moving
“I will praise your madness, and in a language not mine, speak of music that wakes us, music in which we move.” Ilya Kaminsky, “Author’s Prayer”
editorial Creating this publication stemmed from our prior discussions surrounding how dissatisfied we can feel with writing or art that is surface-level compelling or somewhat hollow, and how gripping it is when someone creates something gritty, messy, contradictory, something full of raw emotion that drags you into its world. We both saw making a publication as a place to bring work of this nature together — work that moves you, that changes you, that leaves you palpably different than before. We took Moving as our title with the aim of bringing together work of different forms with a common thread — the idea of art moving towards something, or responses to art that has moved you. This could mean art that moves you toward some kind of self-knowledge, that marks a move from different eras of life to the next, or whatever your concept of moving might be. We have especially welcomed work based around the queer experience, as in how we’re constantly moving forward in the arena of queer consciousness. We are the only publication with a prompt specifically welcoming queer art, from work exploring lived/imagined queer experience to work queer in form and beyond. From art that can be disruptive in order to affect change, to the physicality of movement in the queer experience, such as the move from country to city, a shared experience among many college students. Art should always be moving in some
sense, for the artist or the audience, so in that way the entire concept of the magazine has a double focus that has been linked from the outset. The queer experience is that of blurring lines between one thing and another, disasassembling boundaries and creating a fluidity. We hoped that the open but focused nature of this publication would be more capable of mirroring these kind of experiences, and the art among these pages reflects such freedom. As students, we are trained to respond to prompts for essays and assignments and such, but any ideas which are too radical might risk our marks being penalised. So here we have taken the prompt and response dynamic, something we’re used to, and eliminated the risk element. All of these strands have woven together to create a publication composed of art at once diverse and connected. Diverse in range — with poetry, photography, prose, and more — while still connected by their tether to the concept of moving. We hoped that the prompt would act as a lens, through which anyone who submits work could look through. The multitude of responses we have been able to feature in this issue reflect a range of perspectives, experiences, identities — making the publication in itself, inherently radical, inherently queer, and undeniably moving. - Ellie O’Neill & Grace Farrell 19th November, 2019
contributors 1. Maija Makela 2. Margareta Ruysschaert 3. Sarah Hanna 4. Umang Kalra 5. Róisín Ní Haicéid 6. Étáin Sweeney 7. Sinéad Barry 8. Jeanne Castegnier-Mainville 9. Grace Farrell 10. Maya Kulukundis 11. Coco Millar 12. Anonymous
13. Aoife Donnellan 14. Isabel Howard 15. Jilly McGrath 16. Gráinne Quigley 17. David Boyd 18. Jack Delaney 19. Zahra Khan 20. Ellie O’Neill
featured artist “BEFORE ANNUNCIATION.” By Mary Dorcey
Lilith Wakes in the Afternoon By Maija Makela In my new cavern I grow ugly and relish it. I parade this untouchedness around like a flag - look at me! My head rolls back as I laugh in this new and nameless language where there is only one sentence and it is a shriek. When I felt love I felt it the way when you peel the pith off a grapefruit it comes apart in your hands now I pull out all of the entrails - the exclusive interior delights - and then like a ritual I lick the drips from my fingers, how dreamy I’m salty and bright as lemons. No need anymore for ribcages for bones for shrapnel in here I hang petals from the rafters. Sometimes at night the curtain trembles the same way a body once did, but I do not dwell. Men came, as they do, to teach me new words for grief but I forgot them all, I cut off every last one, swallowed them whole and now look I’m dancing love look love all that sticky blood spills off me like honey. 8
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By Margareta Ruysschaert “I took this picture of my sister Anna in May of this year. I had just moved back home to Luxembourg after finishing my first year in college. Looking back at it I am reminded of how much can change in a year and how important it is to keep family close.� 9
Lie in By Sarah Hanna
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FINDING SCHIELE By Umang Kalra
In the basement of a museum in Vienna next to Klimt next to all of the other museums in Vienna, rubbing unsoft shoulders against neon, learning the words line & form in German and hesitating to adore the sound. On the cover of a book and another and another. In a poem and then another. In an article in the Paris Review giving me permission to keep wanting my limbs to look like his charcoal creatures. Inside of a violence I am learning to name. In London, just far enough away — an hour long flight I am not allowed to take. I wonder who his friends are, there, I wonder if he is all alone, I wonder if he died knowing I will live someday like this, I wonder if I am living well enough to want this. Everything white is dirty. Every man is a promise of danger. There is a man in my house and I go home to feel safe, I go home to tell the stories of wanting to crawl back into time and look Schiele in the eye and ask him why the fuck he did what he did. I’ll go back to Vienna, someday, buy a print and learn some German and set it on fire and look like a goddess doing it, clothed and uncontrollable. What will the ash be good for other than slithering down some unfamiliar sink? Who would want to hear this story: I want him undead, I want him present, I want him witness, I want him choking on it.
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look at the view By Róisín Ní Haicéid
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Something More A song by Étáin Sweeney I am the only shadow on the wall at 2am, I am a lonely daughter, I am goneBut it’s just as well, You don’t come calling anymore, Don’t crash into me, I am not your shore, I am your windows open, I am your breeze blowing through, I am my damp hair soaking my pillows through, I am your waxwork, I have melted to the floor, I am renewed now; I am something more. You are the image-cutter, You’re the scissors, You’re the train, You are hauling cargo and by its size you are amazed, You know your strength and your mind is cruel, But you are gentle sometimes, And for that I’ll be your fool, If I am an open hand, you’re the fist behind my back, Resentment lines my coat but I am grateful thatI knew you and I have suffered through, I am gentle sometimes and it’s those times that I think of you, We were only shadows on those walls at 2am, We were lonely daughters; both gone now it’s just as well, You don’t. We don’t. Call anymore, We cannot be each other washed up on separate shores, I am renewed now; I am something more. 15
Paralysis in motion By Sinéad Barry Fixing on the wall in front of me The patterns started to move Like a conveyor belt Curling around itself Shapes formed Like trees, smoking Branch touching lips And a long drag Relief I look away suddenly and fixate on another spot but every space fixes itself dances slightly look away but every spot to focus on is another spot that moves I shut my eyes and ribbons appear red thread like a thin stream of blood in a shower drain slithering away a wound begins to move as forearms writhe to hide scars keep moving invisibly look still When I’m very still Shapes form on blank walls I lurch back In my head Never moving Quickened breath.
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Jacqueline By Jeanne Castegnier-Mainville i dreamed i was sitting on you we were choosing your urn you wanted to die in dignity you said you wanted to throw up i wanted to throw up too so much we organized your funeral together hundreds of people came and i couldn’t stop crying i read a letter you wrote to a friend in 1947 you talk about Paris you’ll become a painter, you want to learn leave Montreal and cross the Atlantic you don’t care about money or men you want to be free, to be freed i don’t know why you never took that boat but i know that now i have to kiss your hands goodbye the hands that never drew the colors you dreamed about i have to kiss those hands goodbye and cross my Atlantic and i want to throw up
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disharmony By Grace Farrell Emails, mouldy bread, sex, alienation, I’ve always forgiven too easily. Failure, love, being violated, happy endings, It’s a virtue, it can’t hurt you. Sensory dreams — only a pair of eyes, A whole new experience, but still my Unconscious craves the same love, again and again. Marriage proposals, sandwiches with hidden blades between the bread, A bag of second-hand clothes with a rat inside which transforms into a dog when I touch it — Then there are things that happened in this world and My unconscious, which one takes shape in my memory? You’re everything. Going house to house and losing and finding my bag in each one, My ex moves into my current house but he has gained a lot of weight, A threesome in a Parisian changing room with people I am not attracted to, I swim and swim and swim in the sea
On the outside, I drown, I sink, I forgive. A text where you say you want me back Just distant enough to not hold back All the grit — guilt, jealousy, Just leave me already. I only ever let you see me with the lights off But in my dreams I stand tall, backlit, defiant — A different woman lives In my unconscious, And I’ll chase after her Until I can’t tell the difference anymore. 18
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Delia By Maya Kulukundis Little recipe, little book, Given to Mother from hers before, prints an order in cursive. So between Packaged cow, Shadowed and small, And plastic pig, I slink. I have pirate coins in my jacket And half an hour until closing. Supermarkets feel very American to me — That is, white and new and sneaky. Foxes root through bins and make love In copper coils. That sort of food is twisted and sly And hides inside your nails. This is an order from the gut or womb and it chews its way outside. I put it in the oven. An oven face makes me shy. It is Toothy and teething and panting and wet: Here is the floral timer that is the Tinitus that ticks- ticks- ticks Through a starving night and tunneled-out honeypot. I am careful where I stand now because the Window is big in this room and spills so much. I need blackout curtains. I hear they use Hell for gluttons and My knees knock so loudly. Little recipe, little book, Calls me to lay out my cutlery by the Litter tray Under 20
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The Stairs. To Fondle gently Arancini balls, Wrap my tongue into the rice. To wipe red-current jus across my navel Under cheap - yellow toilet light. Was it today or the day before? Was it in this skin or out of it That I knew a girl, cremated, into a red ceramic urn? It is very modern and will melt in time. Little recipe, little book says: eat raw meat during the water-cycle because This is what It all becomes. Oh, god. There is no waste-disposal in this flat and soon, any minute soon, the timer Will shriek. There is no avoiding the grit- grease That this one sweet Taste will leave in my skirt and hair. This little recipe, little book Given by my mother and from hers Before is how we all have bled. Did you know— I am so hungry, always. That little book sits in my ear, the little recipe between my lips. This is an ancient line and The lull of sugar screams. Little recipe, little book, Cushion softly my stinging cheek. Now I wear a white apron. And wash my hands with fairy-liquid To scrub the floors from the veiny Rust on which my desire is fixated. 21
featured artist BEFORE ANNUNCIATION.
By Mary Dorcey Is this how we recognise it, is it the very nature and definition of the matter? Arriving unannounced without preamble always unexpected sometimes in the last place
The colours radiantly mismatched, the fragile lacing of artery and the open-handed
We would have thought to seek at others it’s the timing that takes us unawares -
Presence of it, as though it might be the original of its species just made.
Is this its signature the essence of it felt before overture or preparatory code?
Or in a different hue and season, could it appear as music unattended -
The first sharp leaf that falls at our step in autumn, we lift it from the path -
Its enchantment issuing from behind a bolted door an old chapel on a city street,
Inhale the dusted variegated scent, we had forgotten the perfection of leaves -
We stand alerted compelled to listen as if by divine command struck mute.
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We cannot name the piece but we recover it it returns all sweeping back
Warned us, having accepted as the real only surface dark, silence and obscurity.
With each taut passage of the strings, the cello writhing at the bow’s touch -
Is this then, the composition of what we take as grace? Its denotation -
Those base profundo notes as though the earth itself could give voice to joy could orchestrate
An entrance we can neither summon nor refuse - a voice cast from the void -
Its sorrows. Or it might be in some other guise entirely a lightning strike
An illumination unheralded, unsought? Could this have been the manner
Astounding, the sheer startled blue of it, breaking wide
Of your coming at the least expectant hour, a happening with no portent -
Across a night-time sea its cascade, a life-line flung to our dimmed gaze
Nothing in the name, the hue of weather or the numbering of the day
We could not have foretold before the memory of thunder
Having alerted us? But we sat down together in a crowded room 23
And talked. We did not look one at the other only ahead
Part-glimpsed moment I noticed the forgotten gift that I was speaking
At the people passing in the loudness all around us. Was it then
As though you understood my thoughts that you were listening as if I recognised your words.
In that half-attention it reached me without prelude, in a sudden,
Š Mary Dorcey 15.11.19.
Soft, inner shift the smallest movement barely felt, somewhere just Beneath the heart, Is this presentiment I asked myself, the sensing of an element, A cast of mind I could be fired by a woman I could trust? Was it only in that
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Photos by
Coco Millar
“I took this picture in House 6 before joining the March to Repeal the 8th in 2017. It looked as if the students were marching towards battle, but faced a brick wall. Thankfully that brick wall was defeated when the referendum resulted in a resounding Yes for female bodily autonomy.�
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tits up By Anonymous The songs you sing The clothes you wear The people you see The one you love And you think you’re changing But you’re not You’re moving Gravitating Towards resonance Towards home And you tell your mother through tears That dissipate into laughter And you ask yourself why But you know And you’re shamed And you’re ashamed That it’s been slow
That there’s still a part of you that holds their tongue While sharing a laugh Or exchanging a glance But you hold fear And some come true And you mourn And you move But you don’t Forget
And you can’t explain why But you know
And you’re grateful And you’re lucky
And you’re mad And you’re sad
And you know How far you’ve come
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But how far You have to go
Oct 6th By Aoife Donnellan
I had another standoff with the building on the corner. Her face shone in the golden hour light. I stood with my head out the window catching wind in my ears. The shade seemed like a waste of time. I was losing the day.
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The Year of the Dog By Isabel Howard The bathtub is only used for showers Its dirty yellow paint impossible to clean So I spend my morning hunched below the showerhead The mirror reflects my skin, filtered by light Bringing me closer to this creature that’s mine Shy in illumination I leave the filmy window open to dry Lest steam threaten to suffocate the space In neglecting to close the latch, moonlight will seep through the crack Lying in bed, I hear the dogs you sent to feast on me My dogs, the hairy extensions of my will They greet me with their howls in the comfort of the night With a voracity hounding me to surrender Rising up, goosebumped, from my sheets unclean To be willingly devoured by those I thought I owned Bathe my body in hazy light My mangled form unable to be recognized By anyone other than you, my full figured, waxing, waning You’re always bathing, yourself or someone else I spent too much time watching you naked Instead of choosing to be blinded by the sun
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I filled a bath for us By Jilly McGrath I filled a bath for us. Look at how the light filters through the water or Watch me undress my inhibitions and step willingly into this world. I sit. My knees pressed against my chest in anticipation of your arrival. I douse the water with oils and lotions in the hope that you come. Eventually, you join me, and with the proximity of it all we have no choice but to fixate on each other. Happily, we sit. At times you mention the many displeasing factors about the bath which I have drawn. How the oils overpower or how the water is not quite right. I sit in silence repenting for my many faults and wish I could have drawn one so perfect you need not focus on anything other than me. If the warmth of my body alone would never be enough, perhaps this world could be. Yet in a moment of distraction, you left. For the brief comfort of another. So I drained the bath. And watched as all my efforts sank away, Leaving only the thick residue of scum your body had donated. I look at how it lines the interior of the bath and I think of you and all the terrible truths you hid beneath the waterline. I sit now alone. My knees still pressed against my chest and with every last inch of energy I fight the cold my body is well accustomed to, and I scrape any trace of you away. Hoping maybe one day, with the notion of you gone, I will fill another bath and it this time will be just right.
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Cellular Infidelity By Gráinne Quigley Moving again and my limbs were so stiff Rust had gathered, in those places where limbs fold in on themselves It fell like festive dandruff when the scabs cleaved in two The peace in change: in sharing, in breaking apart. Pins and needles On Fire, feeling numb then Moving Pains -forgetting to clean up after myself was the best part For once I forgot to stop Look through the headlights And I need to clean up after myself far less now. Moving Pains get easier if you have built up the muscle. It was cold standing being stuck and parts of my heart are still Stuck in the microwave thats stuck on defrost It’s thawed at the outside like a chicken breast Thats started to cook on the outside Curl up and colour an off-white But being hungry is the best sauce Being me I was hungry to become someone I don’t know where abouts it all got mixed up But years ago I stopped moving outside of myself I had started to drift
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You can’t hope to make it safely ashore that way in this world I suppose drifting can seem like the best course, if you think you are drowning If you are so tired already I was tired of being ‘perfect’ and still being persecuted More symbol than human I was drowning that entire time. Barely an adult at all, I was submerged when I should have been expanding. I will myself to catch up. I pour miracle-grow by my feet (some call that cheating, but what do you know?)
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Haunt By David Boyd
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A Word about Hats. By Jack Delaney First thoughts that day up were of the imprint in the pillow. The ones that come first are never really remembered, nor are they ever really thought, just held up to the light, dusted off and forgotten. Only the real firsts, the true firsts, which are always the first to carry any real weight, some flesh on their bones, are the ones that propel the day forward. The imprint was there, hard and oval, egg-shaped – though, it must be said that there was no egg, nor had there ever been an egg, but, an egg-shaped head that had, until quite recently, been resting on the pillow, and had, even more recently, removed itself from its resting place and taken itself down the hall to the bathroom where it looked vacantly (vacantly?) in the mirror, a hand brushing its teeth, before returning to the bedside where it was now standing (standing?), contemplating the egg-shaped indent in the cream-coloured pillow. I’d like to have a word about hats. They come in many shapes and sizes, yes, but I’d like to have a word about one hat, specifically. This one is brown and very fluffy with a narrow brim and plenty of room inside (this is necessary, unfortunately, due to the rotundity of my own head, and its general inability to fit into the average-sized hat). This hat was given to me as a gift. I do not believe for a second that it was purchased with my own head in mind, but rather, as a gift from the gift-giver to themselves, or perhaps as a gift the gift-giver received from yet another giver of gifts. Regardless, I am convinced that the only reason this hat fell into my hands, let alone onto my head, was its terrible, unforgivable ugliness, hence my distrust of its origins. The question of who the hat was intended for irks me to no end: sitting on the top-level of a bus; standing in line for an ATM; fishing through online dating profiles while I wait for my coffee to cool. I wonder if people can tell it’s not mine, not really. Maybe if I tilt it to one side, if my hair was longer, if it didn’t look so perched, and I, so bird-like, underneath – about to take flight. Hats are funny in that they mould themselves, learning new shapes, becoming skull-like. Their insides are full of hairs and pocketed moments, smelling of musk and shampoo and foreheads. Wearing the hat of another is a form of masquerade. When you gave me this hat, I knew what part I was playing. Now it’s not so clear. 35
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Zahra Khan 37
Witness By Ellie O’Neill I’m sorry that I can’t Handle things unfinished I’m sorry that I wanted To love you with a witness That’s not to say our garden Wasn’t enough, It was Now I have to cross myself And remember where I came from One part, out west At the foot of a mountain One part in a Dublin tenement building One part at the mouth Of the River Shannon One part forgotten, And it’s loose in me Before I came down living I sat looking At a painting Of a woman It was done in human colour And the cheeks were all in red I’d recognise that ribcage And that masochism anywhere They took you from a dream I had And put you in my life
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the editorial team Co-Editors: Grace Farrell and Ellie O’Neill
We would like to thank all the artists involved in this issue of Moving for sharing their work and adding to the collaborative spirit of this project. A huge thank you to Peter Brazil for the beautiful cover art. In addition, thank you to Trinity Publications for their funding and guidance, and Digital Print Dynamics for their help in creating this issue. We would especially like to thank Mary Dorcey for her kind contribution to this collection. Contact us at moving.submissions@gmail.com with any questions or queries you may have.