I C A R U S MAGAZINE
VOL LXXV | ISSUE II | MMXXV © Trinity Publications 2025
LOUISE NORRIS
F O R E W O R D
Many yonks ago, Louise harboured a deep, visceral fear of buttons. Shell, white, wooden, metal, pink, flower-shaped — they were just NO GOOD. No amount of cajoling or insistence or bribing or convincing made a dent. To Louise, the buttons were NO GOOD; to the buttons, Louise was NO GOOD. So, her mother set to work and happily (begrudgingly) cut the buttons off all of her clothes and sewed poppers on in their stead. It was long, arduous work. It was necessary work. Louise is happy to say that, after many years and many talks, a quiet peace with the buttons has been reached (the really thin, shell-y buttons still give her the heebie jeebies).
Cat too has had her fair share of nonsensical fears (the smell of oranges has long made her shudder). She also had to face the fundamental challenge of how she was to live in the world. Her tendency was to live in extremes, oscillating between excessive self-denial and extravagant recklessness (what is one to do with all this life?). Having exhausted all other avenues, she came around to the idea of balance and now happily (begrudgingly) lives life according to this simple philosophy.
Cat and Lou would say they know one another fairly well at this point. Lou knows Cat has a real penchant for the imagery of someone’s head buried in the crook of a neck; Cat knows Lou has a soft spot for wastelands — something Lou did not even realise herself. Your art helps us to know each other, and to know ourselves, too; the events of our pasts, how we feel in the present, our private hopes for the future.
This issue of Icarus is going through growing pains. The first part tells of things that we forgot we could hear. Sunlight streams overhead as smiles that can be heard go careening over cow-field fences. The second section takes us Elsewhere. Here, we are thrown around on the tube, turned to dust, and spat out again. All that is left to do is give up and lay down. The gaps between our fingers allow things to enter. To eat from the stove is all that we need. The years pass, and we let them.
Until next time,
Cat & Lou.
Lauren Foley
Suzanne Scanlon
Walk into dusk on your way to Summer Sun acquiescing to a northern breeze, We fall into it like sand.
By midnight the church bells all are drunk, Winding down to the cafe, bricks trembling beneath the soles of my feet where long bodies careen between wall and water, laughter mixing with dark.
We linger with a feeling. Utrecht’s canals twist and sigh under the wit of the moon.
A wriggling fish, a skinny black cat, a woman with a pipe. I asked once and she said, the night is the interior of a pearl.
People are split into here/there I live now/then, in my mind’s eye. Summer reaches for us, Insects wail. Trees glance inwards. Thus, the season builds.
Solstice by Arabella Ware
Being Bigger by Lily Hearne
Their aunt collected them at that time of day when the sun becomes a slit in the sky, and falls in slats across the west side of the island. They had come straight from school, dropped at the ferry still towing their schoolbags. Their aunt kissed them both on top of their downy heads, tossed the bags into the boot, told them to buckle up, and then sped off towards the house. She drove with all the windows open, fast, and even though it was a warm day the wind inside the car felt cold. It made their aunt’s scarf fly back in her face and briefly cover her eyes and Cathy’s heart leapt into her throat, in case her aunt couldn’t see and all three of them would go tumbling down the steep grassy bank next to the road, tumbling down to the shore and to the sea. But their aunt just unwound the scarf and threw it down beside her. Cathy sat back in her seat, anxiousness appeased.
The scarf was green with purple flowers, and made of silk. Michael liked the feel of silk, like his Mammy’s nightdress. He knew his aunt’s scarf was silk because he felt it when she leant down to kiss him. It was like a second skin, all soft. The feel of the silk made him lonely for his Mammy, and he was wondering how he could get a hold of that scarf, just to feel it a little, just to put it up against his cheek.
Cathy was quiet and looking away from him, out the window. Earlier shehad hit him hard and fast across the cheek, and though the hurt had faded his cheeks stung when he looked at her, grew red and heavy with the desire to hit her back. But she was bigger, and anytime he hit her she just hit him back harder. She didn’t cry when she said goodbye to Mammy earlier, but he had. He kept crying and crying while they were on the ferry over, and it was then that she had slapped him.
“Just shut up,” she said.
This made the sobs rise like angry, violent hammers in his throat, but he swallowed them back down, dried his eyes, and went out to look at the water with her. There were jellyfish, the blobbing purple kind, just below
the surface. His cheek still stung but he didn’t say anything. Together they counted the jellyfish. Cathy was moving too fast for him, seeing more than he could, always a number ahead. He mumbled until they landed on the same number, and then he said it out loud and she nodded. He couldn’t even feel the pain in his cheek anyway.
Their aunt was older than their Mammy. Michael wondered if it was the same for them as it was with Cathy. If Mammy, when she was big enough, hit her aunt back and that’s when her aunt stopped hitting her, because it hurt them both too much. Or maybe, because they were both girls, nobody hit anybody. Except that didn’t figure either, because it was Cathy who hit him and not the other way around.
Their aunt had made spaghetti, and gave it to them in big adult bowls.
“This is too much for us,” Cathy said.
Their aunt shrugged. “Just eat as much as you want and stop when you’re full.”
Cathy turned to Michael. “Only eat until you’re full and then stop. Ok?”
Michael blinked into his spaghetti.
“Ok?” Cathy repeated sharply.
He nodded, and then ate until the bowl was cleaned up, licked inside and around the edges, not a bit of it escaping him.
Cathy looked at him hard. “You’ll be sick now.”
Michael slipped from his chair, brought his bowl to the sink, then disappeared into the sitting room. Their aunt was on a call in the kitchen. She was holding the phone up to her ear with one hand, and pouring a glass of wine with the other, spinning the bottle up when finished and corking it. Cathy sat at the table and kicked her legs. Her spaghetti had gone cold. She
did not want anymore anyway.
From their bedroom you could hear the sea. It came up and up, over and over again. The spaghetti rumbled around Michael’s belly and made him feel queasy. Cathy was listening to the chugging of the sea and feeling something she did not know how to name.
“Stop sulking,” their aunt said in the morning. They sat, stirring soggy cornflakes into milk, which Michael knew he would not be able to eat. He burped and tasted spaghetti.
“Outside. It’s a lovely day.”
Cathy slunk off the chair and Michael followed her.
“When are we going home?” Michael asked. His foot knocked against a pebble, kicking it up the road.
“I don’t know. Soon.”
“Ya but when?”
Cathy didn’t know what to say. She kicked the stone too.
“I guess this way?” Cathy pointed further up the road.
Michael walked close behind. He nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him, so said ok quickly.
They clung to the grass by the road, which was long and dewy, and made their socks wet and itchy. The sun was coming up and stretching across them, but their shadows were still small and almost square in their smallness.
“We should have put sun cream on,” Cathy said.
Michael was watching the cows in the field beside them. They were brown mostly, with yellow tags in their ears and pink, snuffling noses.
“We go in?” he asked.
Cathy looked over, shrugged. “Ok.”
They walked on further until they reached the gate, which was metal and rusting. Once, when their Mammy had been here too, last summer or the one before, Cathy couldn’t remember, they had sat up on top of the gate and Mammy swung it hard and fast, telling them to hold on. Michael hadn’t liked it but Cathy had, the way her belly rose up and away from her, like flying must be.
The cows were quiet, and swishing their tails back and forth. Cathy clambered over the gate, but Michael was still small enough to slide through the lower bars. She jumped down and the ground met her ankles hard and sharp. She shook one and then the other, then set off after Michael who was already walking up the field. But her ankle was sore, sorer than it should be, and the going was slow. She kept having to stop and rub it for a minute, leaning down into the grass. The field was hilly, and Michael was going up one of the little rumps now, his feet dragging. The cows weren’t paying them any attention, but Cathy’s ankle was so sore that it was becoming hard to walk, and Michael was too far away to call out to now, and tell him.
“Michael,” she tried. “Michael!”
Up the field, Michael heard her and turned around. She was standing on one leg, like a flamingo.
“Come back!” her voice only just reaching him.
She looked small there, balancing on one leg, and surrounded by all the cows.
“You’re like a flamingo!” Michael called back to her, and then he turned and
Cathy watched his little form totter up and over the hill and used a word she heard her Mammy say sometimes when she was angry. Saying the word out loud made her even angrier, and she called roughly after Michael again.
“Michael! Michael, come back now!”
Her voice was too loud then even to her ears, and she felt like there was a frog or something in her chest, hopping around and making her voice louder, and sound more scared than she really was. She could see and feel the cows too near to her. The frog was banging around so much inside her chest that it was getting sore, and she couldn’t see Michael at all now, and the one leg she was standing on was aching and sore, and her hurt ankle beginning to pound, and she kept calling him and shouting, and now the cows were beginning to take interest in her, and one was meandering over towards her, and the frog was inside her mouth now, and she put down her hurt ankle hard and quickly and began to stumble after Michael, calling his name, and feeling frightened.
When the bull did begin to run, it was not towards Cathy. Michael couldn’t hear Cathy anymore, he had gone too far. But then she rounded the little hill in the field, and saw the bull, saw the bull running towards Michael, towards Michael, who was her little brother.
“Michael!” she screamed. “Michael, the bull, the bull Michael!”
When Michael saw the bull he went quick and cold all over and did not know which way to run. And it was coming so quick and so fast that he thought he was screaming but he wasn’t sure either.
Michael was near the stone wall, where, if you stood on top of it, you could see the whole island. And the field was shortening, and he could make it, he was so near now, so near the wall, just get up and over it, so near, near, near, near – the sky was coming down to meet him, and the bull was so loud it was like it was screaming too, and the other cows startled into flight, and were running away towards the side of the field with the road – and he was so near now! His hands clasped the stones, and his feet jammed into the
wall, enough to lift himself up and over, and the bull pounded into the wall just as he was on top of it, and made him fall off, into the ditch on the other side, where the field was empty.
The bull did not see Cathy, who was hobbling quickly now to the side of the field, where, once in, she would be able to get to the next one, where Michael was. And as she went she could hear him crying, she could hear him crying, and began to cry too, crying and calling out to him. She got to the side of the field and swung up and over it, and then up and into the next field where Michael was lying and sobbing.
The bull was breathing heavy on the other side of the wall. Down the field lay the rest of the island, all spread out before them, and the sun was catching the sea and glistening, catching her eye and making it fill up with water.
The farmer was down the other side of the field.
“Stop crying,” Cathy said. “He’ll get us into trouble. Pretend we weren’t in there.”
Michael, dribbling snot and tears salty into his mouth, wiped his face.
They got up, walked the length of the wall of the field, then back out onto the road.
Cathy pulled him into her for a minute. “That was scary. Are you ok?”
Michael nodded against her. But her cardigan was rough and scratched his cheek. It was not like the silk his Mammy wore. He began to cry again, and Cathy pushed him roughly from her.
They started back up the road, silent.
The Cartwheel Competition by Miranda Marks
Things That Happened. by Allison
Branch
Things that never happened, Creeping from the peripheral, A visage in a dream, That felt like a memory — Your mother's convinced you're on drugs.
Anointed with a gift, To never speak your mind, And always choke on truth, Win the war with altruism — They like you better that way.
Cogs that turn and turn and turn, Until they jam. And girls that laugh and laugh and laugh, Until they don't — Even now you laugh too much.
Things that never happened, Or, at least, You pretend they never did.
Slip and fall into a sense of purpose
Rolling in the grass
On the back of the flying tortoise
You were five back then
Now falling ass first in toilets
Your talk has become picket fences
It’s all so pointy
But by the vomit bathtub
A vision of youth appears
Kitchen tiles and
Things you forgot you could hear
Your mother’s smile
And the cookies she’s just prepared
Who will hold your hair back now,
You walking bottle of detergent?
Can’t clean out your tone
With your circle of cackling servants
It never ends in whimpers,
It never ends at all
Slip and fall again,
But this time your position not sorted
Now everything, it seems, Has gone completely disjointed
Disjointed
by
Conor Ennis
Calidez by Caden Elsesser
by Harry N.
Softening molars that cut into these cheeks.
Invoking the overwhelming uncertainty of things. Our funny way of crystallising youth.
Shame pooling in collarbones, cantillating We are disillusioned things. Embodying the seventh sin - groomed into detachment. Stuffing our faces, mumbling out our virtuosity.
As we coat marble in drool.
Marble
Dust_3
by Arabella Ware
I lost track of all the things that make up me while he lay picking at the scabs on my elbows. Dayglow gushing atmosphere into a room where we sink in warm blue noon. Warm, blue, noon. And he is Turning me over like an old coin.
Superimposed on the sheets I gait I amble I ramble towards some elongated perspective Blinking into the light until I am Elsewhere Again, A place like farm country.
Where between inflections of long talk, My mind falls between a dribble of whispers time curling into the slow fizzle of winter Beneath this dome I walk, and language undulates.
Sulk in my step seeking rhythm until I’ve grasped it, – Leaves frozen mid-air from a tree bent west - all the breath knocked out of it. the guts of an osage orange spilling into dry creek bed you are dust and you will return to dust... fine enough to smoke.
Bodies of focused light we are
Drawing away in long conversations, lingering then slipping through gaps in the clouds.
Jubilee Line in August by
Moya Noctor
Life moves quickly in the city, but it slows sometimes underground. Sardines on the Jubilee Line, just how things used to be, Only now I am slick skinned and avoiding armpits. These hot, sweaty molecules between everyone connects us, And you and I are close enough to kiss.
I’ve only known loving you in winter’s light, But things are different now and you are the sun. I mentally record how you sway with each surge, How every twist and turn of the tube is reflected in my insides. I document everything.
Foods I’ve eaten and refrained from, bookshops I’ve visited, bridges I’ve crossed, places I’ve kissed people, places I’ve not.
I see you the same way I see the lights from Sydenham Rise, The same way I see wisteria, sun-raptured stained glass. Which is to say I see you, and this is important. Now we are slowing into Waterloo and when we come up for air, Life will resume its sonic pace. The screech of a bonesaw, a final moment of stillness. You lean in and I decide I am see-through.
Through the Looking Glass by Maggie Kelly
Riptorn by Loretta Farrell
An insipid buzzing; the whir of a lawnmower, hushed mechanical crescendo, pitterpatter soft across grass down and the blue sky peering knowingly over cracked-up concrete and this is November. Taptaptap of the water faucet. The pipes are compressing; the floorboards, cold pine underfoot. Icehouse.
The other week a girl died at a sadwesternfolk show in the basement of that club on the river. We watched them carry her out, our little Moses, tiny and frail and all in black; you could not tell at that point was she alive or not, you just had to assume. The big doors slammed shut and the band started again, they picked right back up in the same place, the show must go on, and we could not hear the ambulances, which there must have been, probably twenty or so, she was a small girl but very dead they said later. But we could not hear the ambulances over the angelwails of the guitars and that sharp drumbeat staccato, tutututut, through the wavy blue lights, and we danced like spectres until all else was forgot.
Omens: fishheads litter sidewalks and pigeons swoop through airport baggage claims and land to roost in the beehive hairdos of old suitcased ladies fresh off the plane from Elsewhere. Leaves fall in spiral patterns and diamond patterns and circles and squares; leaves fall until the trees are barenaked, say it barenekkid like the grandmother who you have not heard from since politics, until the trunks are skinnyshy and begging for a scarf. Omens: the afternoon sun is cold and sharp and cuts across countertop jamjars and interstate highways. The rabbits are stashed away for the winter and the bird family is gone from the porch; just a nest now, sadwdusty and lonesome up on the chipped green beam. We do not take it down; they might come back, we say in our secret hoping hearts, any day now they might return.
Autumn goes to the ravens. The telephone rings off the hook. I practice with clichés and watch pigeons spar for breadcrumbs in the courtyard. Birthday-party smell of matches in the air and the cold winter light cutting corners off the marble and the windowsill is the most beautiful thing to ever
exist, better than the Parthenon. I slipside across rain-wet streets towards home and wait, tracing hearts in the window fog, until velvet sky fades to bluedust morning and I can wrap it in grosgrain and give it to you.
Dream After Watching Alien (1979) by
Kristiana Filipov
The air in that room was bitter like the taste of lemon peel left too long in the drink. But there we were, and I could only stroke your downy arm in fantasy of escape. A sickly creature-shape emerged from my lips bruised and mottle-edged.
Membrane-skinned, so fragile it could break With the slightest pressure, but maybe it looked like stone to you, Rough camouflaging the anxious underbelly
So you ran your hand along the knots of my shoulder bone and stayed silent
As the bloom of your chest pressed against my cheek, pulsing Heart beat up through your skin like some mechanical Beast I feared would pounce at any moment.
Or perhaps you considered that word-beast, Watched the afterbirth I could still taste, rancid in my mouth, and decided That it was better left unexamined.
A bird fluttered in the bush outside, but neither of us heard it.
I paid the outstanding fee,1 listened to the broken2 record: and stars and stars and stars and stars and –
What else do we have left?3
There is not enough time to hear the end of the song.4
There is not enough space to let my hands5 break into the little gap that slips like butter through my fingertips.6
So I carved an enemy from the rock you left your mark on.
Remnants.
by Priya Evans
1 a pocketful of peace was all you had left to owe.
2 cracked in glorious agony, one more story you never told me.
3 the funeral was on a tuesday. the rain stopped to pay its respects at the little white chapel.
4 my doctor told me closure would make the – panic, pressure, pain – go away.
5 they haven’t stopped bleeding since last september.
6 this is the final act of violent treachery.
Good Soup by Giulia Vettore
Grief by Allison Branch
Centrifugal force—
A pulsing pleasure of life, And a practiced penitence, An infinite payment made to time.
Give up the argument, lay down—
And die of embarrassment, At the person who stares back, And the younger one to mourn.
Relinquish your conviction, Pray to your parents—
And eat your words with your fingers, Bloodied from scratching against the grain.
Saliva runs thicker than red, It chokes your swallow—
But you’ll spit out the words, And remember them verbatim.
How could you forget?
Childhood died in a field by Moya Noctor
It’s here I leave you, amidst the damp haze of a happening summer, With cheap wine and expectation on your breath. Ruminating while Stella reads the Bible in the next room, Filling the hall with whispered half-attempts at belief. Shamelessly, she stumbles through the Book of Genesis, Fumbling every other sentence like a talk show guest. You don’t believe in making sense of the nonsensical And thus, you have never read the Bible, Nor read aloud in your own kitchen, Nor in any other kitchen for that matter. What your silence will reward is unknown.
In the evening, your solemnity dissuades itself into dissolution, Barefoot on the balcony, counting gulls. From over roof tops arise the old haunts Like torches.
Night brushes your toes, Cranes touch twilight. You pluck from the skyline these aches that once felt so necessary, The steeples of Christ Church giving way to dorm rooms, Kitchens,
The lawn that chased the Dodder, New Cross.
The dark room, where you tossed in your cot, Watching the Child of Prague watch you. These losses you covet like an executioner, While Stella paints her face in the bathroom.
Another day of chasing sun, perhaps, Across the park down towards the river, Shaded by the stoop of taller, kinder shoulders, Gloved fingers and smiles rolling up your sleeves.
The whir of a hair dryer. Stella goes out.
Gentle, these years that have passed.
Lauren Foley
How To Care Label
by Lauren (daughter) & Patricia (mother) Foley
My bookcase is heavy with the weight of other people’s words. My mother was a seamstress before she got married; she never taught me how to sew.
‘Thread up machine with chosen colour.’
A word is a collection of letters: tumble together, pick apart, make neat. A book is a tree pulped and battered. This is how we birth them.
‘Fill bobbin with thread, place in machine.’
I was the result of four years of failed pregnancy attempts. There was a late miscarriage two years in.
The body was able. The body was not willing.
‘Lift up foot and place item to be seen under it.’
I was thinking of printing my manuscript, leaving it... for someone to happen upon and read, someone who does not owe me. Can pages unbound make an impact?
‘Lower foot down onto material and start sewing.’
I was ten days late following a difficult pregnancy... One which had her on bed rest at the outset –house calls and progesterone injections, following a slight bleed.
‘Be sure to bar tack start and finish to prevent it coming apart.’
Her cervix did not need suturing shut to keep me in there.
Nine days overdue, no movement, heartbeat dropped to sixty, a delivery in distress.
‘Lift up foot and remove article from machine.’
I have hundreds of books in my apartment but none that I have written, this is the overgrown sentiment surrounding the walls of my fallow domestic life I live with daily.
If all of the words in all of our worlds collided wouldtheytouchandpressor pull apart: – please separate – wash warm – don’t spin – do not treat harshly – line dry only – handle with care –
‘Continue with rest of article to be made.’
I crack two eggs into a Pyrex jug I put water into already, then threw it out so what remained was not even a teaspoon of water
One of the shells of the first egg dropped into the jug
I didn’t know whether to leave it there or fish it out
The shells are in the waste bin, they should be in the compost, I will probably remove them to the waste-heap later, or simply feel guilty all day
I will mix the eggs, dash them, whisk them, scramble them I will eat them with toast and butter
I will think about that one fallen shell, how cleanly it shattered, cracked in two; I will think about it forever
Cycle by Lauren Foley
Suzanne Scanlon
The Too-Much Plot by
Suzanne Scanlon
On life, love, death, and January. Or: Enough! when there's no such thing. Remember what Edgar told Lear: 'The worst is not, So long as we can say 'This is the worst."
I’ve wondered, since publishing my memoir, if I was done writing. Though I would not admit this for fear of sounding grandiose, I considered the book an Ars Poetica. I mean Ars Poetica in the sense I recently heard Nam Le discussing with David Naimon:
David Naimon: If we think of the original Ars Poetica, the poem written 2,000 years ago by Horace that gives advice to poets on writing poetry, I think most people still think of an ars poetica as poetry that reflects on one’s own relationship to the act of writing it.
Nam Le: . . . everything I’ve written has been an ars poetica. I feel as though on one level, and maybe this is self-serving, I believe that all serious art is or has an ars poetica aspect because it contends with and is honest about the conditions of its making and the madeness of its articulation. I guess there are various prisms through which I would refract the ways in which this particular book is an ars poetica. But I think one of the reasons why perhaps I’ve been bouncing around the different genres as I have is because I’m still looking for the form or a form that can articulate or approximate let’s say how it is for me to be in the world and to write about it, to be in my mind.
I recommend the entire conversation between Naimon and Le. I’ve recently taught Le’s short stories from The Boat and am now reading his outstanding new book: 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem.
In these terms Committed was indeed an Ars Poetica. It was about - if nothing else - the conditions of its making. It was about why I need to write, why writing became the way I live. And it was about - both explicitly and implicitly - the condition of writing, which is never simple or clear or consistent; it still amazes me that I did it. This book will kill me. Did you see that recent Nicole Kidman tv show where she’s a writer in Nantucket and
and she sits at her desk overlooking the ocean typing book after book? And she is always well dressed? And her wigs! Well. If you’ve ever written a book you know there is nothing more ridiculous than the way real generally shlumpy and abject writers are portrayed as characters on film (now I’m thinking about Julianne Moore in the recent Almodovar, The Room Next Door. I’ve never met a writer whose lipstick is always - ever - on point).
With Committed: I recall often sitting with pages - writing a chapter or a scene - spending a day or a week on a scene. I remember printing pages and carrying them with me. I remember being with my family whom I love and writing about a time when my life within that same family was intensely painful, and it was crucial that I get the truth of it down. Of that time. I remember most that the book was in my head and in my body 24/7 and I remember how the book became more important than anything else in my life, except my son. There were times - more than once - that I thought, This book will kill me. That is grandiose yes and I don’t care. The book felt like a bomb and writing it, getting it out felt dangerous and it was the most important thing in my life.
This book will kill me. I know I felt that and I will never regret that book or anything inside of it because those were the stakes that book required and nothing worth writing should be any less urgent. I am so tired of books or art with no stakes.
Committed has been in the world for nine months now. There is nothing better and stranger and more magical than hearing from readers who tell me what the book meant to them.
It is astonishing to me that I wrote a memoir revealing many quite ugly and shameful bits of my life story - the weird and misguided and bad decision makingness of it all - and that people - strangers! - write to me and say: This is my story, too! or I related to this completely! Or I needed this book.
People in academia tend to resist the idea of “relatability” - and by people in academia I mean me. I mean people who aspire to write literary fiction and have grown up and been trained to recognize this truth of art - the
miraculous - that art does not need to have anything to do with you or the conditions of your life or your life story - it does not need to be relatable at all - in order to move you, to reach you, to be great, transcendent art that makes you feel more alive than you ever were.
But I’ve long since stopped saying this to my students, who consider “relatable” the best compliment. Who am I to argue if they find James Baldwin’s essays relatable? Or Edward P Jones’ story The First Day” relatable? And if they say that Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage was “unputdownable” should I tell them that is a clunky made up Barnes and Noble kind of adjective, unworthy of someone with sophisticated aesthetic judgment?
PLOT: When I told a friend I was getting married at the end of 2024, he remarked upon how good the year had been for me. He said: You had a well-received book published, you got a nice teaching gig, some good writing gigs - and now you are getting married. It was scary to say yes but he was right. It was just after my book came out that the love of my lifewe have been together eight years - said Let’s get married. And so we would, and we did.
Nothing happens and then everything happens, all at once.
I spent a few months planning our small sweet wedding. I had this vague pain I was ignoring. A vague pain a note to my doctor through MyChart and planning our wedding - this was September.
Sept, I told my doctor about the pain - she was light and upbeat and said yes of course with your family history you worry but let’s get you in. What are the symptoms? You know like I have to pee a lot? But then don’t? A stomach ache. Maybe I get full quickly. A certain pain in my pelvis? I was reaching for the symptoms but each one was occasional and easily attributed elsewhere - i.e. pulling a muscle in yoga class. But yes yes sure she said, validated my concerns, never seemed worried or urgent. Why don’t you have a urinalysis first and then we will see. You might just have a UTI. Ok so that was the plan and so - back to teaching and wedding planning and
my son's college applications - and his soccer games - and all of sudden it was October - and I got the urinalysis. It was normal. That seemed like good news.
Even if the pain or vague possibly-a-symptom was there I also had my son’s 17 year old life to get on with - I will get back to you, symptom. You aren’t such a squeaky wheel anyway, symptom. It’s not like finding a lump in my breast - which I have! A few times.
Like most parents I feel or know that I will do anything for my son - I am aware he is nearing the end of the years where he lives with me. In eight months he will go to college. There have been times - a parenting Ars Poetica - when I have found myself thinking - being a mom is killing me and ok but so what that’s the deal you signed up for it - I will die for this kid, no problem, no questions asked. What’s next?
But it wasn’t the applications at all. And my part in that was nothing more than proofreading his (finished) essay.
October was all plot. First my dad lost his balance. At my son’s soccer senior night. A few days later, he fell. The next weeks and days were this, tending to dad, worried about dad. A few days after my dad fell, J’s dad fell at his home in New York. (I was back and forth to Aurora while he was back and forth to New York. That was October and November.) My sweet dad, my poor dad. We spent many many days in the terrible hospital in Aurora where he received inconsistent and frustrating medical care. He only got worse. I am summarizing now, but my little sister said it best: Every day he loses something. (A book I never read, but whose title I’ve adored: Life is About Losing Everything.) The losses: he can’t walk, he can’t eat, he can’t drink, he can’t swallow. There were treatments and the treatments didn’t work. In December he went to hospice. He decided to go to hospice, or so that is how it has to be, legally - CONSENT - but what is a choice when you have no choice. Fuck consent. (I just gave my students an essay by Chris Dennis in which he writes: There is no such thing as free will. And this is how I feel. Dennis is writing about McDonalds and I am writing about Hospice. A free standing hospice care center straight out of a
Joy Williams short story). My dad spent five days in Accent Care: a miserable place on the side of a highway, across from a 7:11, a gas station, and a Cracker Barrel. So this is it, we said. Settled in his room, off the feeding tubes, the IV, he assessed the place, looked around at us, and asked: “Now what am I supposed to do?”
But before Hospice, more PLOT: As planned, I married the love of my life on Dec 7th 2024 at the Arts Club of Chicago. I wore a blue dress. J and I made vows and if I could make them for ten lifetimes I would.
The night before we married, as we were walking into the rehearsal dinner, J received a call from the ICU in New Jersey, where his mother was a patient. His mother, the poet Madeline Tiger, had died. Should we cancel? I said. No, he said. We didn’t cancel.
The next day the wedding. My Dad could not attend, he was too sick; these were his last days. He sent an Irish blessing; he wrote a toast that began with the line,
“This is the saddest day of my life.”
He died on Dec 20th. J had just returned from New Jersey, where he and his siblings had gathered for the burial of his mother. We buried my dad on Dec. 28.
All that plot, and we made it to January.
The plot doesn’t stop, is the problem, and it is too much, I’m not sure how to be clear about it. I have to stop here for now. I can’t get it down without sounding excessive and besides the pacing is off. It’s all wrong.
ALLISON BRANCH is finally twenty and wondering: what if she just said exactly what she meant? No, really—what if?
CADEN ELSESSER does not like to cut carrots but loves to grate them.
CONOR ENNIS used to be tired but he isn't anymore.
PRIYA EVANS is a hopeful romantic.
LORETTA FARRELL spends most of her time trying to get bad jokes to land. Writer? You hardly even know her.
KRISTIANA FILIPOV has been having very vivid dreams. She is seeking Freud.
LILY HEARNE is turning herself inside out wondering what to say in this bio.
MAGGIE KELLY ’s art explores nudity, enamourment, and a touch of melancholy (she hopes her actual personality consists of more than that). She is a psych student (which possibly makes sense…) and loves to paint as a pastime.
MIRANDA MARKS has a broken camera, a journal, and a poetry collection on her person at all times. She takes photographs of people she loves deeply and strangers. The two are often indistinguishable.
HARRY N. is a contributing writer to Icarus.
MOYA NOCTOR is a writer and performer from Kerry. She graduated from a BA in Drama and English at Trinity in 2024. Her poem ‘Mosquitoes in the orange juice’ will be published in March’s edition of The Stony Thursday Book. Her favourite word is ‘gloaming'.
GIULIA VETTORE is a Film and English student obsessed with taking photographs of elderly people and beautiful chairs.
ARABELLA WARE is a poet from Texas. She loves music, art, and oddities. Through writing she discovers how strange the world must be.
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R & A R T I S T
LAUREN FOLEY loves capitalism, she has published one "unpuplishable book" twice. Colour and paint make more sense to her than people. Over a quarter of a century ago, she almost failed her Leaving; sure lookit, Trinity have accepted her now!
Lauren created this issue's cover and the paintings interspersed throughout.
F E A T U R E D W R I T E R
SUZANNE SCANLON's memoir, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen is published by Vintage in the US and Hachette in the UK. She is also the author of two novels: Her 37th Year, An Index (Noemi 2015) and Promising Young Women (Dorothy 2012). Some places her work has appeared include: Granta, The Guardian, BOMB, The Iowa Review, Electric Literature, Fence, Harper's Bazaar, Literary Hub, The Believer. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute Chicago.
E D I T O R S
CAT GROGAN would like to be a writer when she grows up.
LOUISE NORRIS is bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
E D I T O R 'S A S S I S T A N T
GAVIN JENNINGS will circle back to you shortly.
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
Thank you to our spectacular contributors for trusting us with your work. To Lauren Foley for filling our pages with beautiful art and words. To Suzanne Scanlon, for the very same. To Gavin Jennings, for the huge little things. To Eve Smith for accepting another boatload of selfies and drawing our portraits to accompany the forward. To Trinity Publications (not only because we are indebted — quite literally).
And, lest we forget, to you, dear reader. Always to you.
Try to write the little thing. Circle back. Frolic forth!
