Icarus Vol. 67 No. 1 (2016)

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ICARUS MAGAZINE

VOLUME LXVII, ISSUE I

Trinity College Dublin © Trinity Publications 2016

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EDITORIAL ‘this damn’d profession of writing where one needs one’s brains all the time’ ‘talk is a form of love, [Epigraph letredacted us talk’ due to copyright]

— Ezra Pound — Louis Zukofsky

To those who came before us—Dean McHugh, Mikey Kemp, Thomas Merton, Harpo Marx, Fra Lippo Lippi—you have taught us about 12% perfect of what we know, but all in all that same 12% comprises 90% of what we know about publishing Icarus. Thanks for your help, and we hope we haven’t offended you.

To the reader of this issue, Tolle; Lege, preferably beneath a fig tree and not a pear tree. We hope that you find this work as demanding as we found it. We believe, anyway, that you stand to gain a lot from it, as we feel we have. It would be disingenuous to call this production a labour of love; we loved the labour of it, yes, but this love was at most a reflection of what you see, here, now, printed in these pages. To those of you whose names are printed opposite this editorial, we thank you for your love, and greet you at the starts of your brilliant careers.

More generally, to all of you who allowed us to read and to discuss your work, we extend our thanks and hope you won’t give up on us quite yet.

We owe a great deal to Éabha and Gill, who have brought and continue to bring this magazine forward in ways not always noticed. Hi, Nath.

— Leo Dunsker & Will Fleming Icarus 67.1 (Michelmas 2016) is proud to present work from both Maurice Scully and Christodoulos Makris. The former once found himself in our same shoes (which he wore alone, and which evidently fit him quite well); the latter has taken us on good faith, and for this we thank him especially.

The Icarus staff acknowledges Trinity Publications and the School of English, as as well as Gemini International Limited, for making this issue possible.

Icarus is a fully participating member of the Press Council of Ireland. Serious complaints should be made to: The Editors, Icarus, Trinity Publications, Mandela House, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Information concerning copyright and permissions can be found at www [dot] icarusmagazine [dot] com.

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CHIEF EDITORS

Leo Dunsker & Will Fleming DEPUTY EDITOR & CHIEF ARCHIVIST

PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER

Éabha Jones

Gillian Murtagh

CONTENTS Cover: Dae

Five Poems

by NATHANAËL ROMAN

FEATURED: CHRISTODOULOS MAKRIS

For Icarus

22

by MAURICE SCULLY

4

Taxi 174 taking me home

Placed Pattern Particles

6

by HANA EFENDIC

9

On Your Drive to Dexter St

by DANIEL HOJNACKI

12

by SEAN PIERSON

14

by SEAN PIERSON

15

by ALICE JORGENSEN

15

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

16 17

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

Expulsion

by SPERANZA ORLANDO

42

DART 19

2001: A Space Odyssey Explored - Part 1

by JOSHUA R. RHINIER

41

daydreamer

Extremities

by MADEE EHRENBERG

38

sexy unknown

ording

by ED SALLEY

36

The Songman

naytch

by ED SALLEY

33

W/O All of My Friends

soz

by ED SALLEY

30

Lacunae

Stationary (Quiescence)

by EVA O’BRIEN

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20

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

43

Contributors

44

Editors

46

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For Icarus

by MAURICE SCULLY Commemorative statues & monuments are public static moments of statement about an event or person or movement. Individual memory is subjective of course, & collective memory gathers up simplifications that serve agendas not controlled or initiated by the majority of those that ‘remember’, yet subjective memory is thought of as the truth, collective memory as a truth.

‘Placed’ began with some writing on the game of tiddly-winks. I was interested in the colours & shapes as well as the rhythms of the game. The colours & shapes led to ‘motley’ & that, in turn, to Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’. 1916 in this year of centenary, led me to think about the complexity of commemoration. Those I think were the links that made the piece.

Goldsmith outside Trinity College holding open a book is looking sprightly & studious, an image that does not fit contemporary accounts. Daniel O’Connell, lawyer & politician, atop his monument in the street renamed in his honour, providing vantage to seagulls, head streaked white, is surrounded by lady angels with full breasts & bulletholes. Jim Larkin, nearby, arms aloft on his high plinth of Wicklow granite, just across from where he spoke in 1913 from an upper window to the workers on the street below in what was then a hotel owned by William Martin Murphy, of all people (Larkin had dressed as a woman to slip in to the building) is frozen in drama. But Oisin Kelly’s lively statue refers to a different drama, in a different theatre.

So, history. A series of contingent accidents beyond prediction? A chaos of tantalizing patterns? An unending nightmare? The Burgess Shale decimation, mass extinctions through meteorite hits & other natural disasters, the rise of small mammals towards consciousness, what we mammals call ‘intelligence’, a shooting gallery beyond rules?

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A dog barks in the city: roof roof-roof roof-roof-roof I imagined Patrick Kavanagh’s self-commemorating canal sonnet (‘Oh commemorate me where there is water … ’) as itself, as a physical structure, spread over rippled water to break up into latinate & seeming latinate segments which gave stanzas 17 – 19 of ‘Placed’.

These three pieces – ‘Placed’, ‘Pattern’, & ‘Particles’ – are from ‘Play Book’, a work in progress. I think this book might be ‘about’ power. But I don’t know yet.

A version of ‘Pattern’ has appeared in a small festschrift for Susan Howe & ‘Placed’ has appeared in the e-chapbook Plays from Smithereens Press. Thanks to the editors Jonathan Creasy & Ken Keating.

Maurice Scully Dublin, Sept. 2016

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Placed “where motley etc … ” Plastic disk laughs into its cup.

The plastic flat primary colour of it.

The green disk blinks into its cup.

Don’t let the cup tumble.

Dice tickle the board.

Flick.

Slim textures in circles squares diamonds cylinders – I heard you rang you answered you

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you parked in the park you too parked next to the park roof roof-roof roof-roof-roof disk by disk the cups open uplaugh down to your turn where slap here’s the cup.

Circle.

Square.

Facts split the picture open.

Rice-grains dimple the ridges.

Mirrors shimmer into out there – howaya!

[Bang-bang].

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But that was the past. The sea of the past. The fog of the past.

A forest of following hollowing futures.

Bobbing whens.

Plastics pierced.

O co memor or emco morat may by water vat or em rald grass.

Brush past.

Trapped stick.

Red splash.

Spread low with many mythologies rippling a language’s underparts tapping yr fingers quietly to another rhythm –

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watch them now focusing what’s to be said & how.

Pattern When your horse hawed on a hawthorn tree by the fence in the fog where haws awed the hoarse kids & me I think (like me) you thought god that’s life I suppose the Vague & the Fixed or a slick name for a new pub – cool, join the club.

What’s new?

Who knows?

What will we do with the blue behind the mist & the raw

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haws on the hawthorn tree I wonder thought one of the kids there scratching his head but said nothing to me.

(Or to me).

Cawed by crows out of the blue across the country where the hawthorn was the Seven Static Laws on Stained Stone Statues Standing for Shadows & Shattered Hopes ordered in words round roots that sap dark from a deep ground square the air of the vast in the breathing network of what-is – chop-chop. Know the ropes. Sea. Rocks.

Chance. Unbound wonts won’t right wrongs.

Dogs bark, people

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speak, time times you right down to here, &to here too, rigorous, that last fixed minim past yr reflection on the glass after the completion of the process & yr theory’s let pass. Pity. Fear.

Beyond the Temple of Peace Fissured beyond the Temple of the Spreading Cloud in the middle of each diamond-shaped segment a tiny diamond-shaped segment echoed at its tip each tightly fitted to the next making this woody fruiting body from the world the world. A world.

Detach. So there it is.

A few adjustments will make things clear.

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Particles That writer on that plinth might one day lift that page & laugh, what do you think?

Downwind of Lesson One. Flickering text. Birdshit on a shoulder.

Sunglints on glass. (But I doubt it).

(But that’s not the point).

Call me when you get back … & turn down the radio look round, listen, are you awake?

Do you need to be?

(Isn’t this great?)

Plastic guttering clicking in direct sunlight darkens into quiet changes again to glow & snap getting the work done trees’ leaves reflected on the window against a fine clear sky getting the work done well invisible packets of energy puckering curled surfaces that complicate the If-This Then-That

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risk by risk I flick a fly away spreading opening (this is the life!) vertical pellets incessantly settling round you into the mud going right on commemorating battles & heroes & all that (when you don’t know the language – little wisps of it drifting along the tongue – stand back – watch the action) then that metal statue winks a lid & its lips move – hey kid.

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Stationary (Quiescence)

by EVA O’BRIEN

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soz

by ED SALLEY i killed myself slowly at first there is reason to believe i will live forever i do not will not can not support useful knowledge im sorry i fuck your girl

naytch

by ED SALLEY this most closest to any i’ve felt what would we be if returned?

AWAY FROM MACHINE he screams at his metal-glass screen in 3rd person

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ording

by ED SALLEY i wish to stop time oceans attempt to convince me otherwise and fail i am impatient for eternities my skins hang almost at perfect fit i think they think we’re home here a first failure awaits we sit and mark unknown dates from a calendar it’s very dramatic

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Extremities

by MADEE EHRENBERG The first time I choked, my mom had to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on me and pull the mozzarella stick out of my throat with her bare fingers. The first time I had an onion ring was at the Wellesley Center, which is actually just the Babson College pool but I didn’t know that until August. The first time we read Holes must have been in July because we were on the Vineyard and Henry found onions growing in the garden of the house we rent from Jim and Kathy Newman. The first time I got my period away from home was on the 6th grade retreat and I was caught so tenderly off-guard that I went home early but I don’t even remember if I read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret before or after that. The first time Ella told me she’d gotten pregnant she added that it was ‘all gone’; she’d had a ‘shmuhshmorshun’; she didn’t plan on telling Ari about it. The first time I sat on the threadbare couch in Ari’s putrid frat-house bedroom, we sang Weezer songs for half an hour until he put his hand on my leg. The first time we went to Seattle I threw up on the couch in the Hotel Monaco lobby, on the realtor, and on the principal of the elementary school we were visiting. The first time I drank enough to stop seeing or speaking or knowing anything I threw up on my bed in a house that the realtor hadn’t even shown us when we visited ten years earlier. The first time I drank coffee it was indisputably a small iced with cream from the Dunkin’ Donuts in Coolidge Corner, on the same day that Natalie and I stood in a Kabloom flower shop for ten minutes because they had the best air conditioning. The first time I saw Natalie after we moved she only talked about other people and how terrible of a singer her boyfriend, Tyrone, was. The first time I tried to do laundry after I moved in to college I hyperventilated in the street because I was sweating and I had forgotten to buy detergent. The first time I had sex I put a blanket down but the next time I didn’t and I washed my quilt but the stains wouldn’t come out so I flipped it over when my parents visited the weekend after. The first time I realized my parents were other people’s chil-

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dren was actually two times; first with my mom in August 2014 and then with my dad in February 2016. The first time I saw Anika act was in an August Wilson monologue competition and it was the most serious I’ve ever seen her.

The first time I competed in a story slam I won. The last time I told the story about you and me I only told the bad parts.

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Expulsion

by SPERANZA ORLANDO

Incarnation cosily nestled in old lodging, Where golden sunset cast upon Pendulum still dully oscillating, Declining the yoking, To rusty plough foregone In a trance I found myself twirling, Frivolous as a witch, crushing the oblivious longing, shattering, Shaking with cackling!

Surely I was born, proficient in forgetting And by forgetfulness the present reborn

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2001: A Space Odyssey Explored - Part 1

by JOSHUA R. RHINIER ‘Can I get that without the onion?’ he asked.

‘Sure thing,’ she said, ‘and what can I get for you?’

‘Oh, nothing for me please,’ Barb said, ‘I’ll just take tea with lemon.’

‘Okay, I’ll be back with your tea,’ said the waitress. Barb had grey hair and was twenty-seven years old. Her back was arched and face wrinkled; she always claimed the senior discount. Mike was 19 and often assumed to be Barb’s grandson. In reality, they were lovers. Barb had the same name as her grandmother, Barbra Gwendolyn Byard, and was able to collect her deceased grandmother’s social security checks because of a filing mishap. Mike worked at the county’s road commission as a mechanic. They would come to this diner every Sunday morning and have breakfast.

‘Barb,’ said Mike as he stood up, ‘will you marry me?’

‘No, now sit down.’ Mike sat as the waitress waddled over with a cup of tea and a bowl of lemons. Mike was crying.

‘Oh, honey,’ the waitress said, ‘is there anything I can help you with?’

‘He’s fine,’ said Barb ‘could I get more lemons?’

‘No, I’m sorry, we just ran out,’ said the waitress. Barb stood up sharply and struck the waitress across the face. The waitress picked up the tea and threw it at Barb’s chest causing her breasts to swell. Mike, still crying, rushed to his feet and stood between the two women. The waitress turned and headed towards the kitchen.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. He went to embrace her, but her chest had swollen too much and he couldn’t reach around her. When they sat back down into 20

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their booth, her breasts expanded to cover most of the table; her blouse likewise grew. It was light blue with an intricate white flower pattern. The table creaked as the weight increased. Within seconds of sitting down, her breasts had expanded all the way across the table and began suffocating Mike. He was still crying; his tears increased her breasts’ rate of expansion. Barb tried standing, to allow her lover breath, but she was wedged, so much so that her back was forced into the booth crushing her lungs. After a minute, both Mike and Barb had stopped moving, dead. The table shattered.

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Five Poems FEATURED: CHRISTODOULOS MAKRIS a record producer who worked with the Beatles... a record producer who worked with the Beatles once said that exclamation mark was a typo. it was meant to be a question mark. even my phone is annoyed textures intrigue me the detritus from under my bed given to me when I was a kid, circa 1968 playing with soldiers or dressing up not aware of what inspiration is but images of changed thinking as agent provocateur, celebrator of the outrageous, pornographer some examples: say, Early David Lynch films about borders (for refugees and others ; I live near Washington, DC, where we just had 25’’ of snow the bottom of my garden is a mess. broken plant pots, bits of foliage and a gnome in serious need of repair probably quite a relief if the warehouse mysteriously burns down an era of rejuvenated classicism will emerge from the ruins sonorous and Wagnerian and, God (prefeably an Abrahamic one) forbid, nothing involving jazz, long hair and short skirts

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in addition I-Banker poster art. rather have a Farrah Fawcett from the 70’s rather than quality or thought daddy forgot to transfer the money to the account and you have to text him about it AGAIN someone stepped on a cat a visionary sharp curator from the younger generation with international credentials isn’t that something of the “it’s hip to be square” category?

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Philip Glass was a taxi driver...

Philip Glass was a taxi driver, Richard Serra had a moving company I would be as happy if I could write as well as Stevenson than if I could write as well as Joyce I like to pontificate on art threads but the truth is I don’t know much about it the stifling and knowing sense of cynicism the whole installation thing feels played out Apple’s ‘1984’ TV advert during the 1984 Superbowl was directed by Ridley Scott / in the 90s they co-opted the imagery of Einstein, Lennon, Dylan, Kermit the Frog and Picasso / all of this predates social media “street art” retains the anti-corporate aesthetic, unfortunately it has been turned into a brand of it’s own it wasn’t just graffiti, it was posting artworks to random addresses or inserting drawings into library books

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the tabloids chose immigrants... the tabloids chose immigrants alien backward and repressive traditions consume welfare none of these reasons connected to racism xenophobia or bigotry there are dozens ruses instant lottery win them are asylum seekers who are not allowed work anyway fake ID stolen identities name expats hardly known for language skills and desire to integrate abroad good word play a criminal and seeing as he was not born in this country an immigrant which causes cognitive dissonance particularly certain news media for example Mail and Express you having a laugh and willing to put cold hard cash down many don’t coming from the poorer parts of Romania or Slovakia the system needs what colours are people thinking when they complain who not contributed via income tax insurance is not unlike the rise of the pre war brown shirts the foaming rabble with logic I sometimes like to go to the pub through a sense of solidarity with our fellow countrymen debate the average unemployed person could only dream of a student wanted to stop being Muslim since his property has been stolen his family and his life on one of those multi-axis charts and still feel entitled 3rd world basket case tired and fallacious pensioners on the Costa del Sol speak

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mother I’d like to tell you a story when human lives are cared for looking at their ethnicity adopt local traditions with roofers plumbers electricians etc cash in hand and self employed unlucky for them it’s in the text a few women who can speak Urdu you might want playing some kind of demented left-wing game of Scrabble entirely anecdotal an immigrant who has been here for 48 years sorry typos

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I’m just relieved...

I’m just relieved I’ve finally found something that rhymes with orange only if you’re French ‘Blorenge’, the Welsh mountain, is another matter having never heard her name spoken aloud I’ve been calling her “soh-lan-jee” in my head

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the theme is... the theme is : being ignored there’s a digital barrier those who address strangers as “my friend” enjoyed seeing Don Draper in another role everything he writes in a world where just looking at someone can bring up their personal info involves a constant steam sniffy comments fed straight to his brain how cruel trapped in a supermarket with that bloody Wizzard song playing in a loop leading to the girl dying in the blizzard to my mind you’ve “won” and the writer lost if you spot the twist why would anyone accept a few vague details about a pork pie also who puts the toast in?

You’re obsessing over the personal. Step back; Stop following me. Thanks Not sure how you can spin a multi-racial relationship in a negative way between us - it didn’t start or end it was just mixed so that it literally went on and on

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Taxi 174 taking me home

by HANA EFENDIC

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On Your Drive to Dexter St.

by DANIEL HOJNACKI

You Remember…

shrink with age, he’d lived to see the borders of Poland be divided and divested, a broken wishbone of a nation.

didn’t. ability to work was freedom from it.

Muhammad Ali in his prime: ‘If I catch ‘im, he go down.’

the radio towers till the Nazis came. That he said this was all any of us could have done. ry, but that when you grew old, someone would partition your possibilities.

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You Don’t Remember…

keys to let you leave this strange house.

begged her and told her you’d pay her all you could.

four decades.

her name.

swallow the green tablet she gave you with your tea. And that someone ought to give you an award for your performance.

in.

watching a movie you thought you’d seen before, something about Welsh coal miners with a question for a title.

ring finger and wondered where her husband was.

taped to the inside of it that read ‘THIS IS HOME’.

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You Think About‌

of Chopin’s military polonaise.

the slightest link to anything you could mistake for home.

had a question mark at the end.

him any minute now.

mile you drive.

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Lacunae

by SEAN PIERSON

Galápagos goats warm one another with their nostril-tinged breath to the nautical unbelief of amateur translators. You apprise me of a pretense among these folks that which neatly explains the unexpected effect of the ebb. I resound with a list of appraisals as a flung amoeba of goat-snot settles unnoticed from somewhere above on the lapel of my coat. You read every third line of instruction and still manage a soufflé sublime.

I read every name-painted-over on the side of this arching boat but a rapt mollusk obscures every few.

My soufflé emerges burnt.

Orange glowering, clementine like that which conceals the kitsch

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of our house-bowl, careens from the edge of the sea and masks the mien of each and every goat.

You tell me it reminds you of my imprecise hand preparing breakfast as we descend to the bowels of what will become our house-boat.

Amid the humidifying sticky gloop au gratin of truistic and rapturous air, we approach the wolf-less Wolf island, as you’d say, later your lacunae fills our cabin.

My Kubrick is canon and your eyes widen enough to break the lagoon like those of an absent-minded canine upon recognizing the hiss of a cat or autumn as transient, but a dilate is met with a dilettante and your arid October lids soon fall shut again. It is our present function to make clear, or replace one for the other, but instead you expunge our setting in present and indefatigably call this sea ours ours to break, Galápagos lagoon sun-less in a moment, your hair in a self-constructed “limpet-like shell” breathing and excreting all over itself not

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unlike the feral mistranslated billies.

Single waves sway these holidays and our foolhardy goats feign felinity but do not come close enough to a pounce. Our boat with a thousand faces was an Irish skiff. Your propriety over a goat’s mane was more aimless than my romance with Ponce. And my shoreline in the morning, rife in displaced gravel, belied by the underbelly of the calcium-rich cephalopod, opens, for the last time, to the immobility of your toes with the goats watching on the ovens clicking off the tide self-shedding and my coat still, indelibly stained.

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W/O All of My Friends

by SEAN PIERSON

the position tonight calls itself to remote I’ll be prescient for you I’ll tell you what’s inside {heron-cries, our insides, Seed Moons} while parapets sink in prone limbic fields I’ll feel.

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you gorged yourself with Ipomoea alba, I lost count I father three daughters gloam whom I have named without with withal you/you live in marks my daughters live now & then, but always in light.

a recurring anomic aphasia re: your palindrome I dreamt you, not you, but your self in the desire of a blind man with sinking skin like that of a coming nom de plume, half of you.

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The Songman

by ALICE JORGENSEN

Once there was a man who wrote a song so powerful it came to life and moved into his house. He was proud of its success: it won awards and earned money which it shared with him. However, unfortunately it was very promiscuous and kept bringing home women. He would meet them in the kitchen in the morning, looking dazed and eating his cornflakes. He worried that his song was better in bed than he was, and also he felt grumpy at constantly running out of cornflakes. To make matters worse, the song resembled him physically and they were often confused with each other. The world was suddenly full of people convinced he had had deep, tender conversations with them. He took to hugging absolutely everyone he met in order not to risk offence. He could only wonder how the song coped when his own friends assumed it could talk to them about Monty Python or graphic novels.

One day, on a third successive morning of breakfasting on the gritty bits from the bottom of Kelloggs packets, something inside him snapped. He was starting to find his song’s company annoying in any case; though intelligent and cultured by the standards of a song, its range of interests was inevitably limited.

‘This must stop!’ he exclaimed aloud, jerking the lady sitting opposite from her happy reverie. He leapt (still in his dressing gown) into his car, drove to the house of a fellow-musician, and pleaded with him to arrange the kind of cover version that would replace the original and take the song off his hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ said his friend, with pity in his eyes. ‘Even if I were capable of it, it’s far too soon for that to be possible. Your song is too young and strong and - you must face facts - it gets around.’

He nodded sadly. It did. ‘What can I do?’

‘Well, when absolutely everyone who might hear it is sick of it, it will naturally die.’

‘It mostly meets people on the internet. How many internet users are there?’

‘About three-and-a-half billion.’

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‘Oh.’ ‘Another possibility is to create another song to be its faithful partner, and then there would be fewer people trying to share the cereal.’

‘That’s not how it works for that song, I’m afraid.’

‘Sorry I couldn’t be more help. And thanks for the hot, passionate remix I had with your song on Wednesday.’

The songwriter drove home feeling even gloomier than when he’d set out.

He knew it was no good trying to expostulate with the song itself; he’d tried that before and the song had sympathetically taken his hand and assured him it felt his pain. And of course it did feel his pain - it knew his lingering insecurities, past rejections, and continuing need for love - but it totally failed to understand how much he wanted, just occasionally, the privacy to hang around in his underpants playing Street Fighter 2. He had to accept that it wasn’t going to leave, die, or become any less amorous any time soon. If one of the two of them was to move on, it would have to be him.

He began to spend long periods of time away from home. Increasingly he allowed the song to stand in for him in interviews and on social media. The song had romantically long, tousled hair, so he cut his short. At first, as he travelled around looking for ideas, the song kept popping up to join him, distracting him from the newer music he was trying to make, but this happened less and less as time went on. It never became safe to stop hugging everyone.

From afar, he followed his song’s progress. As time passed, to his surprise and amusement, it began to take on a public role. It was regarded as a national treasure and a source of common pride, and sent to foreign countries as a representative. It was consulted for its perspective on marital harmony, gender stereotypes, and even grammar. It travelled more widely than he did. He was happy that it seemed to be doing some good, and happier that he could leave it to get on with it. However, he was not permitted to remain thus detached. One day he got a rather serious phone-call.

It was an important person from the diplomatic service, urgently requiring his presence. His song had caused what could escalate into an international incident: at a trade summit of great delicacy, it had been accused by the Americans of radicalism, by the Chinese of reactionism, and by the Russian Prime Minister 39

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of seducing his wife. The songwriter was hurriedly flown to the venue (in Cairo) and told he was to attend a banquet at which he would mend all the terrible damage done by his song. As he waited outside the vast, becrystalled banqueting hall, straightening his bow tie, an attaché rapidly briefed him.

‘Don’t mention renewable energy, feminism, religion, the public sector, copyright law, healthcare, national sovereignty, any country you’ve been to that’s notably capitalist or communist, coral bleaching, or the role of the arts. And try not to look attractive.’

Taking a deep breath, the songwriter did his absolute best. Trying to be as charming and yet unsexy as possible, he talked for ninety minutes about technical specifications of microphones. Everyone was delighted with him and world peace ensued.

After this the songwriter flew home. He was exhausted from his ordeal, but he realised that he needed to take control, once for all, of his song. It was many months since he had seen his house, and he found it amazingly full of people.

Not only were there a very large number of women, some of whom looked vaguely familiar, there were also quite a lot of men, all with a noticeable family resemblance to each other. He realised that these were more of his songs, brought to life by the power of enthusiasm directed at them - romantic songs, but also funny songs, odd songs, long songs, loud songs, complicated songs, and songs about the difficulties of songwriting. Around their feet assorted infants crawled, played, or merely whined irritatingly - all the little works of fan art, of extremely variable merit, born of his music. And at the centre was the song that had started it all, looking handsome, sad, guilty, wanting his forgiveness and his love. How could he not love it? It was, after all, only a song. Nonetheless he walked over and punched it on the nose.

I would like to say that after this the songwriter lived happily ever after in the midst of this free-loving musical commune. However, he wanted to work on new material and it was all a bit much. So he got in a manager to keep his songs in line.

And then he changed his name, had plastic surgery, and moved to Thailand.

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daydreamer

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

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sexy unknown

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

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DART

by MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY

Love to stand between the carriages One foot in front one behind Not held ladysherseq\chuhs-usingle groundIt sends kisses you bite back One foot in front one behind

Not holding anything now but gauging the grou It sends kisses 184 his shill between the car

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CONTRIBUTORS HANA EFENDIC Hana Efendic is 17, has an obsession with taking sky pics, and is currently in first year at Trinity. She is half-Irish/half-Bosnian and goes back to Sarajevo every summer, crying with delight! She loves it so much! She’s written a YA novel called Nia and is a member of the Virginia House Writers in Dublin.

MADEE EHRENBERG Madee Ehrenberg is a visiting student from Columbia University. She is still working on the dd/mm/yyyy format for writing the date. Her favourite things are running, reading books, and employing tricolon crescendo. She takes her coffee black and does her own laundry. Please enjoy the words that she wrote down.

DANIEL HOJNACKI Daniel Hojnacki, 20, is a third-year visiting student from Toledo, Ohio. Back in the states, he attends Kenyon College, where he studies English, creative writing, and the Russian language. He currently resides in Rathmines, where he continues his hobbies of prize-fighting, mountain-climbing, faith-healing, spiritsummoning, and self-mythologizing.

ALICE JORGENSEN Alice Jorgensen lectures on Old and Middle English literature in the School of English, TCD. She has recently begun to write short fiction, some of it serious, some of it less serious. She is frequently inspired by music.

SPERANZA ORLANDO Speranza Orlando is the nom de plume of Xun Liu, a PhD candidate based in the Trinity Asian Studies Centre researching on 14th-18th century Chinese Classical Literature and cultural/historical linguistics. Completing an MPhil course in comparative literature in Trinity College has endowed Xun with wide literary and cultural interests. Xun is also interested in photography and fine arts.

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CONTRIBUTORS FEATURED: CHRISTODOULOS MAKRIS Christodoulos Makris is “one of Ireland’s leading contemporary explorers of experimental poetics” (RTÉ Poetry Programme). His most recent book The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press, 2015) was chosen as a poetry book of the year by RTÉ Arena and 3:AM Magazine. He is co-curator of Dublin’s multidisciplinary series of events Phonica, and the poetry editor of gorse.

EVA O’BRIEN Eva O’ Brien is a Junior Sophister student. She studies maths and English literature and dreams of being a farmer who writes and makes art in her spare time.

She is a regular contributor to Trinity News.

MOLLY-MAY O’LEARY Molly is a fourth-year philosophy student of Trinity College.

SEAN PIERSON Sean Pierson is a first year student of English and philosophy. He is from Massachusetts.

JOSHUA R. RHINIER Joshua R. Rhinier is a current third-year at Johns Hopkins University in the English and political science departments, studying for a term at Trinity. When not in Baltimore, Maryland for college, he lives in a very rural part of northern Michigan where he does work as a mechanic.

NATHANAËL ROMAN Nathanaël Roman resides at a cluttered desk on a countryside main street. On the third floor of a building facing away from the coast so as not to give him any ideas.

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CONTRIBUTORS / EDITORS ED SALLEY Ed Salley is a fourth year student of English. One third of Twitter handle @jakelatent.

MAURICE SCULLY Ex-editor of Icarus (mid-70’s) Maurice Scully was born in Dublin in 1952, studied Irish & English at Trinity, editor The Beau magazine, Beau Press & Beau Events early 80’s, Coelacanth Press & Coelacanth Reading Series mid-80’s (with emphasis on UK avant-garde writers), he has published over a dozen books, mainly with innovative presses like Wild Honey, Galloping Dog, Reality Street, Etruscan Books & Shearsman. A CD, Mouthpuller, appeared with Randolph Healy in 2000. An e-chapbook from Smithereens Press has just appeared.

Editor: LEO DUNSKER Leo Dunsker is a fourth-year student in the School of English at Trinity. He is also a Chair of the DU Metaphysical Society and the rector of Cave Writings.

He was born and raised in upstate New York.

Editor: WILL FLEMING Will Fleming is a fourth-year student of English and philosophy. His poetry has appeared in Icarus, Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, and The Quill. He is from Wicklow.

Deputy Editor & Archivist: ÉABHA JONES Éabha Jones is a fourth-year student of philosophy and English. She comes from Waterford.

Public Relations Officer: GILLIAN MURTAGH Gillian Murtagh is a fourth-year student of English. She is also editor of Radius in The University Times. She is from Dublin.

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