Icarus Vol. 68 No. 3 (2018)

ICARUS MAGAZINE

VOLUME LXVIII, ISSUE III

© Trinity Publications 2018

E D I T O R I A L call me from abroad / tell me about the prepoetics / of not knowing what I’m doing / I’m begging you. we’re not old men ___ frenzy you (a whole sea) you then retroactively stake your acres Yers.

This is a message of optimism.

To say something is a sugar high, a mood to don feetfirst like a habit or a welcome change in your life for a while, everyone you’ve ever met all with you tonight every night in a heavy-monied night club, is to lie to our faces—to make of oneself a coward and a caitiff. Very inappropriate.

Addition was the the be all until the minus emergency. “law fit for all fits no one like a glove. . . .” nice and true Actual optimism is not a mood so don’t worry about it. There is another I to consider in bold; a problem of separation from a fancy power. The amount of control that makes yourself; what do you care for? Correlation and procedure belong elsewhere—we do not share your sentiments. We believe in the noble whole, to not mistake process for procedure.Years and years and then describe. The real question is: what is your sign?

Thanks to all our contributors. Thanks to all who submitted but were not published.

Thanks to our venues. Thanks to David. Thanks to Flo. Thanks to Sorcha, our wayfarer. Thank you divine inspo.

We have been unutterably lucky to publish work we really stand behind this year.

Thanks to the best of luck. Thanks to the firmament of a capitated body.

To our features, without whom what cross section, thank you.

Thanks to our forefathers, our foregrandaddies. Thanks to Annandale.

To Maya and Phelim, this is to you.

- Sophie Fitzpatrick and Sean Pierson 2

sixty-four pages & cover

CO

N T CONTENTS EN CONTENTS TS CONTENTS CONTENTS CONTENTS

Cover: with the kind permission

Something Real

by SEAN PIERSON

by LANE SHIPSEY

a mother knows letter to my crush

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Haruspication

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by MAYA BUSHELL

6 8

the month three sublets fell through i hated my best friend got kicked off the lease forgot my birth control at home went to florida and geico would only pay half the accident claim

by CHARLOTTE FOREMAN 9

FEATURED: GEOFFREY SQUIRES

by PAUL STURGESS

10 17

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phobic

by FLORENCE HEAP

by PHELIM Ó LAOGHAIRE

Fugue And and

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Bit my guts

by ZAHRA KHAN

to sonnet Urning

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Archangel Michael Gabriel Gavin

by ANNA FALVEY

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from: The Fisherman

by CHRISTOPHER KESTELL

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from the Archive Contributors Editors

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M AY 2 0 1 8

3

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a mother knows

by ZAHRA KHAN

my mother is obsessed with noses she used to pinch my nose when i was a baby because she said it made me ugly and the first thing she looks at is noses it’s why her auntie never married, couldn’t find a good nose. my mother fought with her father about her arranged marriage, she fought particularly about the nose of her groom to be she told me looking at his nose, she knew she shouldn’t marry him I think I inherited it. as your weight goes up and down, i think your nose stays the same i stuck two needles in it during college squeezed black out of it the night before i met you when our noses rubbed against one another i couldn’t stop smiling at their fit you understand when you’re older.

4

letter to my crush

by ZAHRA KHAN

i can’t write poetry but i don’t know how else i could get a poet to take interest in me i have been trying for weeks and weeks to wrap this into sapphic fragment word butter i could spread onto bread for you to eat I can make really nice eggs there has to be a better way to say this this is poor try poo try poetry tapped girl trying to tap tap tap into your thoughts fly walking all over your toast with her shit legs

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to sonnet

by PHELIM Ă“ LAOGHAIRE

them flat earth believing no swingin round inside is all decided flied echoes crack throughout things flickering days out out past screens all done to do in. border. gather my containers my shells-

Unwind!

ununder /here winds not so sharp as them off a bulb sounds

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off mainstreets a that’s what they all say there what they all keep trying to tell the other side is I —If I hear one more middle-aged white man mention Thebes again I’m gon Back home try explain gravity is not a symptom the difference between weather and whether to or not

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Urning

by PHELIM Ă“ LAOGHAIRE

what unstiffening danced naked out from behind the ears lately, not now and less and less, what made us finally hid the edges inside some settlement we’d agree on, I meant to ask, casting it here in lead-cast lead

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the month three sublets fell through i hated my best friend got kicked off the lease forgot my birth control at home went to florida and geico would only pay half the accident claim

by CHARLOTTE FOREMAN

i am busy becoming irrefutable in my dad’s twenty-six-year-old wolf sweatshirt

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Fugue FEATURED: GEOFFREY SQUIRES

Struggle with nothing What repeatedly To the point that

to the point where

Constant or nearly constant So close as to be Forever some murmur each little each each little The dogs, at ten or eleven o’clock, lay on the hump of the horizon their fine prosciutto.

Which would almost certainly

almost certainly would

As if it was only a matter of time Beside alongside either of which Or at rest

at

at rest

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for a while stilled Touch

knowing

Tremulous existence pressed up against and how or in what way Were it not for what was or is now As if that might resul in Progression of some kind And always to hand or falling back again

ready

ready to hand

After some pause some interregnum to that which we know which only we know The same

much the same

For a while anyway But always to some purpose not least because Or riding upon nothing like air When my mind is clear Play play of light the way it And how if at all not that it does not 11

considering

considering that

For which there is no explanation what with one thing and another Or carried

to be carried

no good reason

carried

Wordless peace as if the body had its own mind Unless For a while anyway what repeatedly And progression of some kind each little each each little which would would it not Neither of which so the question is Heat silence abeyance at times At rest at at rest to the point that to the point where as if the body had its own mind Wordless place

unless

Constant or nearly constant beside alongisde Movement or movement of

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Following or preceding accompanying accompanying following or preceding As if it was only a matter of time

Or riding upon nothing like air When my mind is clear What was or is now and how if at all Dispensation ease The long benediction of days But always to some purpose not that it does not Play play of light nothing but what Touch

knowing

Or after some break some interregnum as if that might result in what would almost certainly almost certainly would in the event that Were it not for

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the way it Movement or movement of Shape of air nothing but what Still or almost abeyance at times About or about to This activity what it does to the point that to the point where Background always there like a crowd the world any of which any one of which Invisible lift of air things poised raised difficulty what difficulty Each little

each

each little

Presence not quite and the idea the idea that what we do without thinking what we do as a matter of course without thinking As likely as not

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And heaviness a heaviness so this must be must be Remembering or half-remembering tremulous existence pressed up against Hiatus

pause

Remembering or half-remembering and how or in what way returning once again after a while to that which we know which only we know What exactly almost exactly Forever some murmur for which there is no explanation

no good reason

What with one thing and another Night-air sounds from afar carried to be carried carried So the question is What repeatedly and adding or adding to

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If the difference is The same much the same unthinkable that it would ever In the evening

in the evening of

The struggle with nothing So close as to be

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And

and

FEATURED: GEOFFREY SQUIRES

And

and

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What with

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What with

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For it is only

20

For it is always

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In the hope

in the hope that

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Over time

in the course of time

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And

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In the event that

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One way or the other

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One way or another

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Given what we know

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What is not or not yet

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So that

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With or without

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In the light of

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About which

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Out of which

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In the expectation that

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Or

or

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The sense of what is there

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How or where

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And confirmation as it were

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What it means

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And

41

The idea

the idea that

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In the greater scheme of things

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Whether or not

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All the while

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Until

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What with

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One thing and another

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After a pause

a brief pause

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Our little lives

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To be brought to some kind of conclusion

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And

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Somewhere real

by LANE SHIPSEY

something feels wrong and I have the feeling I won’t know what until it’s too late, wish I never sent you that email, wish I phoned you instead or went to see you maybe in actual real life, the other day I needed to see you so much after we ‘talked’ via messages while I was walking around looking for a place to live in Belfast, only the estate agent was phoning again in between all of that, it seemed urgent at the time although the upshot is unclear, won’t hear until after the weekend I think, and my dad was also phoning or texting from the hospital, yeah texting but then the phone died anyway, I’ve completely lost the phone habit, keep forgetting to charge it, don’t know how people cope with these machines or remember to carry them around, Candy says I’ll soon get the hang of it again but I’m not sure I will even though you sort of have to, even though that is just how things are, and it is so long since I have seen you or will see you, not in an email or an app but in the actual world, an actual world which has both of us alive in it at the same time and place, I don’t count and weigh things like you do but I know it’s been long, and I had no internet at the house maybe the ants chewed through the wires, can they do that, so I went to the Roasted Bean which is the local cafe and rush-translated that last email that I sent you on 11% to 0% battery on my laptop, so a straight cut and paste out of the translate boxes until the screen went black, plus it seems now as if it meant something deeper, was some kind of coded message, but this happens to nearly everything I ever send/t you, like the worst and most annoying was the phone pic of the raggedy lead next to the dented port on the laptop and then you told me off for being obvious when I wasn’t, I was just a tired person who had been travelling too long and didn’t see that version until a minute after, and straightaway wished I’d never pressed send in case you thought what you did think, and all that is so long ago now but it happened here where I am waking in this strange house that did not used to be strange, where my crazy chairs belonging to my life before I tried to be a mother now live on without me, 53

this house where one of my first jobs on move-in was to get rid of the ants and now they are back, making little black marching lines in the kitchen and bathroom, surrounding the coconut shower gel, two of them even getting in the bed and biting my legs, they were patient, those ants, they waited all this time ready to take over again and now they are winning AND I probably should not send this, or should I, but anyway the evil intermittent internet is making a call on that for me... and this is all blah blah blah, megabytes without end, I would like instead to hear your stuff which you are not telling and maybe if you did tell it would be worse because you would say that you have to be in the present in the here and now which means her and there in that city, not in this city with me, which means I’m crazy to still want to mess with you and you should stay in your her and there and not reply which is perhaps what you are thinking also, is it, or are you asleep and not thinking at all and I want to be with you and for it to be right to sleep near you somewhere not in a cut and past but a cut and future, somewhere in a world without wifi, somewhere real Sunday 1 April View as Analog View as Digital Open Date & Time Preferences There is no Internet connection Your computer is offline.

DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NO_INTERNET

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Haruspication

by MAYA BUSHELL

The sheep’s liver sits among the pines With bitter brown needles poking purple flesh, Asking why its ravines are so deep and so dry.

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Bit my guts

by PAUL STURGESS

Weighted chest Tense non-muscular muscles It feels like there’s a giant pig on it All hairy and to-ing and fro-ing Wishing that i wouldn’t stab him with my Hunting knife I moved to suddenly, frightened Him off He bit down hard in my guts, I respond with knife It was better than teeth, I gut him like a pig and laugh Ha ha ha ha Then his blood spills out and i try To push it back in Accidentally hacking away at him You can’t really push liquid because it’s liquid I found that out the hard way

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phobic

by FLORENCE HEAP

I am worried about the enemy coming and mixing up all the prescription medicines in the pharmacies. I am worried that I will go to the pharmacy and ask for medicine to cure my infection and be given medicine for diabetes instead and my infection will not get any better but will actually get worse.

Maybe it will get so bad that I will be left in a mixed-up hospital for the rest of my life.

Things keep on getting bigger.

It is like someone is blowing up a big balloon.

When the enemy come and mix up all the medicines I know it will be better though. At least then we will know that they are all mixed up, and we will call all the wise women out from exile to teach us how to make herbal remedies.

If you ask most people how they want to die most people say quickly and painlessly unless they are masochists and we shouldn’t assume that some people are not masochists.

But most of us would like to die in the same way that we would like a plaster to be ripped off, which is to say, quickly and violently.

I am not safe as houses.

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The older I get the more I learn that houses are not safe at all.

Houses are very dangerous.

They are full of faulty electrics and the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning.

We went to the antique shop together and I bought a crystal paper weight. Paper weights are kind of useless these days because no one keeps pieces of paper anymore. I tried to hold it in my fist but the cut sides were uncomfortable against my palm.

Where is that stone from the sea shore now?

My teeth keep falling out when I am asleep but I am too scared to go to the dentist in case he is actually not a dentist at all but a chiropodist who has been sent in by the enemy to give me bad root canal.

Apparently losing teeth just means that you are repressed or that someone in your family is about to die.

The person who is most likely to die in my family right now is either my grandmother because she is eighty-six or myself because I am clumsy.

The other day I tried to look inside my paper weight but I couldn’t see anything in it, even when I put my eyes very, very close to the glass.You need to be clairvoyant for it to work and it turns out that I am not clairvoyant.

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Archangel Michael Gabriel Gavin

by ANNA FALVEY

Mike is moving to the very middle; the alligator country; just below the jaw that clamps Florida into the rest of the south; the middle of a marshy landmass in the middle of the ocean. When I picture Nalcrest, homes for retired mailmen, I picture a toothpaste factory washed in false golden Florida light: the kind which comes in through church windows on Easter Sunday: we are heathens and not real Christians, and the stained glass pools of light colored beam have not yet lost their charm.

They are new. I am twenty and I am seeking a Father. One who speaks truth solely in lines from Dylan and the Coen Brothers.

One who perhaps never was a mailman, though I would be out a number of pairs of good thick winter socks, but one who would have stayed here, on the end, and not had to move to the middle. Send me a sign or send me to church or send Mike some sunscreen for the long Florida spring.

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CONTRIBUTORS

MAYA BUSHELL Maya is a Senior Fresh student of English Literature and History of Art and chitecture. She believes in bread and roses.

Ar-

ANNA FALVEY anna conspirits oysters on the half shell forming a spur from the black berry in the sky weighing the yachts down wipes your fingers cool all while hemming that vigil you tore she says any paper crown will do CHARLOTTE FOREMAN paints the whole family B and runs away drink in hand expiration : birthday birthday driving to then from the sunny heist what of courtly love.

CHRISTOPHER KESTELL A Senior Fresh student of English Literature and French. Writer and director of a single play. Honestly just glad to be here.

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CONTRIBUTORS

ZAHRA KHAN zahra did bio in school. she doesn’t remember how to do it now. this is her third alias.

LANE SHIPSEY Lane Shipsey is a poet and essayist whose writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, among other places. Forthcoming work includes a London sonnet in a UK anthology about recovery, and a story, Live, Learn, Die, Repeat, shortlisted for the ‘From the Well’ Short Story Prize and set to appear in the prize anthology to be published this summer.

FEATURED: GEOFFREY SQUIRES Geoffrey Squires is originally from Co. Donegal although he has lived much of his life abroad and is now retired and living in Yorkshire. Five of his books have recently been published as bilingual editions by Editions Unes, Nice and are available from amazon, including Pierres Noyees/Drowned Stones, Paysages et Silences/ Landscapes and Silences and Sans Titre/Untitled. His prize-winning translations of the Persian poet Hafez were brought out by Miami University Press in 2014 and his translations of Irish poetry 600-1200, My News for You, by Shearsman Books in 2015. For full details visit his website at geoffreysquirespoetttranslator.wordpress.com PAUL STURGESS Paul wants his bio to be: dramatic, mysitcal, laughs loudly. Guess my zodiac.

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EDITORS

Editor: SOPHIE FITZPATRICK sophie is a final year student at trinity. to you, wish all luck send all belief.

Editor: SEAN PIERSON sean is a second year student at trinity. eventing may all come to cave writings.

Editorial Assistant: PHELIM Ă“ LAOGHAIRE Oh boy... here we go again...

Archivist: SORCHA NĂ? CHEALLAIGH sorcha is a third year student at trinity. imminently picnicking.

Public Relations Officer: FLORENCE HEAP Flo is student of english/philosophy. She edgy like a butter knife. Her work is available in smithereens magazine OUT NOW online.

The Icarus staff acknowledges Trinity Publications and the School of English, as well as Digital Print Dynamics, 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.

thank u for reading w/ us x 64