A New Ulster 102

FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF EJ Mccann, Ana Sephar, Darren John Travers, Cody Austin, Terry Brinkman, Eva Aston, Kenneth Hickey, Dean Boyce, Gavin Bourke, Alex Smith and Elaine Lambert AND EDITED BY AMOS GREIG.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 102 April 2021

UPATREE PRESS

Copyright © 2021 A New Ulster – All Rights Reserved.

The artists featured in this publication have reserved their right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Edited by Amos Greig Cover Design by Upatree Press Prepared for Publication by Amos Greig & Arizahn

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by EJ Mccann, Ana Sephar, Darren John Travers, Cody Austin, Terry Brinkman, Eva Aston, Kenneth Hickey, Dean Boyce, Gavin Bourke, Alex Smith and Elaine Lambert

CONTENTS Poetry EJ McCann Poetry Ana Spehar Short Story Darren John Travers Poetry Cody Austin Poetry Terry Brinkman Poetry Eva Aston Poetry Kenneth Hickey Poetry Dean Boyce Poetry Gavin Bourke Prose Alex Smith Poetry Elaine Lambert Editor’s Note

Page 49

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: EJ MCCANN

EJ McCann is a writer from Bangor

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Ed

"The Road Ahead" Turn out the light of Yesterday Wake up the morn with a smile Embrace each new day's mystery And treasure friendship all of the time Long and winding tomorrow be Time and tide rolls by Like a loving family loves and dream Sweeter the road ahead will lie What can I do with my poetry?

I have written quite a few over the years Looking forward to hearing from you soon Warm regards (EJ McCann)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ANA SPEHAR Ana Spehar is from Croatia, living in Cork for last 5 years. Her work was published in A New Ulster, Boyne Berries, Solstice sounds and poetry anthologies "A Journey Called Home" and “Cork Words”. Her poetry is themed around love and her love of Ireland, her endless inspirations.

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What If I Fall In Love

What if I give you what is left of my heart?

And what if you tear it apart?

I’m already living just half alive So, what if you take away my very last smile?

I can’t give you only a bit of my soul, If I give myself, you’ll have me all!

The very last smile and a heart that crawls…

What if you kiss me and in love I fall?

(Ana Spehar)

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She Holds Her Hand

She holds her hand. With warmth and care, The old, wrinkled hand strokes her hair.

And it takes me years back in time, When that same hand, younger then, held mine.

She held my hand, she wiped my tears, Kept me safe throughout the years.

That gentle hand never left my side Oh, she held my hand with pride.

Now their hands are intertwined, The circle of life clearly defined.

My future, my present and my past The image of two hands in my heart Forever to last.

For my two favourite girls…

(Ana Spehar)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Darren John Travers Darren John Travers lives in County Kildare and writes fiction. He has previously been published in The Cabinet of Heed and is currently working on his first collection of short stories.

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IRMA AND ÁINE

by Darren John Travers

In the field beside the cottage, a flock of sheep emerged for the day’s grazing. Viltė noticed all of them had blue circles spray-painted onto their coats except for a single red one straggling behind the group, which she couldn’t take her eyes from. What separated it from the rest was impossible to tell from so far away, but she strained for a positive answer nonetheless.

Marked for a quick death due to the quality of its meat.

Too weak to be worth the money required to keep it alive.

Sterile with disease.

With a tight, shuddering jaw she rang the doorbell.

A man in a dressing gown and brushing his teeth answered. He was in the last days of his twenties, had a thick, neat beard, and his shock of black hair was damp, dishevelled, and at variance with his irreverent, sky-blue eyes. A coalescence Viltė felt unique to this country.

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‘You’re early,’ he mumbled, looking her over and catching a bit of foam before it escaped his mouth. ‘Come in.’

‘Yes, I am sorry,’ she replied, taking a self-conscious step inside. ‘Only one bus Saturday mornings.’ She watched the red, cracked skin above his heels as he walked over to the open-plan kitchen and spat into the island sink. It turned her stomach. The countertop was littered with misshapen beer cans.

‘Right,’ he said, running the tap for a second, ‘I’m more used to buses in town. I’ve just bought the place.’

‘Very nice,’ she commented, edging into the conservatory extension to inspect the back garden.

‘Yeah, buried my old man in December,’ he said. ‘Left me a tidy bit of dosh. Only way I could afford the place.’

Squinting through one particular pane, Viltė noted, made it look like an abstract painting. Blue, grey, green streaks with a white daub in the middle. Clear sky, stone wall, uncut grass, a clump of caught sheep’s wool. She registered the man had spoken.

‘Sorry?’

‘I was just saying my dad died,’ he said, enunciating the words for her. ‘That’s how I could afford this house. I’m not some rich kid.’

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‘Oh, I am sorry…’

‘Don’t be. He was a prick.’

Viltė lowered her gaze, faced the window again.

‘Sorry it’s in such a state,’ he went on. ‘Had a bit of a housewarming last night.’ She kept her back to him, though she knew he wanted her to reply. ‘So are you all set or do you need anything?’ he asked. ‘I’m just going to finish getting ready.’

Viltė patted her backpack to signal she had come prepared and the man nodded and disappeared down the hallway.

She turned and mock spat after him, her face twisted in anger, and scanned around. In the centre of the room was a spiral staircase leading up to a mezzanine with slanted walls, the sun illuminating thousands of floating dust particles through the skylight. She slipped off her bag and placed it beneath the bottom steps before examining the contents of the old fireplace – the only feature to survive the refurbishment – on the back wall. The half-burnt remnants of four or five cardboard Heineken multipacks and dozens of Ferrero Rocher wrappers, identifiable by those strewn on the rug in front of it. She feigned a look of disapproval at herself in the mirror above the mantel and whispered ‘Kill me’ into it in Lithuanian. ‘Kill yourself’ a distinct inner voice seemed to reply out loud, delivering her a bolt of visible disturbance. She licked her thumb and in the reflection worked a brown stain on the chest of her red velour Adidas top. A pile of glass in a corner of the kitchen was visible over her shoulder. With a damp patch in place of the stain, she approached the pile, shook the black sack slumped next to it, figured it contained more cans, and decided to carry on with the task, beginning with the cans and bottles around the wraparound couch.

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The man soon reappeared dressed in a wool fleece and jeans, his hair gelled back. He glanced at Viltė, who deliberately took no notice of him, and retrieved his car keys from a hook next to the front door.

‘I’m off out,’ he said. ‘Be back in an hour or two.’

Viltė, as if startled, shot him a look.

‘Vacuum?’ she asked.

‘Oh, shit. I forgot. I haven’t got one yet?’ He paused in the doorway, hoping for a professional workaround.

She carried on with her work.

The man’s BMW threw up gravel on the driveway and accelerated down the road. # When the floor was clear of cans, bottles, wrappers, glass, and the rest, Viltė made a start on the countertops. She removed one of the fresh cloths she brought in her bag from its packet, squirted some Fairy Liquid into it, and ran it under the tap, ensuring the water carried what was left of the man’s spit with it. Beginning with the reclaimed wood of the dining table, she wiped it back and forth lengthways, rewarding herself with a Ferrero Rocher from the near-empty box on it when the job was complete. A ritual which ended every subsequent task until the box was emptied and added to the rubbish.

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Carrying two full black sacks, she lumbered outside around the corner of the cottage and dropped them next to the green, blue, and brown wheelie bins, when, from the back of the house, a strange snorting noise drew her attention.

The sheep with the red paint on its back was in the garden eating the man’s grass. Hearing Viltė, it stood up, its ears on end, and studied her with vigilance. She located the hole in the wire where it must have come through, the corner where the stone wall of the man’s garden met the hedgerow of the farm. She stepped towards it and, finding no resistance, continued on to see how close she could get.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Hello there. It is okay.’

Three metres away the sheep stamped a hoof and glanced around itself uneasy.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.’

As if irritated by an invisible fly or wasp, it snapped the air with its teeth and chased it into a corner beside the conservatory, coming into contact with the stucco wall. Abruptly it forgot all about it and lost itself in scratching its side against the rough texture. Viltė took the opportunity to get closer, placed a gentle hand on its back, and scratched where it couldn’t reach on its own.

‘Is that nice?’ she whispered. ‘Just like my sister. She loved to have her back scratched too. Yes she did. Every night she made me scratch the lower part so she could get to sleep. Like this.’ She traced small, delicate circles in the coat.

‘She would always get so mad at me when I refused.’ Running her hand straight up the sheep’s spine to the base of its neck triggered a sudden flinch. It swung its head around and struck Viltė on the forearm, who fell back onto the gravel with a shock. As if some opaque connection had formed between them, they stared at each other without moving for some time. A sadness in the sheep’s eyes intimated empathy to her; it knew what she was thinking, what 18

she had been through, could even read her darkest thoughts.

‘Irma?’ she asked. # The man was in the fairy light-lined garden of the Willow Tree Café, buying time until Viltė was finished and hoping to ease his hangover with a fry-up – an impossible task, he felt, propped next to a table of young mothers focusgrouping the raising of their winging firstborns – when his phone sounded. A text in the ‘Heins in Rathmines’ group chat.

Ronan: Spewed in the fuckin taxi

The man sniggered to himself.

Mungo: Hahahaa did boss kick ya out the car

No further response. The first of the mothers began to leave. She strapped her baby in and hugged each of the others with high-pitched goodbyes as incomprehensible as they were infuriating to the man. The fear was brewing inside him; he could feel it; things were only going to get worse. He realised his chair was creating a bottleneck in front of the exit too small for a pram, but kept his head down, eyes averted regardless, hoping he had got it wrong and that she would squeeze by without bothering him.

‘Excuse me, would you mind?’ the voice descended. Its improbable friendliness amongst acquaintances devolving into 19

passive aggression just seconds from their company.

He gave a curious grunt and turned to her as if too busy eating to comprehend the problem.

‘Could we scoot by?’

Mustering the faintest of polite nods, he stood up and pushed in his chair. A fucking nappy-ad mum, he thought, watching her pass. He sat back down, conscious that Ronan wasn’t going to text back anytime soon.

Mungo: Back to the leaba

Thanks for having us anyway Noler the place is deadly

Ferdia: No luck with Aine in the end???

He read this and while considering a response placed his phone on the table to finish the bit of sausage left on his plate. Slicing it in half lengthways, he used the flat ends to clean up the remaining egg yolk and tomato sauce before putting them in his mouth.

Naaaah

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Waste of a house deposit really!

Tell ye wha though this HOT Polish cleaner in the gaff is helping me get over it!!

The quick-fire response he’d hoped for didn’t transpire, causing him to question his choice of words. Did it sound sad? Tragic? A transparent attempt to avoid going into the rejection? Surely not with the lads, unless a serious growing up had taken place in the last three months without him.

Not long ago, kissing Áine in a hidden corner of a house party or nightclub was a given. What had changed? On especially paralytic evenings she would even walk around hand in hand with him in plain sight, chatting to their friends and even her cousins when they happened to bump into them. He always hoped one of them would ask her about him, about the nature of their relationship, because he couldn’t do it. Áine isn’t that sort of person. But none of them ever did, they would simply register the hands clasped together and act as if it wasn’t happening. They must know she’s not that sort of person too, he would think.

A vague shame had attached itself to the previous evening, but what exactly it related to was lost in the fog. Áine seemed to be avoiding him all night, chatting with Lucy and What’s-Her-Name and their gay friend. Did he talk to her? He did recall constantly glancing her way at one point, paying no attention to whatever shit Ronan was saying.

Was it too much? An image of her walking across the room and through to the hallway came to him. Yes, he waited a minute and followed her under the pretence of needing a piss himself. The noise of her buckling her belt and running the tap was all there. The feeling of wanting to kick in the door just to be alone with her for one second and the water stopping and retreating a few paces to mock approach when she came out. The passive ‘Oh, hi’ she offered seeing it was him and trying to get passed. Him clasping her hand and pulling her back. The unbearable ‘Please, Áine’ that left his mouth. And the worse ‘Never say “please”’ as she broke free.

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He scrolled to her name in his contacts list and selected the photo next to it. Often he found himself checking it in the middle of the night, excited at the prospect of a new update, a new insight. In the latest, she was smiling on top of a mountain or hill somewhere on the coast with a woman he didn’t know. Both wore hiking gear, backpacks, and large sunglasses, her blonde mane coming out of the top of a Nike headband. The thought that she had a life unknown to him was exhilarating. It was unbearable. He typed a message to her and sent it before he could second-guess himself.

Sorry about last night … and anything else ive done to piss you off. Can we talk about it? I just want to patch things up and for it to be easy when we’re around each other. Like it used to be …

(and I won’t say “please”!!)

Unconsciously he opened the home security app on his phone to stare at the live-feed videos of the surroundings of his cottage. It jolted him awake. He squinted at the screen and at the sound of an incoming text rushed to close it and reopen his messaging app.

Ferdia: Send us a pic. Ive a lethal case of Hangover Horn that needs attending

Relief. He checked in vain to see if Áine had read his message before responding.

The nut is outside talking to a fucking sheep!!

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Looks like shes proposing to the fucking thing!

Mungo: Wha?

Ferdia: You’ve hit the jackpot there Noler

Give er 1 pour moi

The man took a twenty-second screen capture from the camera on Viltė and the sheep and sent the clip to the group. # ‘I miss you, Irma,’ Viltė was saying to the sheep, whose neck was extended and it appeared torn between staying put and making a break for it through her. ‘Nothing has been the same since you…dad could not handle it…he left…I do not know where. And mum was drinking again and went to live with aunt Edita in Utena. I had to go. I had to…anywhere. I hate aunt Edita! But look at me. Where am I? What the fuck is this place? I live in a shipping container in some fat man’s back garden. Why? Why did you…?’ The sheep stomped and swung its head from side to side. ‘No, I am sorry, it is okay,’ she said, propping herself on one knee. ‘You are here now and I can be happy with you, like we are children again. I do not know why, but everyone always makes things so hard. I have to pretend to be what they want. Like this…fucking…this dickhead who owns this house!’ She picked up a pebble and flung it against the wall. The sheep flinched and backed up. ‘Why is it so easy for him? He insults his own dead father! It is like these people like to make living so painful, instead of just…I don’t know…just looking around.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the tall trees swaying in the breeze at the far end of the garden. Only the tops were covered with branches and leaves, leaving the long, narrow, almost arrow-straight trunks exposed. With deliberate focus she absorbed their rhythmic creaking before turning back. ‘With you it is beautiful. The Earth is so clear, so in focus. But when you are gone, it becomes impossible to see and…I just…I cannot – I hate it!’ The sheep bleated and charged. Viltė fell to the 23

side with a cry and it fled back through the hole in the wire.

Alone, she lay in a ball on the gravel with her arms wrapped around the top of her head. The trees stopped creaking; the only sound was the fevered breaths filling her lungs whole. She sniffed and kicked out at space. She cried in silence. She pictured a protective shell blocking out the outside world, a great black enveloping weight. A tiredness came over her and she drifted off and fought hard to pull herself back from that heavy place. Lumbering to her feet, her eyes red and hair tousled, she dragged herself back inside the cottage and located a broom in the tall cupboard next to the oven. Suddenly frantic, she swept at random in the direction of the fireplace, her powerful, chaotic jabs becoming faster and faster until she could contain her anguish no longer and flung the broom at the wooden floor with a scream. Terrible silence seemed to fill the room from the floor up. Her eyes followed it to the ceiling, where a reddish bird with black and white wings was dancing on the skylight. Cloud cover had blown in in the seconds she had been back inside. She breathed her twin sister’s name like testing a foreign sound for the first time. ‘Irma.’ The bird froze. ‘Irma, Irma, Irma.’ She yelled it and it flittered and took off. She wept after it and shifted her blurred gaze to the kitchen, to the contents of the fridge. # The man, at a loss of how, or if, to address what he’d witnessed with Viltė, sped down country roads, testing the inconsistent speed limits. Eighty kilometres per hour over eighteenth-century bridges. One hundred and thirty-six brake horsepower in place of the sedate two they were designed for. Tires levitated above hot tarmac; a barely suppressed desire for death’s promised peace. He skidded to a halt next to a medieval cemetery and inspected its illegible gravestones, the ruins of its round tower. He imagined terrified ancient bodies scrambling up a ladder and slamming its door shut, mainly children. He considered visiting his father’s grave for the first time, something which hadn’t occurred to him before. An alien affection for the old man surfaced, followed by a counter-enmity for the living people in his life. The shallow bonds linking his friends – he doesn’t know them. The frustrated lust that chases Áine, that walking fucking enigma, and grants her hidden depths of meaning without evidence – she’s probably empty, even dead, inside.

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He checked his messages with obsessive regularity while circling the aisles of SuperValu, aware that he should pick up something for later. But what exactly remained frustratingly out of reach, like when he dreams he’s being chased by a bull in an open field only to find his legs trapped in a honey-like substance metres from the fence. Resigning himself to phoning for a Chinese, he moved to leave and glanced at the phone in his hand. Áine was online. His chest leapt, he froze in the automatic doors. She had read the message. He waited for her to begin typing, straining to keep his legs from giving way beneath him, only to watch her go back offline a few seconds later.

He massaged his forehead in the driveway of his cottage, studying the sheep across the field. Besides two piles of dirt either side of the rug, the main room inside was clean and empty. He listened down the hallway, heard foreign singing reverberating in the bathroom, and went back to the fridge for a beer and to keep out of Viltė’s way. Of the six Heineken cans he counted that morning, however, only two remained.

‘No,’ he said under his breath, and took out his phone and entered the messaging app.

SHIIIIIIT i just realised shes raided the fridge and drank all the leftover Heinos from last night!!!!!!!!! Off her face singing in the toilet. What do I do??

Before hitting send, he realised he had typed it into the chat with Áine and in a panic rushed to remove it. But on second thought abandoned all caution and committed to the error. He edged in silence towards the bathroom. Viltė, who up until that point was barely audible, burst into a crescendo of la la las culminating in an upbeat-sounding pop melody sung in what he assumed was Polish.

‘Don’t,’ he whispered aloud to himself, his eyes shut tight with a grimace. ‘Just don’t.’

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A fit of coughing cut short her song.

‘Hello?’ he called from the other side of the door, and all noise in the bathroom stopped. ‘You okay?’

Viltė cleared her throat.

‘Uh…yes…’ she replied as if engaged in something of great effort, and there was a squeak of runners on tile and a bang.

‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘Did you fall?’

With no response, he told her he was coming in, pushed open the door, and peered through the head-sized gap. Viltė, fully clothed, was lying slouched in the waterless, freestanding bath, a forceful right hand covering her mouth, her face pink in fits of suffocating laughter, and beer pouring onto the floor from the can just out of reach of her dangling left arm.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he said. ‘Are you drunk? Get out of my bath!’

‘I’m sorry…please…!’ Viltė replied, her laughter mutating into a disturbing bawl.

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‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, frightened by her sudden turn. She buried her head in her knees, unable to answer. ‘Eh…’ He stepped into the room, picked up the Heineken from the floor, placed it in her hand, and wrapped her limp fingers around it. ‘Here, have it. It’s okay. I don’t care,’ he said. He let go and it slipped from her grasp, this time landing upright. He took a step back, out of ideas, and considered the scene: the drunk, pathetic, beautiful figure hunched in his bath and the image of her talking to a sheep on the ground outside. She isn’t afraid to wear her suffering. To own it. He felt envious, angry at himself, at everyone doing all they can to keep their inner life inner, like their lives are a complex web of questions without answers. A giant fucking waste of time, all of them.

Gratitude rushed over him, carrying with it a sense of self-ease he’d missed all day. All year. He picked up the can and this time drained the beer himself.

Viltė attempted to lift herself from the bath, one arm supporting her weight and the other concealing her face.

‘Don’t worry,’ he told her, and he crushed the can and dropped it on the floor. ‘You can take all the time you need there.’ He stepped into the empty side of the bath, took hold of her arms, and she let him ease her back down. ‘It'll be okay.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

Sitting into the bowl opposite her, the man drew his knees up to his abdomen in the same vein and ruminated on Viltė with a fixed expression of compassion on his face in case she decided to look up. When the ping of an incoming message sounded on his phone.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: CODY AUSTIN Cody Austin, is a 20 something year old student from west Belfast. Cody has had only two previously published works, Cody began writing poetry in the last 3 months, they like 80s bops and have a dog named goose :-)

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Resurrection My heart was outside my body I renounced my control and command I worshipped the myth of you that I created. But I rise from the ashes left in your wake.

The body I dwelled in when I loved you decomposing In the torrents, the thunder and ache.

I speak my own name over my grave, standing upon unconquerable land.

Resurrecting myself.

The same ecstasy and destruction as when Eve succumbed to the serpent.

Cradling my heart in my own chest, Cleansed in the current, roused in the knowledge I am no longer condemned to love you. My tongue free from its chain.

The sunlight shines on my honeysuckle skin and I’m ready to trespass again

(Cody Austin)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: TERRY BRINKMAN Terry Has been painting for over forty five years. Has Five Amazon E- Books. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed, Jute Milieu Lit and Utah Life Magazine. Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, Tide and UN/Tethered Anthologies, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster and in the Glove.

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Sonnet CCCLVIII Nimble past clay brown damp brick She propped her Umbrella blocking the sun Carried their closets earthly skeleton Lightly on the turf silence of a coiled lick Slightly blue glancing navel of cord arsenic Lay neatly over coffin-hand simpleton Turning awe in her silence phenomenon Died a bit after dark working on Arithmetic Masked to read a name on high Walked unheeded along the green Palace Blood covered Irish Nose-rag glorify They are all there waiting for Alice Hand broke old Irish’s heart pie Loki down a coal shoot gardener’s Chalice

(Terry Brinkman)

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Sonnet CCCLXXIV Seeks great east of the sun zoom The art of being your grandfather’s backbone Say of it child in the storm cornerstone First play west of the moon’s cloakroom What COVID lost was given back at the Tomb Experience material and moral will repel postpone Grates hue attempts to fore-tell benign tombstone Public enlightenment commentator room With what she said goes the gap Unhappy relation with the Ghost woman’s Zen The poet was rejected from her nap Drop in on Lieutenant Keyes asleep in his den Bazaar sore paw bear mishap Swerved to the right wine in my Oxygen

(Terry Brinkman)

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Hardwick Musk perfume Whey’s ashes Olivet’s breeze Chicago stockyards Mud splashed motley slush Whirring whistle Bull by the horns Nutshell trespass Ruddy wool Razor shells Treading soul Cake sand doughty Weasel rats Delta of Cassiopeia Livid seas State of damnation Fate of the soul Utter COVID triviality

(Terry Brinkman)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: EVA ASTON Eva is a 19-year-old writer from Belfast.

They been writing for a few years now and take inspiration from what it's like growing up in Belfast. Her poems are often quite reflective and just explore ordinary things like first loves and moving away from home; Eva finds the sea to be a great place of inspiration as it's sort of scary and exciting at the same time - much like these feelings of growing up.

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Power play

What could make the brown eyed girl so blue?

Tears make the blue eyes prettier.

Small salty rivers down to your lips where you chew me up and spit me out.

Keep me locked in that garden Amongst the roses in your cheeks and wall me in with strong words and light kisses.

Two heads clashing together as they morph into one, two figures indistinguishable as I dig my nails into your back.

So finish your whiskey and I’ll swallow the glass.

Craving the lyrics of ballads unsung and severing ties with my own sharp tongue.

(Eva Aston)

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A sailor’s knot If the time that passes widens the distance between two halves, Then we cannot slow the inevitable parting of our paths.

As if the tide came between us, Dredging up everything from the seabed below.

Two sailors never saw how they could Grow up and outgrow.

Both boats must follow their course one to the East and one to the West.

Throwing caution to the wind, their desire put to rest.

Yet the tide moves fast The journey will end.

Let’s hope the sea brings us back around my friend.

(A sailor’s knot, also known as a Celtic sailing knot, is made up of two pieces of intertwined rope tied tightly together. They were traditionally to be taken on long voyages at sea as a means to remember a loved one.)

(Eva Aston) 37

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: KENNETH HICKEY Kenneth Hickey was born in 1975 in Cobh, Co. Cork Ireland. He served in the Irish Naval Service between 1993 and 2000. His poetry and prose has been published in various literary journals in Ireland, the UK and the United States.

His writing for theatre has been performed in Ireland, the UK, New York and Paris. He has won the Eamon Keane Full Length Play Award as well as being shortlisted for The PJ O’Connor Award and the Tony Doyle Bursary. His work in film has been screened at the Cork and Foyle Film Festivals. He holds a BA and MA in English Literature both from University College Cork. He still resides in Cork.

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Der Fischer Sic Erat Scriptum Love is smoke In the twilight mist Above the seaside town which defies the stars He met the girl Already sick and pale with grief The Girl A fair Sun risen to kill the envious moon.

Ending all wars After the war To live again in these wild woods forlorn?

A muffled scream On a crackling long distance Darkness visible Telephone line He sings of chaos and night eternal She laboured for you....

Now it's - Labour for her The uncharted past like the uncharted future Everything has returned Sirius, and the spider Like a mother mourning a child A first trimester loss Slow suburban suicide Amongst the sea of trees Burn the pages of an unpublished novel Forest of ghosts Tower of waves Waste worthy words on worthless ones Japanese branches bare strange fruit Breath roaring like thunder Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh Here is a strange and bitter crop A golden bridge also stands After the days of roses.

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And still the beloved holds me Bright Beatrice Time collapses A memory sitting at the loom Weaving a wedding dress For another wandering warrior Penelope searches the sea For sign of ships Tuning the sea area forecast Silent scratching static And silence Only wrecks remain Ears filled with wax To quieten sirens arias But whispers break through It echoes still her wondrous song The night is dark and very long (Kenneth Hickey)

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Midnight

I. CAPITULATION

And in the end it will not hold A failure built of increments The victory of the present Over the memory muddled past And formative future Our will would not fulfil.

The April rose is infested Aphids come in many colours.

Rose Clear Ultra Controls Fungus.

Prevents Future Attacks.

II. –THE GIRL ON THE HILL

We were different creatures then In the twilight past forever dying.

The sun of St. Patrick’s Day shines too brightly Allowing no shadow Where lies usually wait.

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I wish I understood love.

III. – THE SITUATION

We are all embers in the void Singular perpetual dying stars Blinking repeatedly against the darkness.

Utterly alone.

Our children the dubious legacy Inheritors of our inconsistent incoherence.

Morbid morality.

Sing them songs by Charlie Chaplin To ease their feverish dreams.

(Kenneth Hickey)

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Wild Camping Woke with a hammer head ache, in my father’s camper van, a wilting Winnebago, at the centre of Listowel’s large square.

Arc eye itching.

Turned my head away, listened to the Kerry rain’s pitter patter on the cold tin roof.

No sign of cats.

My mother’s voice Will you never have done… revolving it all? saying she wakes up tired.

And knew what she meant. rock her off stop her eyes Neck sore from where I forgot the pillow, Remembering the sleeping bag was hard enough.

My nadir almost complete.

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The chemical toilet worked hard with three adults reviving to the grey morning.

Dreamt of us as Ovid’s slaves, Beloved, and wished the world away.

A wild camping recluse.

Skipped breakfast and headed for Tralee, The rain rushing to meet me from the reeks.

(Kenneth Hickey)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: DEAN BOYCE

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The Back Road Everyone has their walk.

Found on no map, Told, to no cartographer, Imprinted, only, on memory.

With slurry patches, patterned.

Dew soaked deeks.

Fiery whins, flame the edges.

The light lapping of the sheugh.

Minding that time you slipped.

The shivery, damp smell.

A sludgey sock.

Wrung out, brown and boggy.

Keep her between the hedges, Of the fallen in edges.

Blinded by a westerly glare.

Cut by a northerly chill.

The evening sun drenches, A steepled silhouette.

Or the bite of a winter's morning, Blanketed in a fresh fog.

Webbed snowdrops spring.

Leaves crack and crunch.

Drains dry. Dung crisp.

Longing here.

As I toil on foreign soil For where time slows, just enough, To watch life live.

(Dean Boyce)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: GAVIN BOURKE

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Gavin Bourke grew up, in the suburb of Tallaght, in West Dublin. Married to Annemarie, living in County Meath, he holds a B.A. in Humanities, from Dublin City University, an M.A. Degree, in Modern Drama Studies and a Higher Diploma in Information Studies, from University College Dublin. His work broadly covers, nature, time, memory, addiction, mental health, human relationships, the inner and outer life, creating meaning and purpose, politics, contemporary and historical social issues, injustice, the human situation, power and its abuse, absurdism, existentialisms, human psychology and behaviour, truth and deception, the sociological imagination, illness, socioeconomics, disability, inclusivity, human life, selfishness and its consequences, as well as urban and rural life, personal autonomy, ethics, commerce, grand schemes and the technological life, in English and to a lesser extent, the Irish Language.

He was shortlisted for The Redline Book Festival, Poetry Award in 2016, for A Rural Funeral. Unanswered Call was published, in the September 2019 issue, of Crossways Literary Magazine. Sword Damocles, Falling, was published in the October issue, of A New Ulster, in 2019. He was invited, to read, at the Siarsceál Literary Festival, in October 2019.

Louisburgh, County Memory, was highly commended, in The Johnathon Swift, Creative Writing Awards, 2019. Our Tree and Getting On, were published in, Qutub Minar Review, International Literary Journal, in 2019. He has worked, in public service, for over twenty years. His first book, of poetry (sixty pages) was shortlisted, for the International Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK) Full Fat Collection, Poetry Competition, in 2019. The Power in Abuse, Beyond Bone, While the Jackdaws, Watch On and Fair Trade, were published in 2019, in A New Ulster. His poem Ag Iarraidh a Churam, Mo Intinn, Bhun Os Cionn, was shortlisted, for The Manchester, Irish Language Group, International Poetry Award, 2019.

He won, the international, Nicely Folded Paper Trois, International Poetry Collection, Competition, in 2020, for his book, Towards Human, which will be, published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK) in April 2021, worldwide.

The Past is Present Tense, Transcending Mind Movements, The Breaking Waters of Catharsis, The Never Heard and The Death of The Shepherd, were published, in the Decade Edition, of A New Ulster, in 2019. His poems Aloneness, Underneath A Wicker Cross, A Life in Our Times and At Mercies, featured in the April 2020 issue, of A New Ulster. His poem Shivered, featured, in A New Ulster, in Spring 2020. A Rural Funeral, was published in the U.S. literary journal, Writers in the Know, in 2020.

Before and After, Johnathan Swift Was Born, Malaises, My New Eyes, Turning Corners and The Mornings After Admission, were published, in A New Ulster, in 2020. A Life in A Time was published, in the U.S. journal Tiny Seed Literary Journal, in 2020. The End of Their Affair, and Beyond Bone, While the Jackdaws Watch On (2020 Version) were published in Poesis Literary Journal, as well as In the Dead Heat, in July 2020. Dream of Consciousness was published, in E-Ratio, Postmodern literary Journal, in 2020. A Mourning Burial, Through the Rain and several other poems are published in Prachya Review, Bangladesh. The End of Their Affair and The Past Coming Through, to The Present Moment, were published in Qutub Minar Review, in 2020. Before Love Was Legal, was longlisted, for the, Ken Saro-Wiwa, poetry Award, in July 2020 and is featured, in a university anthology, published, in November 2020.

Off Life-Support is published, in an anthology, created by the Siarscéal Literary Festival, 2020. His third poetry collection, Answered Call (81 Pages) was shortlisted, for The Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK), Selected or Neglected International Poetry Collection Competition, in May 2020. Dreaming in The Liminal and What If have been published in Poesis International Literary Journal, in autumn 2020. Looking for An Eye in The Sun will be published, in Chiron Review, housed at Yale University, in November 2020. Anew, was published in Iris Literary Journal, in Texas, U.S, in 2020. Travelling Community and Eye Opening will be published in Qutub Minar Review, International Literary Journal, available worldwide.

In the Dead Heat, The Slowest Walk, Dreaming in The Liminal and Our Child, were published in Poesis Literary Journal in 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in Writers in The Know, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in October Hill Literary Journal, New York City, October 2020. Sea Change was published in Litterateur Defining World, literary journal, in India, in September 2020. He will also be publishing, a single author collection, in India, in 2021. Aloneness was published, in the American Literary Journal, Brief Wilderness, in September 2020. Rhapsody for The Future was published in a new issue, of Writers in The Know, U.S. Cut with Blunt Knaves and Inflow appeared in The Non-Conformist Magazine, in September 2020. His ninety-page manuscript, Anew, has been accepted for publication, by Atmosphere Press as well as, his manuscript, What If? in North America, for publication in 2021, worldwide. Towards the Headlights, As the Evening Fell and Dovetailing, were published in Poesis Journal in Autumn 2020.

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Eyes Gone Black, is published, in the current issue, of From Whispers to Roars, Literary Journal, An Arts and Literary Magazine. As the Evening Fell, will Appear, in the current issue of, Tiny Seed Journal, U.S. The Heavy Weight Champion and Crow Lives On, were published in The Non-Conformist, 2020. Cut with Blunt Knaves, Inflow and Broken Dolls, appear in, the Autumn Edition of, the U.S. literary journal, Harbinger. Was So Sudden, is published, in The Non-Conformist Magazine, U.S., December 2020.

He has poetry, published, in the latest issue of, Qutub Minar Review. Purely Malignant, What If, Overhead and Dreaming in The Liminal, are published, in the current issue of A New Ulster. Living with Death will be published, in The Nonconformist, in Autumn 2020. He was shortlisted and subsequently, commended, in the Jonathan Swift, International, Creative Writing Awards, The Night, She Held My Hand, in October 2020. Enduring Beasts is published, in the current issue of U.S. Journal, Shift, A Journal of Literary Oddities. His epic poem (Eight Pages) Unremarkable has been awarded, a place, for the Proverse International Poetry Prize, Hong Kong, 2020 and will be published in China, in April 2020, with a launch, taking place, in Hong Kong. Dublin is Here, A thirteen-page, epic poem, is published, in Modern Literature, in India, in the current issue.

Gavin was highly commended and awarded second place, for an unpublished manuscript, in the Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK), Local Dialects, International Poetry Manuscript, Competition, in November 2020. Confucius For King, is published, by Litterateur Defining World, in India, November 2020. Still Birth will be published in Poets Choice, India in 2021. Two Way Mirror, The Lighthouse, on The Green, Rain at Night, The End of The Summer, How to Be? and Let the Day Begin are published, in the current issue of Modern Literature, in India. The Most Brazen Wins will be published soon by Harbinger (U.S.) in 2021. Hadn’t Noticed the Birds for Years, is published in the current issue, of Wingless Dreamer (U.S.) and was a finalist for their International Poetry Award, 2020. Endless will be published by La Piccioletta Barca, in February 2021. First Tour will feature in, Better Than Starbucks, in 2021. The Night, She Held My Hand, is published, in the current issue, of Writers in The Know, Minneapolis, U.S. Living with Death is published in the current issue, of The Non-Conformist. Late in The Day will be published in The Non-Conformist, in 2021. Mirroring in Time’s Eyes and Continuums will be published in Poesis in Spring 2021. Morrison Archetype will be published in October Hill Literary Journal, New York City, in February 2021. He was shortlisted, for a recent, single poem, international poetry contest, with Hedgehog Poetry Press UK, 2021. Crossed Lines, Looking Back, Bone Dead and Soon Gone and A Meeting with The Riverman are published in the current issue of A New Ulster, 2021. To See If I Was Alive will be published by South Dakota State Poetry Society in February 2021. He is currently, working on his fourteenth, poetry collection. He begins an M.A. in Philosophy, in 2021, which will be followed, by a PHD, in 2023. Gavin is also, a multi-instrumentalist and has been a songwriter, composer and guitar teacher, for the past, thirty-five years. He plays Classical/Spanish guitar, acoustic-electric guitar, bass guitar, jazz guitar, electric lead guitar, banjo and mandolin. He has written songs, music and lyrics, recorded albums, collaborated with many musicians and songwriters and has performed, in venues, all over Dublin.

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A Snapshot

…I’m sorry, I’ll turn it down, please, I’m sorry, they didn’t say anything, they were just laughing, that’s all, please, my wrist is red, ah, come on, my chin will be bruised, please, I can’t breathe, your choking me, please, ok, they were just laughing, after you left, ok, ok, they asked have you, a personality disorder, they think you’ve mental problems and wonder if you wear a butt plug in work, because they said, you burst out laughing, at your desk at work and then fall asleep, please, they, they just think, your really creepy and you make them all, feel really uncomfortable, that’s all, didn’t say anything else, please, ah my throat, ok, ok, ok, they don’t trust you and they think, you spy on their work and masturbate in the staff toilets and always give out, about them and call them names, because you secretly know, they hate you, they asked if your adopted and if your sterile, because one of your ex-girlfriends, told someone, you never came and were always, talking about men, ah please, no, I won’t tell anyone and I won’t ever come out, with your colleagues again, ah, ah, ah, ok, I’ll use the make-up you bought me, to cover it all up, as usual…

(Gavin Bourke)

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Inhuman

Bashed, torn apart, beaten to a pulp, cut bad, given the last rites, attacked, smashed up, hit over the head, dragged down a lane, kicked his head in, battered him, senseless, one time.

Chased the homeless, on trains, for pennies, dodging, meat-cleavers and broken, bottles of wine, all, for the good life, for his family and himself, a disgraceful, money lender, inhumane and absolutely, dirt mean.

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(Gavin Bourke) Mattress Mick

Do you remember, Mattress Mick?

Ah, Mattress Mick, ah for Jesus, Indeed, and I do, Some man, Mattress Mick, Ah yeah, Remember him, on the TV, Ah, yeah, you mean, the add, Ah he was great, Mattress Mick, Some Man, some buck, some tulip, Ah, he was a legend, Ah he was, He’s the king, really, He sure is, Ah he is, Where you ever, in his shop?

No. Me neither, Ah, me neither, I was once, I’ d no money then, though, Same here, I was in it once, was broke through, 52

So was I, gas, Let’s get them in, Yeah, let’s do it, I’m ordering the next round, Let’s have a toast, to the one, the only, To the great man himself, Mattress Mick!

(Gavin Bourke)

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So I shot Myself in The Face

I went to the garden and it didn’t go so well, So I shot Myself in The Face.

I went to the shops and it didn’t go so well, So I shot Myself in The Face.

I made a phone call and it didn’t go so well, So I shot Myself in The Face.

I left the house and it didn’t go so well, So I shot Myself in The Face.

I walked passed a parked car and in the windowpane, I saw a reflection, of my intact face.

I wondered then, was my memory false?

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(Gavin Bourke)

The Writer

Known, as a fine poet, often, wrote under lamplight, the green-shaded type, sometimes, referred to, as a Strindberg.

Scribbled and typed, fervently, under a grandfather clock, on an antique, ebony bureau, often dashed, to the drawing room, in the throes, of inspiration, during the night, with a quill and ink, waking his long, suffering wife.

He once, woke her up, to ask, for her mascara, to write, some wonderful lines, on a washboard,

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before, they were snatched, from memory.

He published, a few books, and amassed, a prestigious reputation, in some regions, quarters and areas, unfortunately, his writing, was very poor and he had, absolutely, no talent!

(Gavin Bourke)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ALEX SMITH

Alex lives in South Africa and has had four novels published by Penguin Random House's Umuzi imprint in South Africa, and a couple of other novels and several stories published by other local SA publishers.

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If I Tell You My Name the World Will End

She starts at 51° 35' 10.932", -0° 8' 42.2268" The key dangles from ring adorned with a green enamel and silver shamrock, for luck, and a blue glass orb, said to ward of 'the evil eye'. She locks the front door of her basement rental in Muswell Hill for the last time. She is now officially asset-less, unemployed, unengaged and free of trappings: only a white band of untanned skin remains where a yellow diamond once sparkled on her left hand and there is a single charm, the world, hanging from a modest gold chain around her right wrist.

The key she hides under a potted Clementine tree at the door, as agreed with the landlord. Then she gathers up a lime green backpack and, happy to be travelling light, she sets off with a new name, dumping four cut up credit cards into a bin in the road outside her former home.

He travels around the World from 27° 11' 15.18", 88° 29' 57.375" to 51° 34' 5.1672", 0° 0' 50.5584" Thick, dark, gray paint clings to the door - a fan of six petal-shaped glass panes makes a half-moon window as its crown. One petal is broken by a hole the size of a small pebble thrown with some velocity. Tiziano knocks. From inside comes a sound of footfalls on cement stairs. Tiziano smooths back a wave of silver hair and hugs his leather bag more closely to his hip.

‘Who’s there?’ a curt female voice asks.

‘My name is Tiziano Amantea, and I believe you are Roubeena Jeetah?’

'What of it?'

He pauses and glances down at the tips of his bespoke tan leather shoes. ‘This is will sound unorthodox, but do you know a person by the name of Heba Rafat?’ He remembers the train 58

compartment door opening and a young woman weighed down by a lime green backpack and various shopping bags.

As she takes up a seat opposite him, she says, 'This train is going to Istanbul, right?'

'Never heard of any Heba Rafat.'

'She has freckles, green eyes, this tall,' he indicates about 5ft5. 'In her mid-thirties?'

Roubeena Jeetah remains silent. He wills her to remember, but as with the previous dozen or so doors, no luck.

The next door is fatter than usual almost, but not quite, a square. Tiziano regards the glass mosaic four that declares the building’s position on Lilly Street. He wonders if whoever opens the twelve-panelled wooden door will undo the mystery and put an end to loss. He plucks at the collar of his cream-coloured linen shirt before pressing the bell.

‘Go away,’ says the woman, close enough to open, but unwilling. ‘I saw you coming. I don’t want to buy or donate anything, I don’t believe in God and I’m not voting for your party.’

Tiziano can’t help a smile. 'You must be Riva Khalid?'

'Are you the police?'

'Nothing like that.'

She eventually thaws enough to let him speak, but she insists she does not know anyone named Heba Rafat. He remembers the young woman offering to share a spinach and feta filled Gozleme with him, telling him with wonder about a hike she'd done the day before along the red cliffs overlooking the Goreme Valley.

How in the middle of a landscape of craters and caves she came across a man selling fresh pressed pomegranate juice.

She asks about the book of poetry he has beside him called ‘Myth of the Blaze’ by George Oppen and he reads her the first poem in the book, it’s called ‘Latitude, Longitude’. They talk like this all the way to Istanbul, she speaks more than one language and so does he: they have English, Italian, Spanish and French in common. But she is also fluent in Irish, German and Dutch. She tells him a story of each of the five charms on her bracelet: the world, she

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received from her father when she was a child, on the eve he died of cancer at their home in Dublin, the others she has chosen from each of the cities she has sojourned in since leaving her most recent home in London. She is easy to talk to. She speaks about her father and Tiziano finds he is able to unburden his guilt about his wife and daughter in a way he has not been able to do ever before.

There is a wrought iron security gate protecting the blue stiles, rails, mullions and panels of this unusually tall blue door on Churchill Street. No.188 is the first of the multitude of doors he has called at that has an Arabic-style, wide tiled step. Stone, blue and cream diamonds create a pleasing geometry of abstract flowers. It reminds him of a time spent in Iran before the fall of the Shah.

He cannot avoid a thought for the complexities of the politics in Iran: his wife and her parents were forced to flee from Iran because of their religious beliefs. There is no bell and he cannot reach the door beyond the gate, so he takes out a turquoise Cartier pen and taps it against the bars; the clang he creates echoes in the narrow vestibule with the tiled floor.

'I have something that belongs to one Heba Rafat,’ explains Tiziano to the woman with luscious red hair who opens the door and releases a breeze of sweet and spicy sandalwood incense.

Her name is Lara (but he has no surname).

‘Never met anyone called Heba Rafat. ’ His heart aches and he is in the chaos of the station at Istanbul. Heba hugs him. ‘You are going to be okay,’ she says. ‘You are a wonderful man, and I’m sure you were a wonderful husband and father.’ And he, surprised to be overcome with emotion, fakes a sneeze to cover up needing a handkerchief to blot tears from his eyes. He wants to ask her for a contact number, but he doesn’t want to come across as lecherous. Instead he gives her his name card. She admires his family crest and tucks it into an address book which she then drops into one of her shopping bags. ‘I’ll send you a postcard,’ she promises. ‘I don’t do email, but I love choosing nice stamps and sending postcards.’ She hugs him again. ‘Let me carry your things to the bus at least,’ he insists. Finally, she relents.

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Quickly calculating, having now taken in the stranger’s fine vestments, the woman with red hair, Lara (with no surname), adds: ‘For a small sum I can tell your fortune.’

After two years’ searching, it is the twenty-ninth door, and Tiziano is close to desperate, but he has never believed in fate or fortune tellers. The search for Heba has turned into an irresistible mystery to this former Middle East news correspondent for a French news magazine. The more people he finds who deny knowing her, the more determined he is to locate her. ‘Another time,’ he says to Lara, with a smile. He bows his head ever so slightly. ‘Thank you for the offer, but I have work to attend to.’ He pats the soft Vachetta leather briefcase with wild board hide lining that hangs from his left shoulder.

After a break of a week, the next door is inauspicious: weathered planks, bolted in three places. There is nobody to answer. With his pen, on a page of thick cream stationary bearing his name and contact details, he writes: For: Danijela Milenkocic. If you know Heba Rafat, please contact me. I will call again.

Danijela never does contact him.

Time passes. He decides to give up looking for Heba Rafat.

‘Thank heavens! It’s a ridiculous quest,’ says his barber, who has been following Tiziano’s lack of progress with bewilderment.

A month later Tiziano reconsiders.

‘You have to understand,’ he tells the barber, ‘I have something that belongs to her and it is my duty to find her and return it.’

The barber rolls his eyes.

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So it is, Tiziano finds himself peering through the mirrored glass pane of a red door belonging to a night club, but it is closed until 8pm. He returns at 7pm, sure that preparations will need to be made.

‘We are not open yet,’ says a cleaner who resents his early arrival.

‘I am a journalist. Is there a Suzanne Mills who works here please?'

'Ms Mills owns the place.'

'Can I speak with her?'

The cleaner narrows her eyes. 'Wait here.' She closes and locks the door.

Minutes pass. Prompted by a strengthening icy wind, Tiziano fastens the buttons on his pure cashmere coat. There is sound of the lock turning. A Chinese woman with rimless glasses, houndstooth trousers and a well-tailored jacket appears.

'I'm Suzie. Come in,' she says. 'You're doing a story?' Before Tiziano can answer, she snaps her fingers with nails polished aubergine, to beckon a waiter. ‘What’ll you have?’ she asks Tiziano.'

They drink fruit cocktails, she explains that her mother was Chinese and her father British and they discuss Tibet, of all places, as she is on the brink of departing for a hiking expedition to the Everest Base Camp. Tiziano has been there twice in his life. But when he dares to ask his cherished question, she replies, ' Heba Rafat? No, I don't think I know her, although many people come here, so I may have met her?' Suzanne Mills shrugs. 'Why?' 'I met her in Turkey,' he says. This doesn't have any impact on Suzanne Mills.

He is in the lobby of his palatial hotel overlooking the Bosphoros. Looking down, he notices he still has amongst his things an unknown shopping bag. He looks inside it and there is a book of poetry by George Oppen, an embroidered table cloth, and a red leather address book with 'Heba Rafat 0824976669' embossed on the bottom

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right corner. Of course he tries phoning the number, but it doesn't work. And since his name card is still tucked inside it, he will never receive a postcard from her either.

'I'd like to buy you dinner, when I'm back,' says Suzanne Mills, last of the M's, and she asks for his number. Tiziano gives her his card.

After another twenty doors, No.73 Mornington Road is the end of the line for Tiziano. The door is pale green, a standard six-panel door eighty inches tall. There are three stairs leading to the door and a railing. The knocker is brass, not lavish, but well crafted and comfortable to hold.

Tiziano gives three raps. He steps down a stair and observes how the great sandstones of the wall around the door have been painted white, but probably should have been kept in their natural form.

A pity, he thinks. And the woman, Zulfah, who answers has a baby boy on her hip. She too claims not to know Heba Rafat and she says it is feeding time, so if he doesn't mind, she must leave it there.

'Are you sure,' Tiziano insists. 'Are you absolutely sure?'

Her baby gives him a two-toothed smile.

'Carino,' says Tiziano, touched. 'Please,' he looks up at Zulfah who is still a stair above him.

He opens his briefcase and takes out the address book. 'Zulfah with-no-surname, you are the last person in her address book.' He holds it up to show her and is freshly impressed by the beauty of Heba's handwriting. Zulfah's baby grabs at the book.

Tiziano plays along, engaging in a good-natured tug of war with the boy. 'What's his name?'

'Naison.' She is impatient.

'Naison, if my daughter had lived beyond your age...' he allows the child to take Heba's address book in his little dimpled hand. Tiziano is consumed in memories again. More to himself than to either Zulfah or Naison he says, '...she would have spoken six languages and hiked red cliffs

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in Goreme like Heba, she would have travelled in trains across Turkey and the world.' He closes his eyes. 'Her name was Eva. I think my daughter would have grown to be a woman just like Heba Rafat. Their ages are similar. Even their looks. The first moment I saw Heba, I was startled, she looked so similar to my wife. I thought I'd seen a ghost.' He frowns and opens his eyes. 'They were killed in a car accident thirty years ago: my wife and baby daughter. I was supposed to have been with them, driving, going to the coast for a weekend at the beach, but I had injured my back.' He smiles at Zulfah as if finally resigned to failing in the quest to find Heba Rafat. 'Maybe for the last two years I've been chasing a ghost. Nobody in that whole book seems to know her.'

As if in agreement, baby Naison, begins to gum the book’s corners.

'Perhaps we do not know Heba Rafat,' says Zulfah, moved by what some men will do for a child (while others, like the father of her son, are not in the least bothered). 'But I know someone who has been to that place you mentioned.' She plucks the address book from her son's mouth 'I once got a postcard from Goreme,' she says. 'But the woman who sent it was Tara. She was a Irish, a manager at a translation company – I did some work for her, translating into Farsi and Arabic ...

Would you hold Nais for a moment.' She doesn't wait for an answer before handing the plump and willing baby to Tiziano. ‘I got four postcards from her and then they stopped. That was a few years ago.’ Flipping through the pages of the book, she nods, 'Yes, yes, yes. It must be her. I recognise at least three other names here, also translators. Maybe this is Heba Rafat's address book, but perhaps the addresses do not belong to Heba Rafat?'

Although, Tiziano hears the strange riddle, it is only vaguely, he is smitten with the gurgling baby in his arms and delighted to discover that wiggling his eyebrows provokes fat giggles from boy.

They cross paths for the last time at 18° 11' 56.472", 98° 38' 50.91"

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'It is the story of a childless king,' says Tiziano, enthralled. He whispers so as not to disturb the other audience members, mostly locals, who are awed by the spectacle of shadows and gongs. 'The king promises his god he will slaughter forty bulls if only he can have a child.'

Zulfah, swathed in a turquoise scarf, squeezes her husband's hand. She indicates silently to Tiziano to look at their son.

Light shines behind a tall white screen, a doorway to old magic, and delicately cut-out Buffalo-hide puppets cast intricate shadows, fearsome and exquisite. Naison's eyes are wide. He is hypnotised by the shadows and the lurking demons and good fairies.

The story of the childless king unfolds to an audience seated in a semicircle in a field surrounded by banana palms and passion fruit trees.

The Amantea family are in Thailand. Thunder overhead promises a tropical storm, but no drop falls yet.

Opposite the Amantea's, in the last seat of the circle and wrapped in a lime green scarf, a woman sits unaware that she is fiddling with a gold world hanging from a modest chain around her right wrist; the world is one in a crowd of twenty-seven other charms. The lamplight is weak, even so the woman recognises Zulfah, a former colleague, still as beautiful as ever, and then she recognises the sweet man she spent a whole day talking to on the train from Goreme to Istanbul.

That was years ago. How extraordinary! She can't remember his name. He looks old now, but still handsome. Vaguely she wonders how it is that he knows Zulfah. And if she wasn't due to catch the night bus to Myanmar she would have gone to say hello to them – to ask him if he by any chance ever found an address book after their train trip together, but she isn't one to stay in a place for too long.

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The shadow stories continue into the night, but she leaves to catch her night bus shortly after a radiant fairy bestows her blessing on the hero, whose name is Cheke. He asks the fairy's name.

'If I tell you my name,' says the fairy to the shadow hero, 'the world will end.'

(Alex Smith)

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ELAINE LAMBERT

Elaine Lambert was born in Northern Ireland and spent a lot of her childhood between the two farms of her grandparents in Fermanagh and Tyrone. It is the almost forgotten cultures of these places which have remained with her and continue to inspire her today. As a secondary school Head of English in both England and Kenya for 26 years, she now tutors from home and writes both poetry and children's books.

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Origins I come from a church pew; the neck aches from upward attention to the velvet cloth of burning bush overhanging the pulpit, where he leans his elbows and his notes rise and fall like a sport’s whistle.

A judge’s gavel, sending me off at a sprint to a slammed door.

I come from a Sunday School, where the teacher’s hat quivers with net and feather. My fingers itch to fish there.

The superintendent calls. Our bibles under our arms, we draw our swords, find the verse. The felt people are flattened on with the swipe of his hand.

Pressed into place – the disgraceful woman at the well made welcome and the animals listen as she sins no more.

I come from a shoe-cupboard, where the shelves are stacked against me. The coats bulge out with fat impatience.

The DM boots shout.

I come from a long kitchen table, where the photographs are shared.

Quiet gasps of laughter at the days in woods and forest parks.

I come from a garden of pure trees, sentinel tall, they parade along the fence, so I cannot look out, and can hide in their perfume, listening to the people walking our boundary.

I come from a walk through farm lanes, where celandine and fern wink and wave.

The banks are hard to climb, for moss and tree roots make me stumble, but the path is lit, and the way home is smoothed out, like her hand over a shirt as she works it with steam.

(Elaine Lambert)

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The Lane The pot-holed lane down to Granny’s, full of stories of those country feet, that traipsed up, and down there: running the cattle, hiding in hedges, from fathers with hazel rods.

And horses with rag and bone dragged behind, clattering over every bump, creating a symphony of metal percussion raining, all along the hedgerows.

Manure pancakes splatter all along, like round, muddy faces, as if a dozen children have fallen in the bog and are smiling at their mischief. Unmended, left to disarray.

The stones crumble under tractor wheel.

Mutter as we stutter up in our car.

(Elaine Lambert)

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Joy

The wind blows itself out, and the season dies at its own feet.

Exhausted, all the leaves shaken down into a brown mulch, their colours all spent, drained of life.

And the great horse chestnut bruised in its bareness, shamed in the fingering air, exposed to every revealing play of the sun, creeping over its branches, at each new day.

There is no hurry to redress this manikin, and it cringes to the winter stares, that run up and down its limbs, like squirrels nesting in every hollow.

All the while, through the half-lit days, the grey branches ache with longings for the colour to return.

Down in its roots, a calling rumbles up, until its very throat is marching with the memory of how things were before.

And yet, the bare, bold, exposed, old-looking tree is beautiful just now – stark – and just so.

No fairy lights, no birds apart from an odd crow.

And even he lights the heights of it with a mournful caw, that somehow echoes a joy, more raw, 70

than the bubbling mirth of spring – deeper than colour and richer – joy is a retreat into the heart’s core: the dark tree’s centre, where the aged rings collect around me, tuning up my inner orchestra, with an ancient music I’d not heard before, though it was always there.

(Elaine Lambert)

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Runway

‘There is no runway,’ the pilot said. ‘But we’re going to have a go.’

And so he shook us down into a foot of sleet and snow.

And all the plane applauded as if a great orchestra had just sounded the finale of its symphony.

He didn’t get out of the car as we met the sting of hail, and struggled with our bags through sleet, our faces pale from the frightening journey in.

He flicked a button in the car, and the boot opened as if to say: ‘You’re here!

Come on ahead. Get in!’

Then, hiding behind the back door – there you are; your face a little wren hoping for a crumb perhaps – We embrace again.

The arms that held me as a child hold me still, just the same.

And I am nested once more, if only for a gap of days.

The kettle is on, forever it seems, our words lost in steam.

We talk about the weather, politics, news and then in between we quickly shake out a few hurried cares, like we’d quickly tossed for air – a folded-up blanket, full of dust.

I don’t mind his moods, or even the stormy weather coming in.

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For in the swirl of his words, I am found in the eddy of him.

And the beat of his drumming fingers on the arms of the chair – I am there. His generous heart is a cradle still.

When it’s time to go, the snow has fallen hard again on the icy road.

The journey ahead grips me and my grief turns cold.

I shake a little after the last goodbye.

But at least there is a runway, and the weather will close doors softly behind – as we depart.

(Elaine Lambert)

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EDITOR’S NOTE April has been a rough month in what has proven to be a cumbersome year, there have been electrical and internet issues, repairs needing done and deaths it all weighs down on you at times. April though is also a period of change when life blooms and the very prospect of the future lies ahead of us.

Chaucer used April as the start of his Canterbury Tales and The Wasteland was also built around that month it is fascinating to see how each writer used that as a framing device.

Hopefully we are coming to the end of Lockdowns and Covid fear as well as a move away from the darkest aspects of Brexit and we can only pray that future developments are peaceful for everyone.

Thankfully in these dark times we have literary endeavor’s such as those featured in this issue to keep us sane I hope you like them as much as I did when reading through them.

Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

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