nasal expulsion seems to create more and more reverberation, gathering and getting louder and louder, until there is little but a white roaring vacuum in his head. Jasper Coultry, recently re-employed, cowering under a nuclear hangover, the prospect of giving up the dole, apparent sexual assaultist, rises from his chair with his head in his hands. He paces around and wails, then sadly goes to the kitchen to lie down in the pool of red wine and glass., howling and weeping, and waits for the Gardaí, who knock on the door some three minutes after that.

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An Instance of Remorse

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My introduction to guilt Was sticky and sweet, 'Literally' and literally so; I stole jellies and blackjacks And gorged myself wild Anytime Baba'd go out for a fag.

This work time romance with sugar and sin Lit my heart and my belly with sickly regret Worse yet than a thief "Child Eats Dead Pig" Processed and sluiced into fruity creation.

For days I wandered in desert dessert, Lamenting the loss of my moral convictions, And when God couldn't reach me Or teach me Or preach me I left him with wrappings in a pile on the floor.

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Maryam Ali

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GOWP Meets… Dimitra Xidous

I first met Dimitra Xidous on a Wednesday evening in early December. I had read her book, Keeping Bees a month before, and promptly fell in love with it. The book is a gorgeous collection of perspective and experience, sensually woven together to make a raw, feminine whole. We conversed for a little over 2 hours, and discussed topics ranging from intimacy, duende and the spoken word. Dimitra was a passionate speaker, and had an excited, slightly frantic way of expressing herself sometimes when we touched on topics I could tell moved her. I began my exploration of her thoughts by asking when she had known she was a poet, and what role the poet plays in today's society.

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Dimitra: The first time I read Leonard Cohen. I was 15 and it was his poem 'As the Mist Leaves No Scar’. It was sexy and about sex — and it was during my English class and I couldn't believe I could get away with reading sexy things for school. I knew, as I read that poem, and the many others that followed, that it was something I wanted to do.

Something I thought — felt, even — I would be good at. To think about how long it takes him to write — the commitment to craft, the endless drafts… it takes stamina to write poems.

Poetry requires it — and it has taken years to build mine up enough, to make Keeping Bees.

The important thing is to write - write to the best of my ability. To write poems that resonate and move — to write and not be lazy. To work hard to make sure that my work is good, of a high, technical standard. I want my work to be exciting — and to be exciting to anyone who comes to it — whether by design, or pure accident. Of course, on this latter

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point, I have little to no control. However someone feels about my work is none of my business. I find this a difficult thing to explain. But it is about respecting intimacy — mine, and the reader's, the intimacy of words, and the spaces between the words. It is about being comfortable in that space where intimacy thrives. To allow it to exist — to be comfortable with the silences. Poetry is equal parts words and the silences between the words. So maybe the poet's role in today' society is to give weight to silences between the words.

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Keeping Bees is rich with Christian references and religious imagery. Dimitra is Greek-Canadian and she explained that Greek Orthodox Christianity was very much tied up with her experience growing up. Even as a child, she found poetic beauty in many religious rituals.

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D: I went to church a lot growing up — and my favourite time of year is Easter. I remember, years ago, being in church on Good Friday. This particular mass was the one where Christ is taken down from the cross and laid out in the epitaphios. I remember everyone lining up to walk by (or crawl under) the epitaphios, and as the line grew longer, a low buzz of people talking began. As it got louder, the priest came out and asked for quiet, for respect — this was a funeral. I never forgot that — and it felt very true to me. The death of Jesus was an actual physical death — and this mass was a funeral.

And with a funeral, mourning. A sadness — but in a very beautiful way. I've carried that day with me — and as far as whether or not I would consider myself a spiritual person, I cannot separate it from my body, my spirituality is tied into my physical existence....it begins and ends and begins again, and all of it from somewhere deep in my body.

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When I was writing 'The Body Of Christ,’ I was thinking a lot about how maybe, for many Irish people, their first experience of the naked human body (other than their own) is going to church and seeing this man (Jesus Christ) — this violent image, laid out on a cross. In fact, I never really considered the violence of it, until I moved to Ireland. I was always more romantic about it — the symbolism behind his death on the cross, the sacrifice, the resurrection. It wasn’t until I moved to Ireland that I started to think about the suffering that is tied up in it. And the ideology, the — for lack of a better word — disrespect, that is (still) perpetuated in the name of this body. Consider, for example, the violation of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Jesus on the cross, in Ireland, is a body in perpetual decay. That’s probably been the impact of living in Ireland — as a non-Irish writer.

What I would consider the most violent pieces in the collection — ‘The Body of Christ’ and ‘Horse Logic’ — were written here. It's fascinating for me to think about that: living in Ireland has made me a more violent writer. I mean, I look at a poem like ‘Horse Logic’ — and it is all violence. All that said, I do like going to church as an adult — for the ceremony of it. When I go, it's time to reflect for myself. I’ve never been to church in Ireland, but I'd like to. I'm curious.

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We spoke about the concept of duende, something that has played a powerful role in Dimitra's creative life from the moment she heard the word uttered.

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D:I would say read Lorca's essay on the topic — he writes really eloquently about it. He talks about it being this force, almost like a demon. For someone to connect with someone or something else, you basically have to go through slaughter — slaughter of your own self. It's not about seeking perfection in the arts, or looking to experience

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‘perfection’ — it's a raw experience that can't really be expressed. It's a dark force, a movement. It's very visceral. I was 21 when I first heard that term, doing my undergrad at Uni. I had taken a writer's course. I remember the day my lecturer first spoke about Lorca and duende. When she said the word, it's almost like I knew what she meant. She described it, and I thought, yes. That is exactly the kind of poet that I am. I knew that that was where my writing came from, duende. And that allows me to focus on what I want to write about, and how, instead of focusing on the where the need comes from. Any time I'm in Spain, I make a point to see ‘Guernica.' It's a Picasso painting, which depicts an attack on the city of Guernica. I’ve been transfixed, each time I have gone to spend time with this painting. All the agony is in the horse. What Picasso has done is — well, at least for me — made me feel empathy for the horse. The attack on the horse is equal to the attack on the human beings, and the agony expressed through them is no less, no more, than that which is experienced by the horse. Suffering is suffering.

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Keeping Bees captures beautifully what it is to love and to lust and to fuck as a woman. It presents a human experience through a female lens. Dimitra has said in the past that she does not know what it means to be a ‘female writer,’ and just wants to write well. I asked her why she thought her work so often focused on the female form and the female sexual experience.

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D: I guess to answer that question I've to talk a little bit about boys. My first interaction with poetry was through male writers. When I was 15 or 16, and writing my own stuff, somewhere inside of me I felt for it to be powerful — for my words to mean anything — it had to be written with a very

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masculine sense of self. When I read back on pieces I had written then, it's almost as if I hear a male voice. I knew it was somewhat false, but I didn't know how to fix it. When I was in my early 20s, and took that writing course, I started to shift my ideas and my voice began to change. I remember the first piece that I wrote where I fully realised my artistic voice had changed — 'Fig'. It's this line: 'When he sleeps, I sit in the bathroom eating figs. I imagine this is what it looks like when he puts his mouth over me.' I have always thought that only something feminine inside me could have written that line, and when I realised this, something in my brain kind of exploded. Up until that point I had always written with a penetrative point of view. I didn't give any value to my body, as something that could take something else in. I wrote that line and I can still feel the raw energy of the words ‘over me’ — where the ‘me’ was something primal, and knew I had to read other female writers, to gain a sense of the different voices.

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Dimitra has been published in Room, a Canadian literary magazine that only publishes female writers. We spoke about the separation of genders existing at certain times in society and I asked for her thoughts on a male only magazine.

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D: Just make sure it's fantastic writing, and I would read it! I would be interested in seeing what men are writing, and how their work plays off each other. I have no problem with that, as long as both publications were treated in the same way. It would require someone who has a particular curiosity about identity as a social construct. That's the thing with Room magazine and the like — I don't think the editors are saying female writers are better, it's just there exists a curiosity about what it's like to be a woman, particularly a

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woman in a patriarchal system that still violates and victimises women. It makes us feel like we have to justify everything we do. I think there is a certain kind of power to having all these women's experiences collected in the one space. When Keeping Bees first came out, I was very pleased to get a review in a magazine, and it was, overall, a good review, but the last line broke my heart. The reviewer said I was reminiscent of a 'female Cohen’. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that’s a great thing to read — my work linked to Cohen’s — but I would have given anything for it just to have said reminiscent of Cohen. There is no such thing as a female Leonard Cohen; I cannot be reminiscent of that. I still look at it and I wish the word 'female' wasn't there. Maybe, if we existed in a world where a male writer was described as ‘the male Atwood’ than maybe i’d be like, okay. But, as far as I am aware, that doesn't happen.

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Our conversation meandered towards the topic of casual sex.

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D: I think 'casual sex' is a misnomer. The intimacy you experience with someone when you choose to sleep with them — there is nothing casual about that. The idea that it's all about penetration, it's only about that act — I find that to be false. I know, for myself, if I close my eyes I can remember the weight of every person I've slept with, and the differences in the weight. There's a memory of that in my body. When I think about how many people exist in this world, and how many people you will encounter — from that, the number of people you sleep with is quite small. The idea that there are people walking this earth who know what you ‘weigh,’ or what that feels like — to me there is nothing causal in that. I wish we had a different word for what it is when two people have one night, or a couple of nights,

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together outside of a monogamous relationship. Those 6 hours, or 10, or whatever — they're intense, they matter, and you take something away from them. I think sometimes we don't value that, the romance of that. Intimacy, all kinds, is something we need to be thinking about a lot more. I'm very interested in that, and I think you can tell from the book.

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We spent the final chunk of our time together talking about spoken word, and the ever-growing scene in Ireland.

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D: I can think of two spoken word artists/poets that, for the three years I’ve been in Dublin I really enjoy. I can sit through re-listening to their work, because (for me), their work can stand alone on a page without them being there.

Erin Fornoff is one — her poems are beautiful, full of a gorgeous energy that just seems to have its own momentum.

'August in New Orleans' — there is a line in that one, I can't remember the line exactly, but I remember when I heard it, all I wanted to do was to see it on the page. I wanted to connect with it in that space — this was poetry to me. Colm Keegan is another writer I really like. When you hear him perform, with the rhythm and his pauses - those are line breaks. He's performing line breaks! I love that you can hear that in his work. What I would say, and I guess I mean this as a criticism about the scene — when you have someone who is mostly interested in performing their work on a stage, maybe it's the effort it takes to memorise pieces, but that means they can't constantly be writing or performing new pieces. There is a lot of spoken word that doesn't stand up to repeated listening. Give me someone like Erin or Colm any day of the week — I have heard Erin's pieces multiple times, but I enjoy it each time because I feel like I am getting something new from it — so it can be done. But, they are more the exception to the rule - there is some much stuff that once you've heard

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it...there is nothing new to be gained from listening to it again. It is one-dimensional. And, as a listener and a writer, I can find that frustrating. Art is about evolution. You must constantly be moving forward and creating new pieces. If I'm listening to someone who I heard a year or two ago and they're doing the same stuff, constantly — I have very little patience for that. John Cummins is someone else who is able to do that — you see him around all the time and yet he is always performing new stuff.

I remember reading a piece, maybe in headspace.org, that was about spoken word and vulnerability. It was really interesting because it made me question, is it actually vulnerable to get on stage and perform? I thought about my own work and my own readings and I realised something — anyone who gets on stage to put their own work out there is not doing something vulnerable, at least not in my opinion. I have never been afraid to get on stage, or worried about sharing myself in that way. It's not vulnerability, it's about something else – and, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is about intimacy. Once, at the Monday Echo, I was reading ‘You Cannot Tell Me’ out loud, and I held on to this one guys gaze for probably longer than he would have liked. As soon as he looked away I moved on, but I thought if he had kept looking at me I would have kept reading to him. I wasn't trying to make him feel uncomfortable but I thought it was interesting — it was like the tables had been turned. There I was on stage, being looked at, and I flipped that and looked, really looked, at him instead. I still think about that. I think about the power dynamics if that. Did I feel powerful? I didn't feel vulnerable. Maybe I made him feel vulnerable. In any case, I made him feel something, which is the bones of poetry, or really, any act of art — to feel something. And in that feeling — to connect, even for a moment, with another

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human being. It sounds like a cliché, but, it’s true. I fucking love a good connection.

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Dimitra's plans for for 2015 include projects with Keeping Bees cover artist Ria Czerniak and working on a mini cookbook/pamphlet inspired by the food in her poetry.

Keeping Bees is published by Doire Press and is available to buy on their website, as well as The Winding Stair book store.

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See our website gowp.biz, for the unabridged version of Maryam’s interview with Dimitra.

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*

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Song

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When they talked of song I imagined birds in branches filling the sky with practised notes; or a river tinkling in the distance, the wind passing through a stone arch whose history escapes me.

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Not this music teeming with re-imagining on a crowded train, the world passing by in a blur, low lights bright from the memory of love, the mind figuring out everything once forgotten.

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Lie back on the earth now and listen to the moaning, like a whale, just there beneath the surface. Is it life’s breath or all that unsung history singing?

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Kevin Graham

Eve Woods — I Bring You News Of Great Joy

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Contributors

Stuart A. Paterson is an award-winning poet whose work has been widely published in anthologies, newspapers and magazines throughout the world. He received an EC Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 1992 and, most recently, a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014.

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Tadhg Hoey is a co-founder and editor of GOWP. When he’s not playing polo or reading the Daily Express, he likes to do other things.

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R. M. Francis is a poet from the Black Country. He recently completed his MA Creative Writing at Teesside University. His work has been published in many online and print magazines and he is a regular contributor to the spoken word scene.

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Shane Hulgraine is a writer from Dublin. He has had short stories ‘Viracocha’ (Wyvern Publications, 2010) and ‘Edge of Winter’ (The South Circular, 2012) published, while 'Lynnfatuation' was awarded first prize in the Franco Irish Literary Festival (2010), and 'All Good Things' has been shortlisted by Writers’ Forum Magazine UK (2014).

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Maryam Ali is a co-founder and poetry editor at GOWP. She is currently typing in the third person.

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Matt Prater's work has appeared in several journals in the United States, including Appalachian Heritage, The Hollins Critic, and Still: The Journal. A writing instructor at Emory & Henry College, he lives in Saltville, Virginia.

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Cóilín O'Connell is an artist from and based in Dublin.

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Simon Glynn is a Dublin-based literary enthusiast, cornershop wine connoisseur and armchair vagabond who occasionally writes a story.

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Des Garvey is a musician from Dublin that has spent much of his 23 years staring into space at various bus stops.

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Sarah Kennedy is an MA graduate of Maynooth University who is currently working in an extremely unfulfilling job. She is planning on moving to France asap.

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Alan Keane is a poet based in Dublin. Taking influences from electronic music and computer science, his work approaches hope and worry with algorithmic composition and minimalist tendencies.

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Rob McGonigle is a studying digital anthropologist, a path surely leading to rags or riches. hopes to one day befriend and shoot a sentient hologram recreation of andy warhol.

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Rose Servitova works as a job-coach. She was a finalist in Bring Your Limericks to Limerick (2014) and Song of the Year (Lyrics) Competition (2009). Her writing’s appeared in The Irish Times, Mslexia, The New Writer, The Ogham Stone and Brilliant Flash Fiction.

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Katie Kidd is currently in her Third Year studying Visual Communications at the National College of Art and Design. She specialises in illustration, with pattern, line-drawing and lightheartedness making their way into a lot of her work.

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Eve Woods (1990) is an artist living and working in Dublin. She has recently completed her MA. in Visual Arts Practices in IADT.

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Lucy Montague-Moffatt has been featured on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany, The Irish Times, The Bohemyth, Wordlegs and the short story collection published by Doire Press ‘30 Under 30’.

She is currently studying for an MA in scriptwriting in Manchester.

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Pearse Murray has published poems and short stories in a wide variety of print and on-line journals and anthologies. He is a native of Dublin and lives in upstate New York.

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J.Roycroft’s work has appeared in many magazines, including The Stinging Fly, The SHoP and Abridged. He lives and works in Dublin.

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Dave McGinn is an amateur writer, IT professional and aspiring entrepreneur from Tallaght in South-West Dublin. He runs www.irishwriting.ie, an online resource for Irish writers, and recently launched Poemshuffle. When he's not reading or writing poetry, he is usually rehearsing with his band, Lavelle.

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Alice Kinsella is a student and aspiring writer. She spends hours at her computer pretending to write but actually watching videos of baby animals doing silly things.

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Anna McGlynn-White is just a simple English student in UCD who strives to be Jeff Buckley.

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Alicia Byrne Keane is a spoken word poet, reviewer and occasional bass player. She is a regular featured poet at nights such as the Monday Echo, the Circle Sessions, Velocoustic, and Dublin's Underground Beat, and performed at Lingo, Ireland's first spoken word festival.

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Note From The Editors

GOWP Two is edited by Christian Cooney, Maryam Ali and Tadhg Hoey.

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Copyright to all work belongs with individual authors.

For more information on GOWP or to view our archive, see our website, www.gowp.biz

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We would like to thank Edel Martin, Sarah Kennedy (cheers for all the proof-reading!), Reeta Cherie, Emer Toale, Kim Comiskey, Oona Frawley, Tramp Press, Andrew Wade, Simon Glynn, Des Garvey, Rob McGon, Matthew Mulligan, Oisin McKenna, Rosemary Moloney, Elaine Hoey, John Maguire, Eileen Martin, Grace Martin, Aine White, Stephen Jennings, Tadhg Byrne, Chris Holten, Bernhardt McKenna, Damien Allen, Yasmin Ahmed, Sean Keating, Ben Burns (Where are you? We miss you?), the Parson Street massif, Rob Doyle, Dimitra Xidous, fundit.ie, Rob Mirolo, Manma Saor, Sim Simma, our anonymous funders, and everyone who’s helped us out over the past year.

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Wan love x

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