Icarus- Vol.60-Issue 2

ICARUS SINCE 1950 ISSUE 2 VOLUME 60 FEBRUARY 2010

CONTEMPORARY CREATIVE WRITING FROM TRINITY COLLEGE

Acknowledgements

Staff Editor: ......................................................... Dan Sheehan Deputy Editor:............................................. Ana Kinsella Poetry Editor: .............................................. Joanne O’Leary Copy Editor:................................................ Fionnuala Barrett Graphic Design&Layout: ............................Eoin Nolan Photography: .............................................. Lucia O’Connor McCarthy, Lucy Nuzum, Sue Rainsford, Mary McAuley, Donal Martin, Jonelle Mannion, Masha Dunaeva

Special Thanks to:

Brendan Guildea, Stephen Fitzmaurice, Peter Henry, Daryll Jones, Niall O’Brien, Caroline

Walsh, everyone at D.U Publications and the TCD English Department, family, friends and well-wishers.

Icarus is funded in part by a grant by the DU Publications committee and by a grant from the

TCD School of English. Icarus is a fully participating member of the Press Council of Ireland.

Serious complaints, or indeed serious compliments, can be made to: The Editor, Icarus, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Icarus is now accepting submissions for our 60th Anniversary Collection.

Deadline: March 1st 2010 Submissions of prose, poetry, drama, photography, cartoons, writing through Irish can be made to:

icarusmagsubmissions@gmail.com For details of length and quantity of submissions, advertising or any other enquiries including applications for editorship of Icarus Vol. 61, please contact:

icaruseditor@gmail.com

www.icarusmag.com 2

Cover Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

Contents

Poetry

Page 6.......................................... Alyssa in Linen - Sue Rainsford Page 7.......................................... Cattleshed in a Housing Estate - Brian Boyle Page 7.......................................... La Douleur - Ellen Whelan Page 8 ......................................... Batman - Laura Michet Page 9.......................................... An Education - Billy Mundow Page 11........................................ Morning Sickness - Darragh McCabe Page 12........................................ Eros - Jeff Becklund Page 12........................................ For Adrian - Ally Stewart Konigsberg Page 13....................................... Amadeus - Sinead Carr Page 14....................................... From a Platform - Earl Ward Page 14........................................ Lily - Kate McNamara Page 15........................................ Gráinne is made a woman of - Andrew King

Short Works & Cartoons

Page 16........................................ Water - Andrew Hayden Page 16....................................... The Self is a Gritty Thing - Ciara Begley Page 16 ........................................Next to Me - Emmet Kinsella Page 16 ...................................... Cartoon - Luke Maxwell Page 17....................................... Extract from the Fourth Horseman - J. Fleichman Page 17....................................... Loose - Oshima Fawkes Page 17........................................ Patience - Andrew Hayden

Prose

Page 18 ...................................... The Hunt Part Two - Jeff Becklund Page 24 ...................................... Weekly Events - Emily Aoibheann Page 25 ...................................... Wall - Oshima Fawkes Page 27 ...................................... Rotunda - Kevin Breathnach Page 31........................................ Dusk, and other anomalies - Micheal Wynne Page 35 .................................... David and his Brother - Micheal Healy Page 37 ...................................... Angle Share - Jennifer Six Page 39 ........................................Fair to Middling - Conor D’Arcy Page 43 ....................................... The Tin House - John Murray Page 44 ....................................... Chapter Seven of The Abode of Fancy - Monty Chesterfield

Drama

Page 48........................................ Glauce Monologue - Ian Belton Page 50 ...................................... The Quenched Flame - Shona McDonald Page 54 ....................................... Mangan’s Homecoming - Frank Hutton - Williams

Icarus Through the Ages

Page 66 ....................................... Nightlong - Matthew Sweeney Page 67....................................... On Hearing Irish Spoken in South Dublin - Justin Quinn

Notes on the Contributors

Page68........................................ Contributor Biographies

3

February 2010 Hello again.

With Christmas over and the arctic blizzards of the New Year now just a slushy memory, we’re back; bigger, bolder and brighter to inject a dose of our sweet sweet medicine into your aching veins and addled brains. While the weather outside was frightful and the rest of us were polishing off the last of the dying selection boxes to the sight of Kevin McCallister assaulting people with paint cans, our dedicated Icarus writers were making proper use of their forced confinement.

Having cloistered themselves away in dingy attic rooms, quills furiously scratching, for the best part of six weeks, the thirty up-and-coming writers showcased in this issue have emerged, blinking in the sunlight, with more of the best prose, poetry and drama you’re likely to find around these hallowed halls.* In our quest to showcase the talents of as many of Trinity’s multitude of very worthy authors as possible over this, our 60th year, the magazine has grown to an unprecedented size and we have done our level best to cater for all tastes and persuasions. Whether your forte is sensual poetry, bleak and brutal prose, experimental drama or even cartoon puns, I guarantee you will find something to enjoy within these pages. Taking the baton from our illustrators for Issue 2, we are also delighted to have on board Trinity’s photographic elite, whose striking and powerful images you’ll see sprinkled throughout. Closing out the issue, in our “Icarus through the Ages” section, you’ll find two classic poems from another pairing of celebrated Icarus alumni – Matthew Sweeney and Justin Quinn.

Now before I sign off for another issue, I’d like to remind you all that April sees the release of our 60th anniversary retrospective collection. This weighty tome, which at the moment exists only in my crumbling mind, will comprise of six decades of prose, poetry and drama from Icarus issues of old as well as interviews, photographs, illustrations, archived articles and anything and everything else you could ever want or need in this life or the next. So support it, submit to it and most importantly, read it.

And read on.

Dan Sheehan Editor *Don’t look in the library.

4

Photo Credit: Lucia O’Connor-McCarthy

Now, I’d be lying if I said that we have a fixed moral code as to who we do and do not accept as paying advertisers. The truth is that to make this project a success no tobacco company or arms dealer with a cheque book is off limits. Thankfully, however, the opposite has happened. Instead of having to sell our souls, three fantastic literary institutions, in the form of The DLR Poetry Now Festival, The Ennis Book Club Festival and The Irish Writers’ Centre, have stepped into the breach to both help support the issue and add a bit of outsider credibility to our literary aspirations. Plus, since we’re all in the same business, I don’t have to feel dirty for shamelessly plugging them, so everyone’s a winner.

5

Alyssa in Linen

Photo Credit: Sue Rainsford

Sue Rainsford

Made heavy by her dousing in salted linen And by the gluttonous drop of her hips is Alyssa, Who goes walking over tautened hills, These hills that are made tight under your small shapen feet, feet that I palm like produce.

I wish that you were molten, and not so parlous, not so puerile, so I could in-groove into your skin-fitted curvature and make dry my heartbeat that has gone slick, slick like the tendril end of thread made impotent from being licked and then from being licked all over.

When sodden enough surely I would fit, and sodden I must be, like a pool collecting, for if a dream could be made wet by missing I would wake up every day in a storm of a bed, and shimmy into bristle undergrowth to claim connoisseur of your workings.

But always this One more spasm of false idolatry, this one more immersion into the seeping and glossy innards of a fruit, and then back to the saturated collapse, the weighty turmoil like the underbelly of a curtain that small tanned hands must support.

Wrapped therein is Alyssa in linen; Alyssa in linen.

6

Cattleshed In a Housing Estate Brian Boyle

We could nervously laugh At the rusted, racked anachronism Gaping, breeze blocked thoughts Parsed like a grubby pencil Pared then pushed To the edge of the desk

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

It crumbled, created Shadows of itself.

Sometimes that would goad an approach To the rotting wall, testing the corner; Grazed boosts slopping slurred floor, Pushing and prodding the wintering hive We shifted or lit, conjured the heard Sat on nerves, purpose parried by our untrained eyes-

La Douleur

Who would be who

Ellen Whelan

If the Guards arrived.

The yellow flamelight flickers Upon his crimson skin, It does not lick, but barks At his secret sailor’s wrist.

The swell comes once in a while, Angry. Hot. Abrupt.

Shining pink-red, Like torchlight in a tent It aches through the thin, Veined canvas of his hand.

It is announcing his demise And he knows the siren scream Echoing from beneath his venerable skin.

7

Yet he is not perturbed, Nor worried, nor concerned For sailors know the calm That follows every storm.

The clear, cool water Placates this cranky fire.

There is a return To quiet rain on cool spring days.

The waves will give themselves back to the sea, And he knows to follow the blue light.

Batman

Laura Michet Outside the breath-fogged window, someone is watching us: He is elemental vengeance!

He visits us because we hold him in our hearts like Santa Claus. He haunts our town invisible and pads his lonely rounds, forgotten, but the closer he comes to our sheet-tented bedroom where we tell his legend and pass the light, the tighter his flesh knits, the blacker his long stockings cloud.

He wears a cape that sweeps the ground, and with the pawing of our thoughts it curtains out and makes the world a darker place as well, sicker, with more to fear beneath the overpass and in the alley beside the mini-golf.

We love him. But who can say whether he loves us too? or what he thinks of children?

His teeth are bared and his gums are bright and his leathered fingers swab the glass as he looks in, chuckling. Look closer: his cheek is scarred and his lips are split, his eyes are red. And studded in his knuckle a human tooth, fresh and trailing its nerve, and the jaw it came from broken on the road outside.

But god we love him. We hold him in our hearts.

And we are careful of whom we love.

8

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

Education

As he strikes, beads of sweat glisten on the fat red face, steam the thick glasses.

Is he erect beneath the black soutane ?

We are halfway through, Only six to go, Whack.

Billy Mundow He lifts the cane high and brings it down hard on my outstreched right hand.

The eggs of the hedge sparrow are pure, darkest blue.

I return to my place, head down on the desk, clutch the cast iron legs, cold comforters for blistered palms.

I offer my left for the next stroke, trying hard not to wince.

The goldcrest builds its nest in a cup shape suspended from thin branches.

It is small enough to fit in a babys hand.

The dozen eggs are tiny, faint speckle of brown on white.

Breezes will rock them, but they are safe in their pine-scented cradle.

Peregrines stoop over Lough Dan, cutting the wind, Lord and Lady Luggala, who thread in Spring.

They will teach their young in kinder ways.

9

10

Morning Sickness Darragh McCabe

With wicked humming blaze my four humours, Displayed on the floor like drying fruit, Leave me a shoddy husk.

A bad, shoddy husk, stuck to a plane of glass

Feigning dispassionate glances and fearful of the neighbours.

It has a task, the skin That’s left.

It has to fix disparate dimensions,

Whilst I re-align the Milky Way I set it to work And stick its tasks, a chart, to a pane of glass The husk gets in the way.

Yellow and ebony slip and simmer,

If they could but congeal in a bucket to restore the husk!

The skin that’s left panics – a thousand more slippery handfuls, And still

At least one great stone left to shove?

Indifference sours the room like a cold gas

Skin ignores the stippled rays of abrupt sun Whilst transparent I howl from my glass – “Take heart! Shake yourself free

Plug up the leaks before the neighbours see!”

Photo Credit: Donal Martin

All that remain are blood-oranges - as loose veins throb in their peel Skin and I take up the pelts and wonder at Newly sanctified linoleum.

In the glass a human form

Discloses itself, with a blazing hum.

11

Eros

Jeff Becklund Seems like a blue contact lens rests over the grass

where a sleeping raccoon den sits halfway up the bough of a maple tree –

This morning is a product

first, of soured pantry rum, my grandfather’s,

a dead man’s rum,

then, the memory of

For Adrian

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

Ally Stewart Konigsberg

an endorphin spike,

Like something once begun, he came in broken lines, Jerkily, thirsting for everything Beyond the book in which he slept.

Then there’s Helen

Rose-like he lived, pressed, Airless, thornless, defenceless Until her jungle cries, her shell-fire eyes made the air alive.

and a swim.

with Penelope,

they float right up in a fishing boat,

cast way too close

to the family boardwalk.

One seems young enough; god, I’d flatten myself out to slip like a pocket atlas

under your door, until then licking dew from hosta

down the neighbour’s walk.

Whoever hauled him out has the next exact memory, Of how you- Mother, Must, at that complete distance from solitude, Have watched, the lithe bloody arms, suspend, And rise to meet you-solidlyLike a ruddy, numb constant.

As the hoofprint of a horse suggests motion Frozen in time, Birth is a wave breaking, While something lives In the echo.

His first cries fell into triplets.

12

Amadeus.

Sinead Carr

1789, Salzburg A three-year old boy hesitantly stood picking out thirds on a clavier.

Eyes twinkling as each note planted a seed a seed that would grow into a musical miracle.

Minuets and pieces forged in his mind with the ease and delicacy of a child prodigy.

Allegro in C at five, his first symphony; Requiem, his last...

Lingers as imperfect as he too was to be.

As he blossomed he travelled Each night a different show a different city Munich, Berlin, Paris, Versailles.

Pride welling in Leopold’s eye at each strike of an ivory key.

Aristocracy awakened by an infant master majestic melodies swept each heart, each home each dome his small frame filled.

White curls set against blue frilled velvet Carried on coat-hanger shoulders Gasps and sighs suspended on each tone, they listened.

He trained his ear to the hush between each push of the pedal, Intent on forcing concertos and movements to the back of the grandest of halls.

In time he grew a silent skin his thought connected only to routine, Unbroken with words nor thirds picked on a clavier accented by the hush between each oush of the pedal.

Where aristocracy, monacles raised, Gasped and sighed at each note, Uninterrupted by the seep of a tear soaking into the soil from Leopold’s eye.

Ringing, resounding through a chorus’ cry draping it’s heaviness over frail shoulders Amadeus sounds himself through these corridors with the clarity of an October star.

He left no heirloom for his gift, he hid it’s beauty it’s euphoric lift, from glaring aspirations.

Abandoned Intention, Intently conceived.

13

From a Platform Earl Ward

It sleeves itself like skin around her stride, This train. She moves against its line of motion, Deletes the motion from her line of movement, As blinking panes pump shadow through the carriage.

Photo Credit: Jonelle Mannion

Do her idle steps sweep its hulk to life?

Were she to cease, might it too cease entirely, And squat with a dead squeeze upon the sleepers, Never to move, or be anything at all?

Lily

Kate McNamara My mother has lilies on the mantlepiece-seven of them, all craning green necks over the rainbowed rim of her crystal vase.

Serene as children on Christmas night, they stand, half leaning against the vase, their pale hoods concealing little yellow tongues which they stick out at me each time I pass, so that they can stain my sleeves.

Severed lilies lie atop your coffin as it moves away from me up the aisle, towards the altar, tongues stilled their skin your egg-yolk-yellow mark has survived each salt wash.

14

Gráinne is made a woman of After Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne ( The fleeing of Diarmaid and Gráinne) Andrew King Glow stars pulsed like pacing heartbeats in a blushing, watchful sky; smooth as skin, cold as an earlobe.

Gold torced, bare sided, she lay among her ringlets like a canvas; bright eyed, milk white, impatiently waiting.

He stepped into the opening like a cloud across the still blue moon, shoulders glistening as the rustle

Photo Credit: Mary McAuley

of his falling mantle met its grassy hush.

Shivering, they fumbled through the fleeing hours like numbed limbs, and when grey morning came they slept; a taste of meat misting on their breath.

15

Water

Andrew Hayden

Two ducks form a line and glide silently through the water. Young families, office workers and drunken men sit along the old rusted benches placed many years ago along the canal banks. They all congregate to relax and to absorb the peace and tranquillity the area exudes. Not one of them appreciates the deftness and grace which the two ducks must employ to avoid the empty beer cans, newspapers and crisp packets in the still waters.

The self is a gritty thing Ciara Begley

The self is a gritty thing.

Interest is difficult to win.

Consider potentialities.

Yes choose, of course choose, Choose to save one life over another certainly, Choose to delete brutality pertinently.

But dare not tread the line of conve-

'PPUBHF

nience too recklessly.

Choosing to eradicate something ir-

Next to Me

reversibly conceived is wrong.

Emmet Kinsella

Consider potentialities.

Be sure in your certainties.

Be haunted by mere ideas.

Illustration Credit: Luke Maxwell

16

There is none so beautiful As the brunette lying next to me, Her shape, her scent, her breath, All deified by proximity.

Extract from The Fourth Horseman J. Fleischman

Each tooth was carved with a different character. Florcus didn’t recognise the language.

“Wonderful,” he murmured. “Is that driftwood, bleached by the sun?”

“It is,” said the man. He leaned back in his chair and opened the window behind him.

The wind blew out the curtain, rain drove them back and he closed it again.

“I went with Love down to the distant Sea And there Love said to me, ‘Close your eyes and taste my sweet salt tears That glisten, they were shed for ye.’

I opened my eyes and the sky was grey and the sea Black, I was up to my chest in the black sea. The foam was around my chest, My skin screamed with the cold but I could not feel it.

Crabs scuttled up the shore and gulls wheeled overhead – Hundreds of years passed and I saw my feet grow white, mottled and skeletal.

I washed up on the beach and rolled my eyes in their empty sockets.

Small children played with my phalanges and used them for sport.

The sun bleached my bones and they grew pitted and brittle.

On the last day, I felt a warmth I had not felt in years.

I compelled myself to turn my head; Love was standing there His neoclassical profile silhouetted against the flaming sun.

‘It is Time,’ said he and pointed upwards. The skies were streaming out And Angels filled every corner of the aerial aspect.

I turned back to Love and he beckoned to me. ‘You must Ride forth.’

At once I knew what I must do. A pale horse stood, steaming and wild.

My knee bent and creaked. Sand fell to the ground As I stood up, taller than I had been in life.

The horse quivered and flecks in his grey eyes steeled me Against what was to come.

The music of the angels above soared and trembled, fell and rose.

I tightened the reins in, the leather strained against his fury; I ran my brittle hand along the steel blade left for my purpose, released the reins and let him go.”

Loose

Patience

I have left everybody That I used to know, Purposefully, Through harsh machinations Constructed so that all of it was my fault.

All so that I could keep this idea of you.

The bingo announcer declares the first number to be thirty-three to the crowd of elderly women. As they have every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday for many years, they scan through their bingo books looking for the number on their cards. It is often in vain. Outside, in the autumnal evening, fourteen men smoke in groups of twos and threes beside their mini-coaches waiting to drop the women home.

Oshima Fawkes

It turns out things don’t work out that way.

Andrew Hayden

17

The Hunt - Part Two Jeff Becklund

T

here are days, of course, when Stewball’s timetable must become contingent to certain realities of the natural world and the prey at hand. He prefers to hunt early at night but can usually manage to accommodate “other lifestyles”, as he puts it. When Henry Wilburn, high school javelin and long-jump star, offered Stewball $150 for use of a skunk as part of a frat house initiation scheme, we set up traps all afternoon and caught a nice fat one just after dusk. When the Mud Lodge put in an order for wild honey, it took the better parts of a morning and afternoon putting our captive skunk to use (returned wearing lipstick and under the influence of marijuana in exchange for Henry’s $50 deposit) to seek out and conquer a beehive in the bluestem prairie-grass a half-mile or so north of Powers Boulevard. When we needed fresh eggs we had to wait until two in the morning to break into the multi-million dollar lakeshore home of Kinkwood Junior High’s visual art/health education teacher, city council member, and notorious bachelorette, Elizabeth White-Young, who was known to raise chickens in her basement. We found her still awake but still managed to get a few hens.

He’ll go to all sorts of extremes and stay up all night if he has to, but Stewball never wakes up early to go out on the hunt. Once he was commissioned by a film crew who drove all the way out from Chicago just to meet with him. I have no clue how they’d heard. They were shooting a film set in Gary, Indiana, year 2051. It was one of those new eco-thrillers, and global climate change had Lake Michigan flooding all over the place. A seemingly harmless seed-like biproduct from Gary’s new enviro-friendly bio-fuelled power plant network which “the scientists” had constructed in order to replace the coal burners, see, it turns out they’ve got an uncanny resemblance to the female flower of the common hops plant (humulus lupulus), which ends up getting harvested and used down in Milwaukee by Miller Brewing Co. Two batches get sent out before they realise what’s going on and a recall is issued on this non-FDA approved “superbeer”, one batch making its way to the hovercraft-motorcycle factory workers of Grand Rapids, the other being consumed entirely by the Indianapolis Colts (a little-known NFL football team). Everyone who drinks the mutant hops-MGD starts super-evolving to cope with the new freshwater environment – –citizens of Grand Rapids becoming a race of cyborg hover-fish while the Colts sprout beaks and wings mid-game, scoring a miraculous fourth quarter touchdown for the win before flying away to feed. They all meet up in the vicinity of Gary to “end things where it all began” in a drunken mutant sci-fi battle royale. The big twist, these women who drove out explained to us, comes as lead scientist (Lindsay Lohan) confesses her unrequited love for Colt bird-linebacker Philip Wheeler (Philip Wheeler), who has come out of retirement to fight in the Great War. They wanted a marbled godwit, mid-sized waterfowl, to do their 3D modelling of the football players. They were two nearly identical Hungarian women, by the way, both brunettes, and showed up wearing these slim tailored little Max Mara suits just to arrange what I imagine became a fairly profitable business venture for Stewball. They were extremely insistent upon the godwit.

18

“Any sort of bird would have worked really, but you see ...”

They had lost their bid with DreamWorks animation studios after Lohan was on several occasions caught selling magazine subscriptions to their animators. Later she was found “bathing” naked next to a wall-sized printout of coral reef images used in their 2004 animated feature Shark Tale. They’d defaulted into working with the undergraduate computer graphics department at Loyola University, and apparently no-one there knew what a bird looked like.

“They do pigeons pretty well,” said the shorter of the two women, tapping away at her iPhone.

“The trouble is, well, every time we try and render the transformation scene, the offensive line ends up looking like a swarm of pigeons.”

So Stewball does his research: phone calls to the DNR, careful study of the local access Doppler radar, cassette recordings of various bird calls broadcast via bicycle and canoe, introspective meditation, conversations with the Commodore over sandwiches and feeding tube, analysis of Sandra’s behavioural changes over the course of an afternoon. (Stewball is one of the rare human beings I have met who truly excels at making small talk. If you are lacking for words, he will simply delineate whatever natural peculiarity pops into his peanut of a brain. His latest tirade has been on the extraordinary barometric sensitivity of cats.)

In order to pinpoint the exact location of the nest where Stewball returned the following night to capture the godwit at roost, grabbing it by the neck and stuffing it into a burlap produce sack from the Mud Lodge as it slept, some early morning reconnaissance was necessary. He could have just woken up a few hours earlier than usual, but that would mean not waking up at eight a.m. With Stewball it’s eight or he’s never waking up. He stayed up all night that night, watched Daisy and me drink his alcohol. Maybe he’s like that godwit. They’ll only feed at dawn when things are quiet, when the water is still and the light is still. They can hear the fish as they move up close to the surface underwater.

When I arrived today Stewball was sitting out in the Commodore’s old E-Scow wearing a Panama hat and reading the newspaper. He sits out there a lot. If I spend enough time up in the office I think he forgets that I’m around.

“Ahoy!”

I’ve seen him sit out here for hours, down in the bilge with his head sticking out. I don’t know if he thinks he’s sailing, or what.

“Flooding in Israel! Italian tobacco shares hit record high!”

“Gimme that.”

I tried to grab at the newspaper but kept slipping off the boat’s trailer as bits of rust and paint chipped off. The cuffs of my pants were catching on the buckthorn that had spread itself around that part of the yard.

19

“Since when do you get all giddied up on current events?”

He appeared to be smoking a bubble pipe.

“I’ve been waiting all week to fill this order. Tonight things should be lit up just right for us, too. I’ve been waiting forever to redeem myself to chef-master Shawn-o, supreme delicatessen mastermind of woodland/lakeland chefs, since after I couldn’t find any crawfish when he sent me out to get crawfish a few weeks ago.”

“You ever wonder who eats all this crap you bring in?”

I tried to climb onboard again but he swung the boom around and knocked me off.

“The sea, sated, casts you back to land!”

I landed hard on my neck and on the way down felt a quick gust of wind. I saw him grab at the mainsheet, trying to compensate for the wind’s drag on the boat, as if the boat had sails strung up to it. I hit the ground pretty hard. At one point the sails had been folded up and tucked away back in the garage, but I think someone broke in and ripped them off last winter.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

There was a rip down the side of my new slacks.

“Well it’s too late in the season for the northern leopard frog, but I have a really good feeling about greenfrog and bullfrog. Good little hoppers for the pan-fry-o, Shawn-o says their dorsolateral folds, they help the meat absorb his old-time Cajun marinade once he gets ’em all loose and tenderised.”

“You’re a dick.”

I went inside to look for an icepack where Iand was surprised to find Daisy, not so surprisingly downstairs in the Kashmir Lounge getting drunk and playing Scrabble by herself. The board was mostly full of words and Stewball’s largest iguana was laying out, perfectly still with its eyes open, basking in the warmth of her breasts as they hung down near the surface of the card table.

She didn’t seem to notice me close the door behind myself and walk over toward where she sat.

“Want to play?” she said.

“Sure.”

She offered me the bag and I had nearly drawn an “S” when the iguana slipped it from my fingers with a crack of its tongue and made an awkward sort of swallowing movement. Through the whole ordeal it somehow maintained the illusion of sitting still, looking at me now like I 20

was nuts.

“Too slow,” said Daisy.

Later on Stewball came down with Henry Wilburn and the iguana slithered off somewhere. ::MOSQUE:: “Hey how’s that? Double word score, suckas.”

Plus the “M” was on the double letter square.

“That’s what the thunder said, boo-yah.”

A trademark Henry Wilburn phrase.

“Let’s do this. Daisy, mark it with a score of ... a score of ...”

I’ve known Henry since middle school and I think he’s the only guy I know who still gels his hair like that, all spiky blonde like an Anglo-Nordic Japanese-drawn cartoon character.

“40 points, to start the game.”

We had to make a pot together during the clay-sculpting unit in our Junior High art class, and Ms White-Young would always give him extra credit for “displaying a positive attitude” as if suggesting that a positive attitude might help us make a better pot. One day she referred to Henry, quite publicly, as her “little lightning bolt of creativity”. What I imagine should have ignited the standard bout of ridicule and violence instead transformed Henry into something of a folk-hero, earning him the nickname “Thor” the next year when he started lancing for the Emerson High Track and Field team.

“No, man. No. There’s a hierarchy of operations we’ve got to follow here.”

Stewball was a stickler for the rules.

“Double letter counts after the double word. Daisy, mark it a 35.”

She shrugged and wrote something down.

“Still, a pretty ballsy opening move,” she said.

Stewball squinted and rubbed at where his beard would have been if he grew facial hair.

“Well, you’ve got to take into account that he did manage to pick up a ‘Q’ along with ‘U’ on his first draw. That’s pretty unusual, and pure chance I might add. With luck like that he’ll never 21

learn how to play the game right.”

Henry made a facial expression I didn’t understand and took six new letters from the bag. Daisy arranged the word ::EXILE:: perpendicular to the “E” of ::MOSQUE::.

“That doesn’t make sense, though.”

Henry checked with his left hand to make sure the tips of his hair were still sharp and began re-arranging the new tiles in his letter-trough.

“Drawing good letters helps make you a better player because you reach an acceptable scorequota sooner and have more time to diversify your gameplay, in general.”

Daisy made another mark on the score pad. “‘Exile’ – pretty good, Daisy,” I said.

“Well what about, Daisy?” said Stewball. “She drew that ‘X’, which is a bugger of a letter to use right away, and from what it looks like she had too many vowels. You get a good score handed to you on the draw, she’s got work her fucking ass off if she wants to survive in an aggressive climate. Who do you think’s going to be a better player as luck changes and becomes less of a factor overall throughout the course of the game?”

I looked at my tiles: :: IINFOIA:: Shit.

“No, see, while she’s crunching her bad letters I’ve already got words figured out. I get to spend time looking ahead on the board, anticipating your moves, etc. It’s like, basic evolution, bro.”

The only thing worse than having to listen to a rambling idiot is having to listen to a loud and college-educated rambling idiot.

“Darwin figured all this stuff out. He used to study birds. The ones who have extra time to come up with really fancy songs get the mates, see, the women-birds can, like, figure out who’s all pumped up in the genetically advanced sense by listening to them sing, and stuff.”

I remember my last night with Fiona, when she left me.

“Your turn, Tim.” ::IIONIFA:: 22

“Tim.” Daisy looked impatient.

“This game blows,” I said. “I’ll be upstairs.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong buck-o-Hen-ro.” Stewball moved his six letter tiles around in a random sort of way. “I’ve never met a bird who’s heard of Darwin. I’m pretty sure they just think chirping in is general is really hot, generally speaking.”

The night she left me had been a weeknight and I’d spent all day in and out of the Grape Room.

The Commodore had just taken a first mortgage out on his beautiful woodland home and had transferred another instalment of $7,500 into my bank account. It was convenient that we used the same bank since that way there wasn’t a routing fee. I checked online to make sure it had gone through; it had, along with his customary memo: “2 weeks’ salary; care and guardianship of Stewart Haverstock.”

She’d been gone herself that night but I knew exactly how furious she’d be when she did make it home. It had been a long day, I didn’t have time for it. I needed quiet. Just couldn’t deal with all of it any longer. It boggles my mind, a little bit, how simple it was, terminating our relationship.

You just close the door, put the dead-bolt on, turn on the TV.

23

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

Weekly Events Emily Aoibheann

T

here was a dream. A door vibrating inside her belly with a disease, pummelling her insides, the sound of an illuminated city.

She wondered had she ever slept at all. There had been a time lapse, things were different, but she couldn’t remember sleep: that weighted moment which lent the thoughtless clarity she had no access to in waking life. Tensing the muscles in

her brow, her jaw drawn in tight, cotton sheets and Dude’s limbs sealed her in a catacomb, a sweat tube. Something sat in a corner of her being, a late dinner visiting the back of her throat – a climbing from pit to tip.

There was a nightmare. In the corner of her eye a man, her soul the destination of his desire, the chit-chat of despair and holy spirits dampening her parched limbs, sucking the liquid from inside her. Visions of rotating lady-halves in lusty poses, fairies twisted in the blood-coloured curtains, dangling in darkness, towering forever-long in the clambering heat, looming – a decoration, a door. A rhythm as thick and sticky as honey ran the length of the walls, a ripple effect pushing the torturous pulse into her tired, tired body. Disco beats, muffled laughter, alarm clock, stupid joke, thud and bump. Party time for the high-heeled, baritone mumbling secondfloor aliens – who disappear into grey shadow at the turn of the stairs, leaving a vague trace with the morning dawn. Perhaps they sleep during the daytime and emerge confused at night, believing they have just begun their day.

Perhaps she died without realising, delivered into a purgatory of sorts, a hellish reality outside of linear procession. A nasty fabricated womb, a stumbling loop – too drenched in tiredness and discomfort to see sense. Too early to consider leaving, too late to go home, stuck behind the velvet curtains with a racket to wake the dead.

The light foiled the man in the darkness, altering the lovers in the curtains, revealing instead the domestic ship shapes on the inside. Four walls wrapped round her vision were mirrored in the room – painted for the student in kitsch green, a strip of fruit and roman script at the very top, featuring demure apple and pear watercolour. Dude’s head had disappeared from sight, human noise emerging in contented breath, little distracted by the violation pouring down walls from upstairs. She considered momentarily moving the pillow and revealing his face, to verify her existence in the real world, safely outside her nightmarish imagination, but quickly reconsidered, thinking: I will put my hand under that pillow and there will be maggots where Dude’s head should be and I will be in hell.

Touch your hand to the wall at night: is there somebody there? Are you there? And the other, is that something only I hear? It takes an ear like mine with a mind to match to keep me awake, the beat of my heart, a tolling bell. A visual screen limits what I can know despite my capacity 24

for knowledge. My body is weighted with memories it carries, stones on strings, cancer-water filled plastic bottles in cars – boilings – in the heat of back windows, repeating a world a world a world. I saw it in an advertisement and now it’s part of my subconsious and so are you. My existence is part of that thing you’re doing. You are inflicting your presence into my life and knowledge into my mirage. Its just a ride, a 4.22 a.m. ride.

She switches off the light again. Lying back and sweating still, she attempts to relocate Dude in the small bed, stuffing layers of winter duvet between her and his slick sleep. She longs to be rid of the cotton sickness and relieved by the crisp sheets and suburban silence of her own home.

Caving inwards, coming from somewhere, clearing those that were left behind in a tragic, fruit-filled vibration. The future of theatre, creating tragic beats that fill ears with saturation and eyes with devils. Look at what you have done, you have forgotten what it’s like to be a pair, a pear, a something – and what of the expectatons? They will want that thing from you and again, you will be tempted, dictated – a sweet silly thing, a sweet silly thing, before you die, become a something, a molecule, piece, ghost, machine, a cancer-water.

“I just want to hold your hand,” said the devil, drawing the curtain.

Wall

I

Oshima Fawkes

T

here is a place where a group of soldiers, a group of children and a selection of old ladies throw themselves against a massive wall. They repeat this motion until one of them dies (it is rarely one of the old ladies: they are too cactus-like; the vicious bitches with their bus passes, umbrellas, denied bank overdrafts and violent moral equities). When one of them dies their bones clatter all over and their guts are spongy sacs that disintegrate when you poke them with discarded sticks and their eyeballs roll like so many fallen coins resting on a table.

The survivors pour the remains into a funnel, compress them with a machine resembling an old printing-press and then, with spatulas, scoop the remnants into a picture-frame. They hold this aloft while funereally marching home.

Sometimes The Natives mourn so much that a severe inflammation of the oracular nerves occurs, causing the eyes to hang out of the head, swollen (and similar in substance) to the size of smallish water balloons. The Natives’ vision is distorted irreparably, and so others (The Unaffected) must make their decisions for The Afflicted, lest damage is inflicted upon The Unaffected.

II I arrived amongst these people as a well-rounded man (naturally the conservative old ladies, 25

those voracious bitches, accused me of being a novice in the Art of Love; but I was a man: a man of practicality) willing to help, not subvert, these indigenous people’s way of life. I would remove the obstacles constraining them.

I took the meagre population to The Wall and showed them that if they applied any selection of explosives to the base of the structure they could easily demolish it. They said this was not their intention. I showed them how to scale the wall by fashioning a makeshift ladder. They scorned this idea also. I demonstrated to them how rudimentary tools could be used to disturb the earth, and thus they could dig a hole underneath the wall. They accused me of moral cowardice.

It was then that I realised that most of them related to sanity as a relative disembodied concept.

Although this concept has, doubtlessly, changed the viewpoint of many, when I mentioned it to them I observed no paradigmatic shift in their consciousness, but, instead, a palpable hostility.

Anyway, as we misunderstood each other, they kindly endeavoured to reveal our common ground, and hence explain their viewpoint. They did this by showing me a picture of a young deceased girl who had fallen prey to The Wall.

She was a young girl with a bauble in her hand; her dress was stained from playing in the dirt and she was lying down, as if dead. Her heart had been preserved in a cage next to her prostrate body. For some reason this cage was constructed out of other people’s bones. The heart beat irregularly and weakly. Pulsating bloodily on the grass.

The tragedy of this made my heart pound until sadness became apoplectic rage. I approached The Wall and beat my fists against it. This wasn’t enough, so I smashed my head off it again and again. I kept hurling my head at The Wall, haphazardly, and with all my strength. I lost all sense of time and a strange ecstasy shook me as my skull cracked. My forehead grazed until the skin was intermingled with grit. The blood poured from my lips, nostrils and ears. My teeth were broken to shards of jagged bone. My nose mashed into my face until the cartilage near disintegrated. My eyes could see only rivulets of dark blood. My cheekbones broke, then my face crumpled in on itself. But, of course, I thought only of that poor little girl.

III Time (out of necessity) passed, and I had almost become accustomed to the spectacles we force upon ourselves, when a young political theorist disrupted our pattern. This young idealist foamed at the mouth with large words; so we ate his heart with spoons.

It felt like jelly as his skin peeled away. His carcass was strange: he was almost whole, but with a dark crater in his chest and his arms spread out flat, palms upwards, perpendicular to his torso, while his eyes looked up into his own skull. I, who still had a faint feeling of unease, wanted to bury him out of sight, but The Natives pointed at The Carcass. Thousands of ants were crawling into the hole in his chest and on his face they resembled an unsettled red ocean. I requested of one old lady what the ants would do with the body. She told me they would either destroy it, or carry it to The Wall. I said that I disbelieved her. She replied that I was right, and that it was useless to speculate on their actions or motives, but that if I had continued down the path I was on when I arrived, I could very well be swarming with ants at this moment. I thanked this elderly lady profusely. And as she hobbled away crookedly, I couldn’t help but feel how right she was on every count. I smiled. I would be very happy now.

26

Rotunda

Kevin Breathnach

Photo Credit: Sue Rainsford

You’re gonna think I’m a bleedin’ tick or somethin’, but I think me Da is havin’ a baby.

You’re gettin’ fat, Da, I said, just like I always said, your belly’s gonna explode if you’re not careful. But jaysus he flipped. Hit the roof. Went absolutely mad. Stormed up out of his seat and slammed the door behind him. Have some bleedin’ respect, he says.

Sorry ’bout ye! I said.

He’s been dead moody lately just like me Ma was before she had me brother Eoin. One minute it’s how-are-ya-kid the next it’s ah-for-the-love-ahh-christ-kid.

Eoin’s two now. It’s nice havin’ a little brother but I don’t know about havin’ another one. Maybe a bit headwreckin’ probably, especially for me older brother John.

A few weeks ago Ma told us that Da was gonna be made rotunda, and since then he’s been sittin’ around the house watching telly all day, gettin’ angry at me for leavin’ a cushion on the floor or not eatin’ me dinner or some shite like that.

Nothin’ special, I know, only that the same thing happened to Ma before she had Eoin. She was huge like a big whale. Then she went in the ambulance and went rotunda, and when she came back with Eoin, she wasn’t fat anymore and she was talkin’ about goin’ to work again. I hope Da goes back to work once he has the baby. Gotta earn a crust, as they say. Da’s been wreckin’ me head anyway, bein’ here when I get home from school stinkin’ of drink like. No fence, Da. “Ma, will Da gissa lift to school tomorrow morning? It was freezin’ this morning.”

27

“Are yis havin’ a laugh?”

“Wha?” “Have you not seen? The car’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Your Da had to give it back.”

“Give it back? Wha? Who’d he have to give it back to? And why?”

“Because! Didn’t I tell you your Da got made redundant?”

What’s that got to do with anything, I thought.

So I walked to school the next morning. Fuckin’ Baltic, as me ma says. Hadn’t done me homework so Mrs Cobban gave me detention and a hundred bleedin’ lines to do. I must do me homework. I must do me homework. I must do me homework. Fuck’s sake, it was almost pitch black outside by the time I got home shiverin’ and shakin’ and me Da wantin’ to know wherethe-fuck-have-you-been and me Ma sayin’ wudja-leave-the-child-alone. Take a chill-pill I says when – fuck’s sake! – he slaps me one in the back of me head. Hurt like mad.

“Nearly Crimbo, Ma.” “Ah yeah, it won’t be long shortly.”

“When are we gettin’ the tree, Ma?” “When your father gets off his arse and buys one.”

“Can I get a Playstation 3 off Santy, Ma?” “You’d be lucky to get your two front teeth.”

Santy didn’t get me a Playstation 3. He got me a game for me crappy old Playstation 2. What a cheapskate, I said. But I played the new game anyway for a while. It was alright. Nothin’ special, you know. Then I had to get dressed ’cos we had to go to mass and then to me Ma’s ma’s house to have Crimbo dinner with granny and granddad and all me aunties and uncles and me cousins and shite. It was alright, same old story, nothing special, you know. Turkey, ham, bleedin’ Brussels sprouts and then the old people startin’ singin’ yeh-scumbag-yeh-maggot and me and me brothers and me cousins chantin’ presents! presents! presents! I couldn’t believe it when me granny got me and me brothers a Playstation 3.

Fuckin’ mint! I says.

28

Watch your mouth! says me Ma. Sure you can play the game Santy got you on that, can’t you? And I says yeah I suppose so, Da, only this thing comes with a few games that are much better graphics but. Never played that other shite again, I don’t think. What’s the point like? Me Da’s always askin’ about but. Fuck’s sake Da, I says, you’d swear you made the bleedin’ thing.

Me and me Da went on the Dart the other day. How can they print bleedin’ poetry on the Dart, says me Da, when they can’t even print the bleedin’ timetables! We had a good laugh at that.

Bleedin’ poetry is right, Da! Lonely as a cloud, I said in me best posho voice like the bitch Mrs Cobban. Da had a gulp from a small bottle he had in his coat pocket, whiskey or somethin’.

Jaysus, the smell of that! We were goin’ out to Howth so Da could be interviewed or somethin’.

For the paper? I asked him. He didn’t answer me. It musta been about him havin’ a baby. Not normal like for a man to have a baby is it? Anyway the pricks musta really slagged him off but, ’cos he came outta the room with a real sad face on him like when France beat Ireland. Looked like he was about to start cryin’. Who’s the baby now!

He wasn’t angry at me, but. We went to the chipper and got a bag of chips between us. Salt and vinegar? Yes please! And extra vinegar if it’s not too much trouble for ye, love!”

There we were, the two of us, me and Da, sittin’ on the pier eatin’ a bag of chips.

“What are we doin’ here Da?” “Just havin’ a sit-down. Restin’ the old legs.”

“I’m freezin’, Da.” “Ah shut up.”

“No, Da, I mean it. Granny says you’d get bleedin’ pleurisy in this cold.”

“Here,” he goes, “have some of this.”

He took the little bottle out of his pocket. Jaysus, Da! I screamed. It was like fire scorchin’ down me neck.

“Da, I don’t think you should be drinkin’.”

“Says who?”

“I remember before Ma had Eoin you wouldn’t let her have a drink.”

“Bad for the baby, it was.”

29

“Well exactly, Da. That’s what I’m tryin’ to say to yeh.”

He didn’t say anything for ages, just looked out at the sea swiggin’ from the bottle. Hardly even touched the chips. Savage, I thought. More for me!

“Can I give you a piece of advice, son?”

“Course, Da.” “Carpe Diem.”

“Wha’?”

“Latin, isn’t it? D’yis know anything!”

“What are you talkin’ about Da?” “It means ‘see the day comin’.”

“Goin’ where?”

“Comin’, ye tick! It means that when you start workin’, make sure you have some sort of protection. Things might look great, you might be on top of the world, buyin’ everything you ever wanted, but if you don’t have protection, if you don’t have sort of cover, before you know it you’ll be sittin’ around the house all day doin’ shite-all, lookin’ for coins in the back of sofa, goin’ outta your head with worry. Me and your ma sure could have used some protection, that’s for sure.”

“Like in the ad.”

“What?”

“You know the ad. Always use protection, it says. If you didn’t want this to happen, Da, you shoulda been more careful.”

“You’re not wrong there, Shane. Not wrong there at all. Now, it’s gettin’ late now. Best get back to your ma now.”

30

Dusk, and other anomalies Michael Wynne

“Take my hand,” the stooping woman lisps to the child. “This hand. And run with me.”

Hand in hand, they race. Ahead, the house stands idle and staunch as pre-destiny, while, a little distance above, bats from the abbey tumble and swoop in twos. In the child’s other hand, a book is held. Someplace in this book it is observed that the word dusk has not been used much for the last few generations. It is given as an instance of another sublime and lovely word becoming redundant in an age with no time for the sublime. This passes through the thoughts of the woman, who authored the book, as she and the child come up against the gate of the twilit house. At their approach the breadth of the house is humble in its stony solidity.

“The key, when you’re ready, Delaney,” laughs the woman, balancing on the front doorstep, and breathing the scent of the lake in the child’s hair when she kisses it. Proud, the child’s fingers lift the key from the wallet where it has been kept safe all afternoon. Inside, the air is cool as reason. Drinking it, the child, as if waking to her own ageless depth, freezes for an instant or two. Stooping again, only less than before, the woman whispers that she would like to take the book, but only so she can write her name in it. As if inured to all kinds of sacrifice, the child surrenders it; and then, with the mysterious discretion of childhood, is gone.

From the study by the stairwell emerges a man with patient hands, a man who, it can be seen even in the dimness, has Delaney’s cleft chin and sharp-cornered eyes. “Still autographing?” he nods and laughs, seeing that the book the woman holds is her own. “As astute as always,” she says, her voice sounding mildly aggrieved. He steps back on the threshold after she comes across and kisses him.

“I’ve never known you to be so kissy as you are this visit,” he offers, as if enjoying a certain access of shyness.

“You mean you don’t see me as affectionate, ordinarily?” Her mouth pulls itself down in mockdejection. “Haven’t I always had kisses for my favourite cousin Vere?”

It intrigues and slightly disturbs her that he doesn’t answer. But considerately he extends a hand in silent invitation, and she steps into the room he calls his sanctum. Immediately her eyes meet a screen swarming with words.

“Is the computer your only light?” she wonders.

“I’m as economical as ever,” he tells her.

“At the expense of your eyes,” she warns.

31

“My eyes are grand,” he says, his tone, as it were, antagonistic to the phrase.

At the deep-set window she looks out and into the warm-coloured imbroglio of a fuchsia bush.

“Such a mass of fuchsia. The Irish for the flowers translates as God’s tears,” she says, testing the poetry of the expression in uttering it; but, for once, appreciation of its beauty is not actually felt.

“I learned that phrase from you,” he remarks behind her.

“I know,” she says, as if this is a source of sadness.

“Back in the days before my balls had dropped,” he adds, laughing with self-conscious hollowness at his own deliberate vulgarity.

“What are you writing?” she asks, running her fingers across the fissured spines of books packed into a scaffold bookcase to the left of the embrasure. “Something philosophical – again?”

“Philosophical-ish,” he concedes simply, his brain filtering the sympathy from her sarcasm. “This one is a scientific mystery story, involving ideas to do with Time,” he adds.

“Time’s been so done,” she laughs, flippant as a teenager.

“Not in my way,” he counters with that good nature of his that has the power to make her tart soul cower unwillingly from him. “This one has an epigraph, from De Profundis,” he says quickly, as if out of a wish to deflect.

“De Profundis.” She is thoughtful, her eyes rolling from the bookcase to plumb the selfestablishing night. “I read it when I was in college. What’s the epigraph?”

By heart he cites the words: “‘At every single moment of one’s life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.’”

“Very deep,” she responds, mock-ironic, without a pause.

“Deep? Hm. To me, it’s really just the clear stating of an amazing fact,” he offers, his words issuing out of the calm triumph of a shattering simplicity.

“That’s how it strikes you?” she asks, her tone flat, her heart scalded with the heat of a mysterious envy.

“I thought I picked up the same kind of sentiment in your own book,” he confesses.

32

“Mine?” Her own book she lifts before her eyes, which rove over the sepia fragment of townland the cover shows, and the charcoal letters that spell the word Chestnuts at its foot; and after a moment she decides, “Maybe.”

“Anyway, usually I’m not into epigraphs,” he says; “but that line happens to sum up the book to a tee – or one side of it. At this stage of the writing, that is.”

She wants to be sympathetic and engaged; but suddenly it’s as if his writing, and possibly even himself – this favourite cousin of hers since she was Delaney’s age – nauseates her. Forgetting him for a moment as if he’s a dream, she leaves Vere’s study, descends the three carpeted steps to the dining room, passes through a saturnine kitchen, and goes out by the old scullery yard-door into the day-obsoleting dusk. By the hushed fuchsia she stands, as if waiting. In her hand hangs fruit, heavy as irrelevance, which she has gathered from the shadowed orchard of her life. In her hand it hangs, heavy – although, to her senses now, at the same time, seemingly empty as Dead Sea fruit – while she faces the slow-ageing night as if willing it to absorb her, as her cousin in the room behind is re-absorbed in his fictive labour. Delaney’s voice in muted song carries to her from an upper room through the breezeless evening. The song she does not identify; but the grace notes with which it is effected reflect the once-natural manner of singing of her own past self which the present version eclipses with part-bitter finality.

Swinging past the fuchsia, she comes to where the yard broadens and terminates in rising lawns.

Over her the soft night deepens into inevitability. Behind her, her cousin works in the silence of a serenity that is undisturbed by joy; while here, surrounded by unshowy space, her mind toils in the reluctant void of itself. Earlier at the lake when she pressed her lips to Delaney’s, Delaney pressed back with her own strong young lips. She finds she is stunned by the loving nature of her niece. Without fear her niece’s nature loves. She thought she could in time love that way herself, but on this score agrees amongst herselves without rancour that so far she’s failed. It was on the one hand her intention to show in her life-story how she has made peace with this and other failures. On the other hand, the intention was to demonstrate how her present self is a superseding outgrowth of her early self. The thought that Time has been a friend to her in this is something that seems additionally outgrown since her book emerged last winter. Further now into the solsticial navy-purple she slips, as if marking her solitude in the night-shrouding grounds of her kin.

Strange as it seems, though she’s convinced that, while the book she has written has made sense of nothing, it justifies itself by virtue of that failure. This anomaly she offers up, like a celebrant, to the nominally anomalous dusk. Like a reassurance she feels the house – the partial setting of her young girlhood – outlined behind her. The virgin flyleaf of the book anticipates the hand that holds it. A snatch of song spins into the stealthily skirting sky. As if preparing itself for eternity, the night for moments becomes immutable.

33

34

David and His Brother Michael Healy

H

e makes a fool of himself. That’s the sad, honest truth. And every Thursday I drag myself down here to watch him do it. The room is filled with fresh eyes and clean faces, each person wearing expensive clothes and calling attention to conspicuous haircuts worth a sum far in excess of what I bank in a month. I remember the first time coming here, maybe two years ago. It was the first moment I looked at a group of young people and felt completely and utterly on the outside. I felt old in a certain sense, but more than that I felt spent, discarded or simply unnecessary. I can feel every ridge on my face, the arc on my forehead forged out of stress and discomfort, the grime of my uncouth life clinging to every pore. People think there’s virtue in a life lived with responsibility, with an imperative of survival. They tell me that at least. In there, though, it’s warm. The bar’s garish lights and the attractive, pampered customers ... the glorious purposelessness and self-indulgence. Yeah, there’s an honesty in there maybe, a long way from the idle pleasantries of those secure enough to moralise that are so familiar to me.

“I’m on next,” he said, out of nowhere. No hello, no affection, just a matter-of-fact statement.

I used to say he was just a kid but he’s twenty-six in March. Lying to yourself is all about the suppression of your more rational mind, letting the fantasy seem more plausible. Lately I can feel reason and logic drifting on a turning tide, preparing to come back into prominence. The lie won’t last much longer.

“That’s great, Davey, I’ll be back here.”

“You can’t see from there.”

“I can see perfectly fine. All these people will be sitting down when you start to sing.”

“You can’t see from there.”

“Don’t worry about it, David. Have a good time up there.”

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

He turned and starts to make his way to the stage, clumsily pushing other patrons aside, provoking some offended stares. He was halfway through the crowd when he turned to me and shouted over the mild cacophony of casual speech inhabiting the place.

“Peter and Clare will be coming,” he yelled at a level far in excess of what was required. The people around him paused and uncomfortably turned their attention to me.

“Okay, I’ll look out for them,” I replied calmly, unwilling to let my embarrassment become visible. And damn it, I was embarrassed. But I’m not allowed to be.

“You look out for my friends then,” he replied, at the same volume. I responded that I would and 35

he continued on his way to the small stage. They won’t be coming. He calls this his “gig”. He talks about it all week at home, alerting me to its existence every morning before I go to work.

I’m not sure how he first found this place but he’s been here at every Thursday night karaoke session for at least two years now. And I’ve been here with him. He stands up there and thanks people for coming like he’s seen musicians do on TV, as if the crowd was amassed there to be entertained by his own talents. Then he makes a fool of himself. He’s made a fool of himself every week for two years now. I’ve been made a fool of as well.

The owner of the place knows him by now. Every week as we walk in the door he greets us, generously shaking Dave’s hand with a polite “and welcome back to you, Mr David, our favourite performer!” I shake his hand too. We exchange nods, a gesture loaded with the knowledge of the benign deceit we’re both participating in. It chills me every week. Not only is David “performing” without the full knowledge of what’s going on but he’s making me look ridiculous as well. I sit at a table every week surrounded by young, fashionable, attractive people there only to have a good time while I lean hunched and ashamed over a neat measure of whiskey, my filthy eyes fixed on the graceless, formless space before me. I can feel the acrid odour of sweat and fear pour off me every time I trek across the city to this damned place after work, hanging resiliently as I fester in some darkened area of the bar. My knuckles are red, my hair is dry, limp and receding. In here, I’m as much a mockery as Dave up on that stage.

There’s no virtue in my life, nothing laudable or commendable or desirous or worthy ... I work to sustain my own meagre self and the life of my brother, the grotesque sum of which is on show every Thursday in that bar. But that’s all I can do. People would shy away from saying I’ve been dealt a bum hand, but it’s the truth. Nobody’s given me any reason to believe cross-bearing is worth the hassle. I’ve been with people that have told me I’m a good man, a real decent kind of person. Really, though, I’m weak and dishonest. Everyone in that room knew what they wanted and took it, the mundane nature of their desires irrelevant. I want the age to wash off my face and the strain to lift from the lines of my hands. There’s no love in what I do. Everyone else here is bathed in it. They can afford that fantasy, I suppose. I’m locked into a life of supposedly virtuous aberration. I want to look away from the ugly rudiments of reality and see the fanciful vision of life these people wander through.

The owner introduces Dave and sees him to the microphone. The room was quiet and attentive, the most respectful they’d be all night. I kept my head down in case any of the regulars should look my way. He sang something cheap and popular but I didn’t pay attention. I haven’t for over a year now. His voice is loud, grating and rapt by feedback, his words scarcely intelligible. Yet every Thursday night everyone sits quietly and indulges him. Their kindness is his humiliation, their condescension his unknowing shame. It’s the same every week. This is our life now. We subject ourselves to the paltry courtesy of people decisive enough to pursue their own interests and desires. There’s nothing else for us in this life. He just makes a goddamned fool of himself and me with him. They applauded loudly, generously, as he finished his song and shuffled off the stage back toward me. We’ll get back to the apartment later and I’ll clean the dishes in the small kitchen area overlooking the couch I sleep on, following the routine in silence. I’ll run my calloused hands over my prematurely old face and fall asleep, knowing that these people still dance, and celebrate their beauty, their youth, their successes and their immense potential, 36

balking at the night and the morning to follow. I see the stains on the ceiling, the crack in the window lit by a distant street lamp obscured by the city’s grime and filth. I work hard. I spend my money responsibly. I live myself the way I do to protect another. There’s no virtue in this.

He stumbled through the crowd as another singer took to the stage, like every other evening. I finished my drink before he spoke.

“Did you like it?” he asked.

“It wasn’t bad.”

Angel Share Jennifer Six

A word she absorbed. There is something wonderful, smooth and caressing about these two words. Angel share. * She was thinking about the two words when her head hit the ground. And about the yellow clouds up there in the sky. Yellow from the Christmas lights they just put up in the streets, another few days earlier than last year. In fact, she was also thinking about the high level of the river to her left. It rose and bulged since the rain started to pour down everything the clouds could possibly bear. It made her think of the swollen and wet spot on her forehead. * Sensationalism. Since death has been made public, and those who die made it on our TV screens, everybody wants to die. Everybody, unless you’re sane enough to admit that being popular has something to do with having the time to enjoy it over the ground. Yet if your dying lasts 15 minutes you have reached your potential like most other public figures.

A certain amount of sensationalism won’t hurt anyone, would it? Is it bad to watch a bridge collapsing under the strength of the water? Is it still the same when someone is swallowed with it by this liquid force of nature? Is it bad then if you stand around a tram which collided with a bus? Just to take pictures with your mobile of how the victims get carried out of the mess of metal, glass and fear? The young and the old astonished by the fact that they weren’t involved.

Astonished by the thrill to actually see the injured.

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* “Mind your step the next time, bloody whore!”

Laughter.

Bloody was the perfect adjective for her, anyway. Blood dripped on the pavement, and the stones bore a hole in her chest though they looked so smooth. Still she could hear the water rising beside her, a roaring sound coming from one of the bridges nearby. A faint echo of Christmas shoppers’ laughter and strumming purses was wrapped in the watery roar.

“Oh, and hey!”

They weren’t gone yet. * In large amount, it kills time, grief and sometimes people. But drops of whiskey also clean wounds; they disinfect them. It is said that the whiskey’s spirit ascends to the sky. Up, up and up, until beyond the sky, it reaches heaven. It is said that the angels know about this precious spirit which could cause so much harm in earthly lives but loses its perfidy on its way up. It turns into a honey-smelling, luck-bringing airness. Though the luck-bringing is not yet confirmed.

Nevertheless, it transcends into what is called Angel share. * I still felt the sweet but sharp taste of the golden liquid in my mouth and throat.

Both of us hoped that the angels would come and help.

And all the while I was watching, doing nothing, and, finally, hurrying on.

38

Fair to Middling

T

Conor D’arcy

he fat seals lay on the rocks in the sun. They adorned the outcrops of shale, barking sirens, until the sun began to vanish behind Ardilaun. They would loll off the warmed stones into the thickness of water, another element, thicker and more forgiving. We slid the currach in – it was tar-dark – hopping on before anything could flow in over the tops of our wellies. Six cages, a bucket, a lump of a phone and two lifejackets sat in the bottom along with us. When I first started rowing I just assumed a boat was rowed in the direction you intended to go. But no, you faced backwards, looked at where you were coming from, which was always some bit of land in this bay between peninsulas. And you pulled yourself, not pushing. You clenched your hands, your small hands around the paint-smattered handles of the oars and brought them into yourself, into your chest, letting the first knuckle of your thumbs bounce off your shirt, every third or fourth stroke. The creaking out of the oar hooks was like the screaming of some sea beast, rising in pitch till you were at the back of your stroke, just about to breathe out and then it would subside.

Usually I wasn’t rowing though, I was in charge of the pots. It was only on this, the first outing of the year that you’d go out with the pots. Every subsequent time, we were looking for our own buoys, sprayed blue with the sort of thing you’d use for sheep. Blue was a popular colour and even though it was a small bay, a dozen or so pots lay at the bottom of it. We knew our neighbour’s marking, a “K” in black. He made a living from this. The only time we’d be tricked was after there was a big strand in it or after a storm. A lot of the old stuff that was down there would get churned around, thrown loose or dragged in from further out. Then we’d see one and say, “That one?” one or the other of us, and we’d know that it wasn’t ours but more often than not I’d pull it up. If the day was fine and the dinner wouldn’t be ready for a while then why not pull it up, see what the old ones looked like, maybe there’ll be some big lads inside in it.

There never was of course, no big minotaur of a lobster but it wasn’t really about that. The section of the rope closest to the surface would be clean, waves keeping anything from growing on it. After pulling in a few arm-lengths, though, thick green stuff grew on it. Your hands would lose all that salty, sea-fresh sheen they had and get slimy. I used to coil it in the boat but after a while decided it was best to leave it back out in the water even as I pulled it.

The expectation was great. I’d always ask him how deep it was, here or there, how my brother would dive down to the bottom sometimes and find the rocks where they congregated and then we’d know, we’d know where to get the best, biggest ones. You couldn’t pick them by hand though, that was illegal. There had to be that element of chance and skill. The weight would give away fairly early on whether there was something in the pot or not with our own ones but with the amount of weed and algae swamped around this line, you couldn’t tell. Looking down when you must be getting near it you’d see the sand floating, stirred from the bottom, masking it again. There was a conspiracy to keep the mystery going that bit longer I think. And then – wait – there she is, she’s an old one, ha, old-style one, wait’ll we get it up on the side. Anything in her – not a bit, ah, how long has that been down there, you couldn’t tell, could be twenty years or more, d’you know Marcus King, course you wouldn’t – a second cousin of Lizzy back the road, 39

no, drives a purple Toyota, yeah, that fella. Well his father had pots down here.

I let it slip back down into the opacity of the Atlantic, the thick rope sliding through my hands, smooth with the odd jump, trying to tell when it hit the bottom, thinking I’d know. But then rope wasn’t moving anymore and I hadn’t. Lobbing the buoy back out, hoping for a bigger splash than I got.

Our own were a different story. He’d pull up against one, I’d lean over and grab it in. Sometimes we’d have to make a couple of approaches. The buoy would sit in the bottom with the other things – it’s ours alright. I knew these ropes. Blue and thin, bought from the shop in town on a Saturday afternoon he’d taken off work early. Six days a week till he was sixty. My school-soft hands relished the abrasion, the wet roughness of the rope in my hands, leaving it behind me, trying not to tangle it, soaking my jeans through just above the knee as it brushed against them.

No oilers. It was much the same now as before except the expectation this time wasn’t of vague history, of discovering something mysterious but instead a tangible hope. Trying to identify the contents as soon as it appeared about ten foot down. A mass of wet wriggling and writhing, it was heavy and shook as I struggled to sit it on the side of the boat before putting it foolishly on my own seat. I could flip the board though.

There were four things the pots could contain. Nothing was the first. Second, was dogfish. They were big, too big for the pot and it always struck me as a wonder they fitted their speckled leopard heads in there. They flap and snap and beat their tail and body hard. There was always the danger of getting a bite off one of them – rock salmon, in a bit of flour, fry them up, lovely, did you ever have it, oh, long ago, so if they were on their own in the pot you could shake them back into the water then and there. If not then you’d drop them into the boat, up near the end so they weren’t in the way. Then when you had all the other pots checked and reset and you reached land, you’d get the bucket, scoop them up and ease them back in. They didn’t take to it again with the ease of the seals though. They seemed to have spent too long in the boat, the facing backwards and moving forwards, so they swam back to the shore. Three or four times I’d turn them around, trying to throw them a bit further out. After that he’d tell me not to bother with them and it was left up to themselves.

Third were crabs. Red crabs and green crabs. You could eat these too apparently, though we never did. More victims of perspective and motion, shuffling sideways. The crabs were much better than the dogfish; they were bait. I didn’t like doing it the first few times but once you were used to it there was a pleasure in it. Shaking them out into the bottom, they’d recover better than the dogfish and make a move towards my toe. I’d raise my foot, aim and bring the heel down hard. SCQWUSH!! Sometimes you’d have to give them a second go to finish the job as they’d twitch a bit, even as their insides were on their outsides, their shell pushed in. Scooping up the green and red in my hand, it was still bonded, I’d free the hook and loosen the pouch that held the lure, the cause of all this, coming to feed, and stuff it in there, flicking the come-loose bits of body off me into the trap. If someone had my guts, the red stuff that belongs to me and lives in me, on their hands and Subbuteo’d it into a trap to catch something else ...

Fourth was what we were after – lobster. They smelt – or whatever lobsters do, sensed – in the 40

water the flesh of the crushed crabs, or the fish-heads we’d get from the neighbour sometimes, in the water, which must be cold and black down that deep. They’d make their way there, and walk into the netting of the cage, eat a bit of the bait. Trapped. You can’t go back out the way you came in. Others, crabs and dogfish, would join and it would get cramped, worse still. They might stay like that for a day or two and then, movement. Up, up, or whatever direction a lobster can conceive of. Breaching the surface, they do better than dogfish, a shark, but worse than crabs and seals.

When I saw the curved blue body, I’d be happy. You’d check it wasn’t too small, give it a chance to breed if it was and drop it back in, a huge fall. You’d shake all the other stuff into the bottom, not giving it any attention for there was the prize. Usually purple-blue, segmented armour, oversized claws. They’d take a man’s finger off, those things, SHHNIP!! But I couldn’t believe that. Even still, I grabbed them behind the socket and not too close to my face. I’d hold them up, Simba-like, they’d flap and snap and try to get back into the water, walloping the tail against my wrist. Looking at the underbelly I’d always hope not to see eggs. Teeming, that profusion of life made me feel ill. Clustered so close together, so dense and potent it terrified me. I don’t know what it is, perhaps the sheep I’d seen with the maggots in it, but when there were eggs, a distorted, bubbling, spreading mass of eggs, I felt sick. Ah sure that’s the best bit. I never knew you were meant to throw them back with the little ones for the sake of the population. I would’ve happily. It was even worse once they were cooked. The actual cooking process never troubled me. You threw them into the water and they flapped around a bit, then stopped, then changed colour. Then you cracked them and ate them with butter and bread. But when the pregnant ones were cooked, sitting on the kitchen counter, the underbelly of eggs, like a thousand bombs beneath a war plane, like red, red holly berries on a bush at Christmas – I couldn’t stand it. And he sucked on them, delighted.

The other part I sometimes didn’t like was when you couldn’t just shake them out, when they’d cling on to a bit of netting or the frame of the pot. They’d latch on, hold on, I don’t know if they knew what was coming, if the little throwbacks had told them, but they were tough to budge.

Eventually though, after a couple of sharp tugs they’d detach and their fate was sealed. I pitied them and wondered if I’d hang on that strongly. The only thing left to be decided then was whose stomach they ended up in. He ate most of them, overcooked though. I’d bring some up to the neighbours in the holiday house next door sometimes. The mother there, a nouveau riche midget, refused to have anything to do with the squirming madness. They reminded me of the facesuckers in Half-Life or the bellyburster in Alien. The husband, a salesman and a cheater as it transpired, stepped up to the mark and threw it in the sink while filling the kettle. You can also chop them in half, right down the middle with a big knife but that seems excessively gory.

There have been no trips out in the currach since he died except for once when I joined my brother and his black Labrador for a row. Late August sunshine had left our skin lobsterred after a day sitting outside a pub. It was beginning to set now and we wore long-sleeved shirts. As the fabric cuffed off my skin I winced. I still wore shorts. The dog leapt into the boat barking, loving it. He was already soaking and the white patch on his chest gleamed. Posed like a masthead, his eyes darted around as his tongue hung out of the side of his face. He produced more foam than the sea, which was calm.

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My brother sat in the back and rowed. Backwards, out and out and out, watching the house and the hill diminish. Occasionally he’d pause and twist around to have a look at the island and the water we were heading for. “How far do you want to go out?” he asked. “A bit further out yet anyway.” The dog was very excited, staring down at the water although he was used to boats with my brother. “Great design these things. I love looking at the pattern, all the curves and crosses.

Did you ever see them bending the wood?” “Yes,” he says, just at the climax of his stroke.

We went a bit further and he stopped. I wiped my face and my hand tasted salty. My skin was burnt and tender and touching it was an odd pleasure. The wind was always stronger when you were off-land. I marked our position against the land – on one side a field with cows, on the other a house with a big garden in front. We idled there, spinning slightly, my brother correcting every now and then. I surveyed the surface of water for the orange call of a buoy but there were none. Overfished last year, I’d heard. Something broke the surface suddenly, though a ways off, and the light shone on it and stopped. The dog noticed and increased the frequency and volume of his barks. They echoed out across the water and I wondered what it sounded like on the land.

The something shined again nearer now, cresting above the blue and I thought about whether and how to tell my brother. We have a spectator over there. Louis sees a long-lost relative. He looks like a big fella. Did you see the water slug coming for us? Do you think he could flip the boat? Curious lads, aren’t they? Did you ever see one underwater? Watch this now. I wonder can they understand each other. “Did you spot that?” “The seal? Yeah. Do you know what the Latin name for them is?” “Uh,” I paused even though I knew what it was and knew he knew, “pinna, I think. Means wing or fin. Flying or swimming.”

He didn’t show his head again for a while and the dog went quiet. Then it came up, about ten foot away from us, eyes and whiskers clearly visible. The dog went mad. I grabbed him so he wouldn’t jump out of the boat. He growled and gave me an angry glare. My brother shouted at him and he quietened down but wouldn’t lift his stare from the seal. The seal seemed happy enough just observing us. After we’d taken a couple of pictures and he hadn’t moved in about five minutes the dog relaxed a bit.

42

The Tin House

T

John Murray

he sun beats down on the roof of the metal shed. Sergei is out on the plain breaking up the hard-packed earth. It is still springtime but the sun has already become unbearable.

The sun scalds any patch of uncovered pale skin. Black eyes, black hair, pale skin. When the sun goes down it first goes orange and then goes red – a perfect disk dropping behind the mountains at the edge of the plain. The mountains are peaked with snow all year round as Sergei hammers at the earth. With his back to the mountains he faces thick forest. Endless rows of dry stunted trees. The old man with the cart tells Sergei that after the forest is the sea but all Sergei knows is the forest, the mountains and his tin house on the plain.

Sergei beats the earth seven days in the week. He plants seeds and when the rain comes he sits in his tin house. He watches green shoots poke their head through the soil, gaining more courage day after day. The rain rattles like coins on the roof of his shed and Sergei falls asleep listening to the sound. The old man brings grain and trades it for Sergei’s green plants.

Water comes from the well at the edge of the plain. The water is brown and orange. Sergei boils the water on his tiny stove. He takes pieces of wood from the edge of the forest. Deep and thick, bugs swarm and sting when he goes near it. He takes his wood and walks back across the plain to his shed. When the stove is lit he heats up the water until it bubbles.

Sergei beats the earth and plants his seeds. He collects wood from the edge of the forest and dreams about the sea. The sea isn’t orange and brown like the water from the well. The old man tells him it is cool and green. Sergei dreams all day and all night as he sleeps and works on the plain.

Sergei follows the old man to the edge of the plain and on into the forest. The track is winding and unclear but the old man knows the way. The bugs have stopped but the forest is dark, the air still and dry. The old man sets himself down and tired Sergei does the same.

When Sergei wakes the trees have gone, the old man has gone with them. The sun rises, first red, then orange, its rays growing stronger. The sea stretches out in front of him, glistening green and cool. Sergei lies in the sea, hiding from the sun. The sun tries to scald his pale skin but the cool green sea stops it. He lies on his back, arms and legs apart, his body floats with the waves.

When he breathes out his legs go down, when he breathes in they come up again. He opens his eyes and all that lies above him is the bright, clear blue sky. All thoughts seep from his mind – water from a hole in the sand. A large red fin slides through waves. Sergei bobs up and down in the cool green sea as the massive herring devours him.

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Photo Credit: Masha Dunaeva

CHAPTER SEVEN of THE ABODE OF FANCY: “The Mad Monk’s Post-Teat-Suckling Epiphany” Monty Chesterfield

A

t the break of the new day, The Mad Monk awoke, beside the Cow and her calf, with tears in his eyes. He had been crying in his sleep.

For he had been subject to distressing dreams over the course of the dark night, where horrific portents of things to come commingled with sad memories. He had seen a one-eyed cat with a bleeding tongue; seen a catatonic old man sitting incontinent in his bed as his mind cracked; seen a man incessantly spooning dollops of mustard into the gaping mouth of a kneeling female; seen his own death repeated as if on a loop, the Wizard plunging over and over that axe into his master’s chest, and the racking screams that tore the air; or seen again that same Wizard, his corpse mangled and his busted head a pulpy mess, having been squashed by the wheel of an unheeding automobile, having lain down in the middle of the road to die; seen a naked fat man dancing with a carving knife; seen the bloodied pond where his own daughter plunged down her unhappy head to suffocate and drown; and lastly of all, all the sadder for seeming so happy, seen the gang of old stagers, sat around the dinner table in the Arcadian Nook it was once their privilege to call home, eating and drinking and making merry, as the sun in glory shone down from on high.

And as he sat up from the grass from sleep, and roughly wiped his wet eyes, feeling the dampness of the morning dew, in the grey light of dawn that matched his mood, he could not help but think again of that Arcadian dinner table, and of all those who had sat to sup there, his old friends, all of whom, bar himself, were dead. So many deaths he had seen in his time, he thought sadly, so many beloved lives he had seen dropping off and quitting from the race, never 44

more to be seen or spoken to: there was his prophetic brother Elijah; his daughter Minnie, a peaky abnormality, a Faerie-human-hybrid child he had never done justice; and cousin Peter the prim one; and Uncle James and Uncle John, Jim and Jack the jovial ones, the avuncular good fellows, never failing to merrily crack a joke – wherefore were their dear jests to be no more?; and Colonel Buckshot, the ancient gargoyle; and young Sherman the wise fool; and Watt too, Watt above all of whom he thought, Archibald Theodore, the dwarf with the look of a titan, a giant among mortal men, his daughter’s husband, his son-in-law, his devoted pupil, his best friend, the one and only, he too long gone – and how he missed him.

And as he stood up, taking care not to rupture the slumber of the Cow and her child by his side, and began to pace about the field, touching the stones of the wall around them, he remembered with a pang their salad desert days, when first they met and bonded, as if by accident, in the wastes of the shifting sands; how he had appeared out of the drought as if a mirage to comfort the thirsting little man, so splendid in his conical cap and garden gnome’s getup; how swiftly he had befriended him, the pair united by their effusive grandiloquence; Watt the younger who acquiesced to play at being disciple to the elder, lapping behind at the towering master’s heels, picking up tidbits of his supposed knowledge, his secrets, his gifts, his powers, his “Divine Madness” – that was the name The Mad Monk had coined and the doctrine he preached, the term he used to describe what it was that made him who he was, that peculiar, ungraspable sort of enlightenment he possessed, that power he strove to pass on to a select few others, like Watt and the Wizard – but deep down he knew it was no more adequate a phrase than was “Magick” or “Lunacy” or “Sorcery” or “Bullshit”. For it eluded words, whatever it was that made him not as others were, that unsightly power, somehow preposterous, that came and went as he grew and diminished, though never obliterated – and at times how he did so ardently yearn to be a simple human man, such as Watt was, who had not this oppressive weight of empowering greatness forcibly thrust upon reluctant shoulders, that could not shake off their yoke – then this further burden of immortality to contend with, a novelty initially, though now more oft a drudge, 45

conferred upon him when he was dead, and unable to give the go-ahead – for it was a mixed state, the pleasure of his own permanence soured by the dismal spectacle of all the other things and persons who were not, as easily felled as a tree – why try to get close to anyone, only to see them slip away again like all the other passing shades, to be thus resigned to trudge on again utterly alone, to seek new fruitless intimacies? Alone, for he was always somehow alone, for all he may have known such intimate friends and family that had gone – Puck and Pooka there were still, yet to join him – but they were not family, not as dead daughter Minnie had been, nor like his Faerie wife, frumpy now and losing her looks. And nor for the Puck and Pooka could he ever muster the love he had borne Watt, not with them enjoy the rapport he had had with that other, smaller, greater man.

He would never find another friend as Watt had been. And he acknowledged now how he had learnt far more from Watt than ever Watt had from him; for Watt was a Hero built on a tidy and diminutive scale, modest and approachable, human, wholly human, a state such as The Mad Monk always secretly envied; Watt who married his daughter, Watt who he devilishly encouraged to sleep unknowingly with her mother, The Mad Monk taken with the cuckold’s cheap thrill, a low deed he now condemned, that yet did not ruin their friendship; for noble Watt would remain unerringly faithful to his wayward teacher, Watt who never swerved from his side even after he had died, who built for his corpse a coffin, and sailed aloft the perilous seas in search of a desert isle such as would be for the cadaver a sanctuary – and now Watt himself was dead, his master had overseen the wake and read the eulogy, and borne the body back out into the desert where they met, where Watt had been entombed in that same coffin his resurrected elder had vacated – and human Watt would never rise again from that place – for he was too much of a man to admit of such a grotesque awakening.

The Mad Monk leaned on the stony wall, and watched the sun begin to arise, far away in the distance over the country’s dipping hills, red rays beginning to lighten the cascade of far-off fields, illumining the woolly sides of tiny sleeping sheep, flocks huddled on the hillsides, rays alighting on pinprick haystacks, drying up the dew, casting light on his mood of melancholy, his stooping figure as if cut of grieving marble, every line on the tired visage one that sang of woe, no light seen to shine in the large and downcast eyes, as they stared down the red and rising sun. He was alone in this place, this smaller world that had not the room for one as he was, a ravaged vestige of a bygone ghostly time, an age of Watts and Wizards, a time that knew not the contemptible poking of tongues into cheeks, unafraid to dream of greater things, that had the courage to strive enact their beautiful fantasies, for whom to be irrational was no shameful sin, who valued valour, who esteemed friendship and folklore, who made no mockery of magic and did not sneer at superstition, forever donning their ridiculous robes to roam the fields and pine for love as they tended to their flocks, an Arcadian age, golden and holy, that even if it did not exist outside of the world of dreams, then damn it, why not dream? To dream of happiness, dream with longing to be free, unshackled and untrammelled by the tyranny wrought by the unstoppable turning of time, time that sought to elide the careless, to keep them busy, to look at clocks, to rip up a pastoral carpet to drown in smothering concrete, to do one’s duty, to scurry all over the bruised and sickened earth like the busybody ants, forgetting one’s roots, getting overwhelmed by the trivialities, losing touch with what was human and animal, with all that was true and good in life.

46

In his mounting anger, The Mad Monk ground his teeth, and kicked the stone wall, sending it toppling asunder – but the falling stones made no sound. For an instant he bowed his head, overcome; then looked back up.

That red sun was a rising one, not a sinking one – and so too might his own star rise again. And if this wretched world had no room for him – begod, he would make his own room to clear his niche, if it meant bringing down all that was there, in a thunderous riot of rubble and ruin to shock the skies, and make the universe quake, and the stars shiver, but from the throes of such destruction might spring up again a better place, a world in which his ilk would be welcome.

And let him begin here, here, on this island of Ireland, as good a place to begin as any, this land thought for so many ages to be the end of everything, last bastion and outcrop of earth before the endless shaft of cold and cruel sea, yes, this place, once thought an end, let it be now, through his endeavours, the beginnings of the better. Yes! He laughed aloud, awaking the Cow and her calf.

“You is okay, sah?” she mooed in concern.

“Never better, madam!” he chirped, whipping around to bend down to nuzzle her voluptuous belly, fingering the teats of the undulant udder he had suckled, “But I fear I must hasten to be gone, to go off to redeem the world, to make it a happier one for cows as thyself, your beauteous bovine self, supplier of such milk, madam, milk so marvellous, like as unto the wine or honey of Heaven, finer than any e’er I greedily drank – but I must be away, yes, and look you not so sad, for I shall return, we will meet again, for there is a Day of Reckoning in the offing, where all will climax and come together as one – easier said than done, hence my need to make speed.

So fare thee well, and see you soon – and rest assured, I do love you, my heart you have won, how jealous would my wife be were she ever to discover the terms of intimacy we share – and bye, bye, my boy, your mother’s all yours, my best wishes to you both – and now – pip-pip, tooraloom-tooraloom and zoom!”

And with that, he kissed her one final time, and ruffled the calf ’s forelock, and gave to both a wink, and then shot away over the wall he had knocked, and bound along on the legs of a dervish, over a dozen succeeding fields, tripping by their occupants, stepping on the toes of rabbits, rousing the rage of bulls, exciting the wrath of pigs, arousing the ire of donkeys, and the bewilderment of a few men in tractors, until he had soon quit all the cultivated lines of domestication, and was lost amid slopes of hills, a dot among the crags of mountains – and thereupon was gone from their sight.

And the Cow, bemused, gave a puzzled snort; whereupon her spoilt calf made noises in appealing for his morn’s customary suckling bout; and so she lay back down, with her udder in the air, to let her son do as he wilt.

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“Glauce” Monologue from MedeaMachine Ian Belton

Glauce: Claire Danes would be great but I hear she is a total headcase. Her mom is always on the set with her and the girl can hardly get a word in edgewise. Mena Suvari is a total flash in the pan and Uma Thurman is past her prime. Christina Ricci and Kate Winslet are too fat and … That doesn’t mean I don’t have attachments? You want attachments? I’ll show you attachments. Natalie Portman is totally lined up and Anna Paquin is dying for some Classical Street Cred … NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo No! It’s not an adaptation of the play. The play? The play!

MADEEAAH. Not that you’ve read it you Cro-Mag. Well, actually, I’m not even in the play.

I am an allusion. Not eeeiiieeeiiillusion … Uhhh! Goddamnit … Uh-llusion. All anyone ever says is “Creon’s daughter … Creon’s daughter …” My NAME is not even in the fucking play. If Euripides wasn’t dead and I wasn’t dead I’d sue his ass for infringement of copyright concept or some shit like that. If I left it up to him, that dead Greek motherfucker, I’d still be a little inbred, buck-tooth royal slut frolicking around the castle like some air-head Bambi on acid. Waiting for Medea’s dirt-eating barbarian children to give me … Ohhh … What’s THIIIIISS! A Pre-sent! For MEEE!!! What do you think I am, stuuuuuupid? I know Medea is some oriental, freaked-out, near-eastern, bad juju voodoo mama, shiiiiiiit. So I don’t even open the presents … I have my slaves … I mean my servants … do it because because I’m no fuckin’ bimbo. And they open the presents real careful-like, and with like the serious Robocop bomb squad gear on … they open the boxes and out comes the most BEAHUUUTIFUL dress I have ever seen and the most precious, delicate, dainty tiara the gods have ever put on this good earth. How was I supposed to know that evil foreign bitch sabotaged, or poisoned, or put some freakin’ spell on the bogus gifts. Who ever heard of a poison cocktail dress anyway? The bomb squad looked it over and shrugged, “What’s the big deal?” And do you know what I did? Do you? I cried, I shed tears, I wept because I was so moved by the size of the gesture. I thought, if that was me I’d be pissed and here she was taking it like a man. And do you know what? If you want to get anywhere in this life, that’s what you gotta be … balls and all. When they handed me the gifts I 48

was like, “Daddy, Daddy … Please don’t expel Medea from the country. She’s not soooo bad. Or at least let her angelic little children stay on and become fluffy little princes. I didn’t even wait for a response. I threw on the dress and the tiara and let me tell you … I looked good … Well, that is before my SKIN started to MELT off my BODY and my HEAD caught on FIRE and I started spewing MUCUS and BILE while my EYES bugged out of my HEAD as my BRAIN imploded in on itself. And my Dad … My poor Dad … My Dad who would wait around the corner in the station wagon while I went to high school dances … ran over to my smoldering corpse and tried to help while everyone else ran in the opposite direction. And wouldn’t you know it? The poison latched onto him like galloping cancer and enveloped the two of us … fire and blood, father and daughter, dripped down together in molten clots, flesh curdling off our bones like tear drops congealing out of pine trees, inexplicably dissolved by those ravening venoms …

[Long pause.]

I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna say what Miramax said. You’re gonna say nobody cares about the victim because nobody wants to be the victim.

[Pause.]

Well, I got something to tell you Mister Man Man. When cows learn to speak, the slaughterhouses won’t last very long.

49

The Quenched Flame Shona McDonald

[Lights come up. The scene is a park. At stage right there is a small stone wall. At stage left there are steps leading to a stone platform. Night-time. One street-lamp shining stage right. Stars flickering in sky. Path comes from stage right and leads to centre. GIRL sitting on steps. Enter BOY stage right.

Stops few feet behind. Beat.]

BOY Aren’t you cold?

[GIRL looks up.]

GIRL You. Here.

BOY You’re shivering. [Moves to sit beside her, she edges further away. He tries to put his coat around her.

She stands up, holding her arms.] How’ve you been?

GIRL Two steps back.

BOY What?

GIRL I thought it was one but now I think it was two. What do you think? You should know. You left me there.

BOY Me? GIRL Yes. You. [Beat.] It’s gone dark. It’s all gone dark.

BOY Well, it’s getting late.

GIRL Not the sky. I mean us. You. Me. I don’t know what I mean. Every time I think I know what we are, what this thing is, I’m wrong. Every time. And you just sit there, silent, letting me ramble on. Leaving me to wonder if there is anything real between us at all or if it was all just in my imagination. Maybe I don’t even know you. Maybe I just created my own ideal of you as if this was all just a story. My very own fairytale. My knight in shining armour. Fiction, all just fiction.

50

BOY But you do know me. You do.

GIRL You’re mistaken. I know my version of you. The angelic heroic prince I believed you to be, but you didn’t come with a halo attached. And for that I am glad. I needed to know you had a flaw because I needed to know you were real. Flaws, bad traits, undesirable qualities, deception, guilt.

Strike a chord yet? Falsity? Hit a nerve yet? Lies? I think I’ve struck gold.

BOY You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to trust me, why don’t you? So many arguments and it comes down to the same thing. You can’t trust me. If you fall, I will catch you. I will. But you have to let me. [Beat.] Are you scared? Is that it? Are you scared of what will happen if you let someone in?

GIRL You said that then too.

BOY What?

GIRL That I was your best friend.

BOY You are.

GIRL That night.

BOY That night. Here.

GIRL Yeah. Here.

BOY You never answered me. You never do. I never know. How can you expect me to know? You never tell me. You never talk straight.

GIRL The bulb was gone.

51

BOY What?

GIRL In that street-lamp over there. It was pitch dark. Except for the stars. There were millions of stars. And there was a slow wind rustling those leaves on that tree over there. And I was wearing my brown dress and I was worried my parents would find us. And you ... you don’t remember any of this, do you?

BOY No. No. I don’t. I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you.

GIRL Why? Just tell me why you don’t want to lose me. Because if you’re about to tell me you love me, don’t bother. I waited for you, made excuses for you, pitied you, loved you and watched whilst everyone laughed at me for grimy naivety. And you ... I bet it felt great to have someone to pull along on a string. Idiotic pathetic little me. I bet you laughed too. Can’t blame you really. I’d prob laugh too.

BOY You know I wouldn’t do that. You are just choosing to ignore the little voice inside you that knows the truth. And until you start to listen to that voice we are going to keep spinning round and round in circles like this and I’m dizzy already.

GIRL Like a knife.

BOY What?

GIRL Like a sharp jolt of pain. A stab right through me. And it keeps happening. In and out. Again.

Again. Only I can’t see the mark. I can feel it. I can sense it. But I can’t see it. And that scares me. It hurts. It throbs. It makes me so violently sick, but how can it? It’s invisible. I can’t see it but I so desperately want you to. See what you’ve done to me. The jagged rough edge you left.

You blade.

BOY Blade? I didn’t. I never meant to ... I just ... It confuses me. I never know. Never knew. What this is. What we are. And you. You can’t talk straight. You talk about blades and scars and steps but you never talk about what’s going on in your mind. And I still don’t know where I stand. So many words. So many metaphors. To avoid the point. To avoid me. To avoid yourself. And we just keep walking in circles. More and more circles. There are other shapes in life and if you let me I could show you. But I always feel as though you’re out of reach. I could say you’re my best friend but would I ever be yours? I could say I love you but would you ever love me? We never 52

quite make it. It’s always “almost” with us, isn’t it? Chasing a dream, but that’s just it. I run so hard but I can’t keep up with you. We’ve been up and down this road so many times and every time I come to a stop sign and have to turn around and try again. But I’m tired. I can’t keep chasing you. You think I don’t love you but the truth is I can’t. Maybe we were just dreaming.

[He goes to leave, but turns back.]

You know, on the surface you shine and you throw out beams and rays of smiles and grins, golden and sparkling. But what most people don’t see is the dark cloud looming overhead, the rain ever waiting in the wings.

[He leaves.]

GIRL There were stars that night too.

[Street lamp flickers and turns off.]

That’s how it happens. It flickers and flickers and then it’s gone. Just gone.

53

Photo Credit: Lucy Nuzum

Mangan’s Homecoming A melodrama in three scenes Frank Hutton-Williams

FLORIN — A failed writer, now gombeen man, as obnoxious as he is insecure, anguished by the name his mother chose for him.

REBECCA — Reluctant spouse of Florin, slightly grey with age. Pronounces his name facetiously in order to berate him.

GEORGINA — Their fiendishly inquisitive twelve-year-old daughter.

FRENCH VICAR — More often preached at than preaching. When he speaks in English, he does so with great fluency, but with a slightly nasal, Parisian accent. His first name is Jean-Paul.

ANGUS LOVELACE H — His partner, who does most of the preaching. Also on very intimate terms with Rebecca.

MANGAN — A shadowy vagrant misappropriated and misunderstood. Nothing definitive about him is known.

SCENE I [In lounge. The front door to the house is to the back right of the stage. A side door exit is also to the right. Three brash and oversized armchairs are arranged in triangular formation around an antique card table; three packs of cards are strewn randomly across its surface. Armchair A faces the audience 54

directly in the centre. Armchairs B and C are positioned complementary to it. A bright lamplight on the card table casts a shadow over the back of the armchairs. The room is so spotless it looks like it has hardly been lived in except for a large stain on the floor beside armchair C. Florin is seated in armchair A, Georgina in C, B is empty. Wailing is heard from outside, somewhere between that of a gale and a human voice. It grows louder. The lights are dimmed.]

VICAR [Standing in the shadow behind armchair A.] So you claim to have known this man, Mangan?

FLORIN Yes, but— VICAR But you just said you knew nothing about him.

FLORIN [In denial] Did I? Well, we were acquainted with one another. But I can safely assure you he mattered little to me. Only his silhouette survives – he might as well be dead and buried.

[Panicking] I kept my distance from that shadowy figure. Throughout our correspondence I’ll have you know I remained perfectly self-identical.

VICAR Self-identical?

FLORIN Yes. He wasn’t going to change me… from what I was. Nothing could.

VICAR You knew him well. You were in touch with one another.

FLORIN Okay, okay – I knew the damned reprobate. [Pause, a thumping at the door followed by shouts of protestation] [Sneers] What’s important is that I recognise him no longer. No, let me amend that.

I still recognise him well enough not to recognise him any longer.

ANGUS [Standing behind armchair C] The same is true of my budgerigar since he had his wings clipped.

How he used to dash about his cage!

VICAR Il n’est pas le même sans ses aîles. Bof. Qu’est-ce qui en la foute nous?

FLORIN Anyway, I lost touch with him once he started to be haunted by blue-eyed cherubim.

ANGUS Smitten into hell, was he?

FLORIN Well, there’s no evidence to support that assertion, but yes, he must have been.

[ANGUS LOVELACE and the VICAR JEAN-PAUL exit quietly through the front door. Wailing is heard again, fainter this time. It quickly subsides. The lights are no longer dimmed.]

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GEORGINA Perhaps it’s— FLORIN Perhaps not. No further conjectures please. They said we were to be in for a bit of a squall tonight. In this ill-starred conurbation, a squall, can you imagine?

GEORGINA Who is “they”?

FLORIN That poor old fool, I forget his name, instead of “rough weather”, or something like it, said we were heading for a squall. [Irritably] Oh, you know the guy who sells that trash paper where my old man used to on the park corner that your mother inexplicably buys. [Elegiac] I recognised your voice, old man, its gentle creaking, like a dilapidated door, squeaking on its hinges.

[More wailing.]

GEORGINA A lot better than “rough weather” though, isn’t it?

[REBECCA is heard fumbling at the lock, before bursting in through the front door. She is dripping wet.]

REBECCA I’m absolutely soaked!

GEORGINA Poor Mamma!

REBECCA I’ve never experienced anything like it; I was blown off the pavement! The rain, the rain, the rain is— GEORGINA Quick. Let’s get these clothes off you. I’ll help you to dry off.

[She helps her mother to take off her coat, scarf and gloves, and then exits at side-door to hang them up.]

REBECCA Thank you, Georgina. At least there is someone in this house with an ounce of sympathy. Florin!

[FLORIN squirms visibly. REBECCA marches towards him.]

Florin! A man is crouched on our doorstep. I didn’t even see him until I stepped on his hand.

FLORIN What am I supposed to do about it?

REBECCA [Simultaneously with FLORIN] Is that all you have to say?

[Pause.]

56

Get out now and talk to him! Go on! Get him away from here! Get rid of him now, and while you’re at it you can get rid of that dreadful smugness you’re wearing on your lips.

FLORIN [Immensely artificial] Weather-worn and sopping wet, you tax me with unkindness. I go.

[He rises heavily, with great protest, before walking up to the front door, grabbing his anorak, and slamming the door shut behind him. GEORGINA re-enters with coffee and hands it to her mother.]

GEORGINA You’re drying off quickly!

REBECCA Yes, I suppose I am. [Sits down in armchair A.] Well, what shall we do now then?

GEORGINA I don’t know.

REBECCA Well come on, Georgina. What are we to do now? I’ve told you I don’t know how many times before always to have something on the agenda.

[Silence.]

Would it be better then, if we were to talk a little about school?

GEORGINA No. REBECCA I presume you’re getting on a little better with Mr Lucas these days?

GEORGINA Like a house on fire!

REBECCA And have you have stopped teasing that girl with the ridiculous front teeth – what’s she called?

Fidgett? Bridgett?

GEORGINA [Smirks] Beaver butthead.

REBECCA Georgina, not even in jest!

GEORGINA But she’s so ugly. She looks just like the head of a beaver, stuck to a bottom!

REBECCA I cannot believe I am hearing this from my own daughter. Here she was, what was it, less than a week ago, telling me how she had decided to reform her attitudes, to reform them – only to return to her original convictions!

GEORGINA Where is Papa? Why’s he gone out? What for?

57

REBECCA Really, Georgina. And to think that you and I had just reached an agreement— GEORGINA Does he want to get as soaked as you were? Just listen to that wind and rain.

[Wailing is again audible, clearly more aggravated.]

Papa loathes this kind of weather. He’s told me before, whenever we’ve had bad weather like this, that it makes him dream of leaving everything behind for a shack in the creamy-white sands of Jamaica.

REBECCA Creamy-white? Yes, well, we all have our little fantasies.

GEORGINA Like watching the front teeth of Bridgett Deligliori grow and grow, with a humungous gap in between them …

REBECCA Shut up, Georgina!

GEORGINA Well, that’s mine.

[The front door opens and FLORIN emerges, soaked to the skin.]

FLORIN Satisfied? I am at least as sopping wet as you were. And for what purpose, may I ask? For the privilege of talking panopticons with an incomprehensible lunatic, who remains, incidentally, steadfast on my doorstep.

[He reopens the front-door and leans right out of the doorway, reeling like a ship’s mast.]

Away with you now, damned reprobate!

[More aggravated wailing. Closes it again. ] Well, that seems to have frightened him off. Is no one going to help me out of these wet clothes? One-sided, this family, one-bloody-sided!

REBECCA Do shut up and hand me your anorak, my dear. [Kisses him on the cheek.] I’m glad you got rid of him, whoever he was. Perhaps that’s served to cool you off somewhat.

FLORIN Perhaps it has. I did give him a damn good hoof or two. He won’t be coming back, that’s for sure!

REBECCA What got you so hot and bothered in the first place, Florin? [Pause.] Is it your name?

[GEORGINA struggles to suppress her laughter. FLORIN, too angry to speak, exits through the side door with REBECCA. GEORGINA is left on her own. Deeply concentrated in what looks like a 58

delicate operation, she starts plucking away the lining from the felt of armchair A, accidentally spilling her mother’s coffee down the back of it. REBECCA promptly re-enters; remarkably, she does not notice.]

Georgina, bed!

GEORGINA What?

REBECCA You heard. Do as I say.

GEORGINA Why the sudden rush? What’s got into you? I was just going to— REBECCA [Shouts] Just do as I say! Goodness, do you have to be so difficult about everything?

GEORGINA Of course, Mamma, but as you always say, you will not always be around for me to do as you say, and there will come a point, will there not, when it is up to me to— REBECCA Stay up then!

GEORGINA What?

REBECCA Flunk school and dream of growing huge front-teeth for all I care. Your father’s right. You’ll come to regret it sooner or later. It’s called discipline, Georgina, and it’s simple basic discipline, Georgina, that you lack. You see, even I know when the job in hand is to go to sleep. Right now, you should go to sleep, Georgina, go to sleep – go to sleep and feel fresh for the new day – that is the job in hand. Can I trust you to switch everything off ?

[Lights fade out. End of scene.]

SCENE II [In a Catholic Abbey full of Milesian fierceness. VICAR in black cassock. ANGUS is dressed in a tightfitting black suit; he is wearing stiff brogue shoes. Their speech is very grave and deliberate.]

ANGUS Yes. [Rushed] It slowly dawns that all I have and have not been did not add up to holding on to you. [Slowly] As one speaks to stone, as you to me. [They kiss.] Your embrace … a granite precipice … weather-worn … laced with crumbling grit … protracted and crestfallen … or simply the antithesis of creation … to speak about you. Oh Jean-Paul, you make a wreck of my too-confiding heart! To have fallen in love with me only to fall out of love! To think I was within an aim’s ace of becoming a Benedict …

VICAR Angus, please!

ANGUS I suppose this is meant to bring about the restitution of your original state, before you loved?

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The life in spiritu must indeed be glorious if you are able simply to pick up where you left off, each time you fall, as if nothing had ever happened during the intervening period. Or does it stand to reason that you are now thrice fallen? [Angrily] Must you be so impervious to a descent of any kind? [Change of tactic] Are you so impervious, Rudolf, to remorse? You still feel, do you not … the demand of the absolute?

VICAR [Hesitates] Yes. ANGUS The demand of the absolute. Yes. It is that and that only which brings us to the fulcrum of a decision. Without the softening of a compromise. Yes. I like that. You say that we cannot go on like this.

VICAR And yet we do.

[Pause.]

ANGUS You’re missing the point, Jean-Paul. I think your capacity to love on this earth has been blemished by your fatuous egotism. Funny how the pious pragmatics that promised you reentrance, complete with vatic cane, to the fair courts of life, should have assured you such a final … impenetrability.

VICAR I implore you, Angus, not to speak in vain.

ANGUS [Withdraws a mirror from his upper breast pocket, wielding it as one would wield a sabre.] This recognition of mine comes, perhaps, a little late?

[Pause.]

VICAR None too soon. [Readjusts awkwardly] I too have come to realise how emptily I plugged away.

To think I supposed myself free from my moorings when I was frozen insensibly to your— ANGUS [Turns the mirror towards him.] Like the squid with its ink, you exhibit only the failure of desire under the excess of its affirmation. [Pause.] Really, Jean-Paul, I still have great … affection for you.

VICAR [Looking into the mirror] That affection is hostile to life – my life.

ANGUS [Shoves it back into his breast-pocket] And what about my life, dare I ask? How is my life now to be led? You, you still have— VICAR God? Of course, I quite forget … I own him, he’s my bitch. [Angus is incredulous.] So you think I’m trapped in unanswerable servitude. But you do not understand how real suffering must be mute and inconsequential. Lying inside me … white-grey of a steeply caved feeling … aching in hope of [falters] consequence.

60

[Angus walks away.]

[Distressed] Didn’t you hear what I said?

ANGUS Yes, I heard what you said – on the theme of suffering, what you said about it – [turns around] but I did not hear what your suffering said. I might well conclude, might I not, from what I have heard you say of suffering, from what I have heard you say about it, that you, yourself, aren’t suffering – a conclusion that I am becoming more convinced of by the second! Surely the expression of a pitiful malaise uniquely and essentially mute must mean that what is expressed is essentially anti-expressive, that there can be no ear to hear it, that it can only be talked about … indirectly. Finally, must it not mean that the expression of suffering represents a double muteness; so that what you end up importuning me with is neither the expression of suffering nor suffering itself but the demand for me to lend an ear, impossibly, to the sound of insistent muteness. And so, you see, remaining unheard as well as unsaid in its unique and essential muteness, it is impossible for me to hear what your suffering says! [Scoffs] As if I could possibly share in that which is doubly mute!

VICAR What on earth are you talking about?

ANGUS I think you’ll find that I’m quite in line with the anti-pity tradition. Because I am not you, because I am not a Catholic, because I do not stop and question – “What is the name of your priest?” – because I do not mistake theology for what it is – theodoxy – because I see no purpose in the unfathomable propagation of pain, I expect you’ll call that “emotional illiteracy”.

VICAR It is true that we cannot always fathom the purpose of His ways. “Do not inquire as to whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee.” In love, the bell tolls similarly. We cannot claim agency for whomsoever it may toll.

ANGUS No, fool! [Strikes him with the mirror.] In love it is moronic, as you are demonstrating, not to claim it!

[Silence.]

Look once more at yourself. See how you have changed.

VICAR [Peers into the mirror] Ah! They’re here at last. Oh look! Their beautiful child is holding hands in between them.

[Enter FLORIN and REBECCA with GEORGINA holding their hands in between them. ANGUS is still absorbed by the mirror’s reflections.]

REBECCA Lovelace! Isn’t that you? I’m sorry we’re so late; Georgina wouldn’t— ANGUS Becca! How are you dear? Yes. You look wonderful. Yes. Don’t worry, Jean-Paul and I discussed plenty in the meanwhile! [Pause, artificially reflective.] Doesn’t the air have a marvellous stillness about it this morning, after the gale we had yesterday? Have you noticed? A kind of dank 61

torpidity— REBECCA Yes. I got absolutely soaked. Hullo, Vicar.

VICAR Rebecca. I hope I find you well.

REBECCA Very well, thank you. Georgina! Say hullo to the Vicar.

[Pronounced greetings all round. An awkward moment as FLORIN refuses to shake ANGUS LOVELACE’s hand.]

FLORIN [Beginnings of drunkenness] Sorry we’re late. The marvellously dank and torpid air. Forgive.

REBECCA Florin! I will not have you speaking like that to Angus, of all people.

FLORIN Where you have a mirror in your upper breast pocket, I prefer to keep a flask. [Removes a flask from his upper breast pocket, unscrews expertly the top as he does so and takes a swig.] White port, what do you think of that, Angus? No longer the cheap booze for me. The last time I carried this about with me [he gestures to the flask] – you’ll understand, before times improved – I said, Mangan, I said, [shakes it] … the demand of the absolute! [Sings] Then A-HA-HO-HUM, sixty drops of laudanum, take another dose and say: “to filthy bombast come what may!” [Suddenly sincere] When the soul’s been raised, he said, the onus is on us to ensure that the seeds of moral insanity grow up into a rosebush of giant altitude.

ANGUS [Incensed] A rosebush of altitudinous complacency, more like. You wouldn’t see me dead drinking that liqueur.

FLORIN Rebecca and I thought we could do with a few pieties and a bit of fresh air, that’s all. [To the Vicar] Apologies for the visitation.

REBECCA I apologise for my Florin … for my husband. He’s had too much to drink, again. Angus, Vicar … our discussion. I don’t feel that it’s right for us to have it in here. [Puts her arm forcibly around Florin’s waist. Angus puts his arm forcibly around hers. Georgina is in between them.] I think it would be better if you came back to ours.

ANGUS Becca, yes. I think that’s a much better suggestion. We need to be earnest about this.

REBECCA Georgina has specially prepared some fresh mango juice.

[Exeunt.]

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SCENE III [The lounge, as in Scene I. Voices are heard walking up to the front door, which is slightly ajar.]

REBECCA Georgina, I wish you’d get rid of that ridiculous thingamajig. I don’t know where you got it from, and you’re certainly not taking it back to school with you— FLORIN Who left the door open? Oh God. Signs of … forced entry. Somebody’s broken in.

[GEORGINA enters wearing gigantic fake front teeth, followed closely by FLORIN, REBECCA, ANGUS and the VICAR. MANGAN is standing in the centre of the lounge, dressed in a tattered, half-powdered wig and a voluminous cloak, with a small umbrella under each arm. He is wearing green-rimmed spectacles. His long and partially grey hair is swept right back off a domelike forehead.

Wagner’s Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin suddenly blasts out. MANGAN breaks into a dance, beating his umbrellas against the floor. ] FLORIN [Shouts violently and drunkenly] What the hell are you doing in here? I own this house! This is my house! This place belongs to me! Don’t you understand? [Turns desperately to GEORGINA] Switch it off, will you!

[MANGAN continues to dance. Apart from GEORGINA, all other characters are locked in stasis.

GEOGRINA, despite punching all the buttons on the hi-fi, shaking it frantically, is unable to switch off the music or turn it down; eventually, she decides to abandon her efforts and join the others. MANGAN continues to dance until the end of the prelude.]

ANGUS He’s certainly colourful! Isn’t this man … a friend of yours, Florin? [Pause.] Wasn’t he?

[Remembering] Didn’t I see you, Florin, quite by chance, near Fishamble Street – that’s real auld Dublin – no, hang on, in the Glasnevin Cemetry, with this, or with someone at least who looked very much like this … schmuck.

MANGAN Ochone! Mouthed to flesh-burst, gush mein geistliche lied!

FLORIN Yes, he once encouraged my affections toward the counter-Enlightenment.

MANGAN Whistle me down the wind. O Karoman!

REBECCA What is he doing in here? Get him out of here this instant!

GEORGINA No! I like him!

VICAR Soit-il très maudit? [Opening his arms to MANGAN] Nous étions semblables, même frères!

FLORIN I expect you’re all blaming me. Am I to blame if he, in spite of everything he knows, can’t find a little dignity and self-respect? Really, I forget who is responsible for the dereliction he now finds 63

himself in – it’s hagiographic dotards who alienate him from real poetic achievement, not to mention from respectable social mores, what-nots and what-have-yous. Look, he’s pissed on the floor.

MANGAN Here, in the midst of your possessions, mein Lebensstufen …

REBECCA [Points beside armchair C] Just look at the stain you’ve made on my carpet!

GEORGINA Actually, Mamma— MANGAN My incantation is vinegar upon nitre.

FLORIN He camps out here as if this were the house of his patron!

MANGAN [Turns to Florin] Coupon-clip-per! What profits the boon of luxurious repose? Gombeen man, was it your breath that gave me this Föhnkrankeit?

FLORIN Why you son of a bitch! Rebecca, is it that bad? [He puffs out into her face, turns back to Mangan.]

So boyo, you think you can break into my own home and insult me like this, in front of my own family?

[Thumps him. MANGAN falls to the floor, where he covers the large stain. REBECCA is fretting angrily behind the back of armchair B, where another stain has been identified. MANGAN suddenly jumps up and cowers front-left of the stage.]

MANGAN Va t’en! [Aside] He’s so impressionable that nothing about him is striking.

FLORIN Damned reprobate! [He threatens to give him the full treatment.]

VICAR [Bellows] Non non non! Arretez! C’est toi qui est mièvre!

FLORIN [To Vicar] Please don’t tell me you understand this effusive hackwork of a human being. He’ll do anything for his darling Rosaleen dowsed in Papish wine and Spanish ale. You should see what he eats! I’ve seen him, for an evening meal, drag lumps of Irish soda bread through melted Harzer and Turkish delight.

ANGUS A mongrel most deranged.

REBECCA It smells like tar-water! What is he doing here, in my house! Florin, get him out of here, this instant! [She points to the carpet behind armchair A.] This is the final straw!

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FLORIN Okay, Mangan. So you want to live in my house? Is that what you want? Would that be good enough for you? Well you can get out, once and for all. I never want to see you here again – or the law, you understand? We’ve moved on. None of us can relate to you anymore. You’ve become an island all to yourself.

ANGUS [To Vicar] Listen to this! It could bring us back together!

VICAR Connard!

REBECCA I didn’t know you and Angus had … parted ways?

MANGAN Adamantine barriers sever me from communion with mankind.

FLORIN Christ, you’re sheltered.

MANGAN Such contingencies are forever issuing like exports from a warehouse... Allah, Allah hu!

GEORGINA He’s sneezing!

[All characters turn their backs to shield themselves from MANGAN’s “sneezing” whilst he chants to the sound of “Allāhu!” As he continues to do so without relent, they begin to walk off stage, gradually emigrating from the central space occupied by MANGAN. MANGAN is left to muse quietly to himself, much to his own amusement.]

MANGAN God is … God is … God is Truth. [Pause, sniffs the air.] Sweet vintage that flaunting rose was proud of port!

[He takes off his green-rimmed spectacles, turns them over face-up in his upturned palm, and looks at them, quizzically.]

Long I waited to know what naked meeting Would come with what was moving behind my eyes And desolating what I touched.

[Tosses his spectacles to the audience. Crouching there as lights fade, he mutters into the ever-dimming darkness.]

The earth-bound and the blind, who cannot feel That there be souls ...

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NIGHTLONG Jabbed by wind’s spear shadows prowl the wall.

I read to make sleep jealous.

The light dims with each word.

Threatens to vanish at the penultimate page.

Cliché conducts the music I transistorise to swap later for silence.

I try again.

Lightness, I curl up, count dodos diving to Atlantis.

But aches interrupt.

Worries tug my beard, & enemies goad my memory & the curtain keeps flapping aside, letting the moon’s footbeam through.

It won’t be bedtime tales she’ll come for either.

Matthew Sweeney

Icarus, Issue 71 – January 1977 Matthew Sweeney was born in Co. Donegal in 1952. His awards include the Prudence Farmer Prize (1984); Cholmondely Award (1987); and the Henfield Writing Fellowship (1986). He is a member of Aosdána and has written numerous collections of highly acclaimed poetry.

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On Hearing Irish Spoken in South Dublin The whole Victorian terrace changes tint like when clouds go or come, at a hint or Chinese whisper, a catch deep in the lungs.

Thoughts float between the two official tongues like oysters changing sex with changing seasons on rocks that steeply shelve into the ocean.

Lift up the shell and sluice one down your throat, And through the darker months your soul goes fluid.

It spills its love about day after day off this Atlantic Island sweet and gay.

Justin Quinn

Icarus, Volume 57 – Sunmer 2007

Justin Quinn was born in Dublin in 1968. His collections include The O’o’a’a’ Bird, which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1995; Privacy; Fuselage; and Waves and Trees. He is a founder editor of Metre, a lecturer at the Charles University, Prague, and a translator of Czech poetry.

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Kevin Breathnach: is a JS student of French and Philosophy. He would like to wish Nick Haythornthwaite (SS Theology) a very happy birthday. Feedback to breathnk@tcd.ie Oshima Fawkes doesn’t do much. - Feedback to: faganoo@tcd.ie

Ciara Begley is in third year business and politics, she is fond of kayaking.

Feedback to begleyci@tcd.ie

John Murray graduated from TCD in 2006. He currently works full-time at a job in which he has no interest. Feedback to johnmurray1983@googlemail.com John Engle is a second year student of Philosophy, Political Science, Economics, and Sociology.

He hails from Maui, Hawaii.

Preferred pseudonym: Adam Seline Feedback to johnengle78@aol.com

Billy Mundow is a Junior Sophister, English Studies , TCD. He is a mature student and has been published in Crannog and The Stony Thursday Book. He lives in Dublin and on Inishbofin Island, County Galway. Feedback to billy.mundow@gmail.com OMG Andrew King thinks writing is so random. Lol. Feedback to kingab@tcd.ie

Ellen Whelan is a first year Law student. She started writing poetry at a young age but only recently realised that she could use it as an excuse for her lack of opinion amongst her overlypoliticised classmates. Feedback to whelane2@tcd.ie Darragh McCabe is a fourth year Film Studies student. He lives in north County Dublin.

Feedback to mccabedj@tcd.ie

Jennifer Six has written since she does not know when and is currently an Erasmus student in Trinity. Back home in Germany she was also a part-time journalist and had a column about her studies, flatmates, and coffee. She wants to become a (screen)writer. Feedback to sixj@tcd.ie Captain Michael “Highball” Healy was chosen to represent an intergalactic police force created by the oldest beings in existence - the guardians of the universe. He protects Earth and Space Sector 2814 as the Green Lantern. Feedback to healymi@tcd.ie Sinead Carr is a First Year Speech and Language Therapy student from Donegal. She’s been writing poetry and short stories now for four years. Feedback to carrs3@tcd.ie Conor D’Arcy is a JS student of Sociology and English Literature. Feedback to darcyco@tcd.ie

Michael Wynne is a postgraduate student with the School of English at Trinity College. He has published fiction and non-fiction in many anthologies and journals including The Recorder (New York); The James White Review (New York); Walking Higher (US); The Saint Ann’s Review (New York); New Century, New Writing (Britain); Coffee House (Britain); Cyphers; Force 10; The Connacht Tribune and Magill. Feedback to wynnemi@tcd.ie Emmet Kinsella is a JS English and Psychology Student who occasionally writes a rhyme or two. Feedback to: kinselem@tcd.ie

Frank Hutton-Williams is studying a course in Irish Writing at Trinity. He has encountered the word “ineluctable’ a lot. He wishes everyone a Happy New Year. Feedback to huttonwf@tcd.ie 68

Brian Boyle enjoys playing the double bass, and regailing diminishing audiences with hubristic tales of Trinity 2005. Feedback to boyleb1@tcd.ie Emily Aoibheann is a writer, performer, musician and graduate living and working in

Dublin city. She has written for a number of magazines and periodicals, such as the RAG (of the Revolutionary Anarcha Feminist Group) and Never Never and Elsewhere periodical. See youreournarcissus.blogspot.com for more. Feedback to emilyaoibheann@gmail.com

Earl Ward is a second-year student of medicine from Galway. Having sat in on a number of lectures in the English department last year, he no longer regrets choosing medicine.

Feedback to notlessbecauseinpurple@gmail.com Ian Belton is currently a TCD M.Phil in Theatre & Performance Candidate. He is a graduate

of the Juilliard School Directing Program in New York, the NEA/TCG Career Development Program and a recipient of the Richard E. Sherwood Award from the Mark Taper Forum. Upon graduation from Trinity Ian would like to figure out a way to be away from his wife Kat as little as possible. Feedback to beltoni@tcd.ie

Shona McDonald’s a first year drama and theatre studies student. She owes her eccentricity of character to the imbalance she feels at wearing odd earrings consisently! She writes to tell the stories she’s afraid won’t come true if she says them aloud!

Feedback to shonamcdonald@hotmail.com Ally Stewart Konigsberg has sacrificed a lot for her literary career including youth, goodlooks and motorcycles. She enjoys talking about herself in the third person.

Andrew Hayden is in his final year of a TSM in English Literature and Psychology. Feedback to anhayden@tcd.ie

Sue Rainsford will soon abandon poetry for a career in scubadiving.

Feedback to rainsfos@tcd.ie

Luke Maxwell is a fourth year film student.

Feedback to lmaxwel@tcd.ie

Kate McNamara likes when people make fish faces and dislikes it when people make fish pies.

Feedback to kmcnama@tcd.ie

Laura Michet is a third-year student in English and History

at Dartmouth College in the United States. Feedback to: Laura.E.Michet@Dartmouth.edu

Jeffrey Becklund has been dead for 20 years. Condolences to becklunj@tcd.ie J. Fleischman is the publishing pseudonym for Theresa Ryan, a SS student in Pharmacy.

Theresa is also a freelance illustrator and has been been published in ImagineFX magazine.

Feedback to ryant3@tcd.ie

Monty Chesterfield did a stint as Ralph Richardson’s dresser, and shall be scripting a hilarious

new John Malkovich vehicle. Feedback to collsj@tcd.ie 69

Friends of Icarus Ben Keatinge Mark Hutcheson Rosemarie Rowley Aine Miller Nicholas Grene Eve Patten Philip Coleman Gordon Jarvie John Scattergood Mary Sheehan Peter Sheehan Mary Claire Sheehan Brendan Guildea 70

!"#$%#&$'()# !"*$#")$&"&&

Thursday 25th Sunday 28th March 2010 Pavilion Theatre, DĂşn Laoghaire !"#$%&'( Tel: (01) 231 2929 www.paviliontheatre.ie Festival Information and Workshops Tel: (01) 271 9531 www.poetrynow.ie