Icarus Vol. 72 No. 2 (2022)

i c a r u s

72.2

ICARUS MAGAZINE

VOLUME LXXII, ISSUE II

© Trinity Publications, March 2022

EDITORIAL

If you go on YouTube and search “Björk talking about her TV” and click the first video and scroll through to the 3:00 timestamp she will give you some very very sound advice: “All that’s on TV, it just goes directly into your brain, and you stop judging if it’s right or not, so you just swallow and swallow. This is what an Icelandic poet told me once, and I became so scared of television that I always got headaches when I watched it. But then later on, when I got my Danish book on television, I stopped being afraid because I read the truth — that’s the scientifical truth — which is much better. You shouldn’t let poets lie to you.”

We’re not taking a side on the Icelandic Poet versus Danish Scientist issue (we don’t really know how a TV works). But we do think you shouldn’t let poets lie to you.

Here are some poets (and writers, and artists) who we believe will tell you the truth. Art can help you see things for what they are. Many things urgently need to be seen.

Accept no substitutes, Alex + Gabi

Icarus is proud to present four poems by Sam Sax, a ten-page spread by Mary Maggic, and cover artwork by Megan Luddy alongside the work of Trinity students, staff, and alumni.

Cover: daily practice by Megan Luddy ( featured)

CONTENTS 1

raudona Used To Notes from Zipolite Aya Dandelions The Whitethorn Tree Chief of the Parish Church Choir Beachcomber Golden Scoundrel (ode to Hare) Reincarnation is a Thing Arsène Lupin Strikes Again When Antonia Met Lara

Keegan Andrulis Emer Tyrrell Kristen Poli Yashodhan Nair Maureen Penrose Gerry McDonnell Katelyn Davis Gracie Shearer Susannah Violette Susannah Violette Hugh Conlon Maya Kulukundis

6 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 21

2

a painting I Married My Highschool Sweetheart: Are Crushed Toes Cause for Divorce?

KISSING IN TESCO Close to Home P.3 it’s a very good apple Noticing Natural Body Wash in a Boots Bees.

Home Invasion French Movie Actress Tits A VERY SMALL ANIMAL EASY FAST QUEERS Postcard of Paul Henry’s The Potato Diggers sentences which are all true & which i mean very very much Judgement day LISP

Eléonore Maréchal Julie Smirnova

24 26

Emer Tyrell Catherine McGovern CAWHILL Eloise Rodger Maitiú Charleton

27 28 29 30 32

Coco Goran Róisín Ryan Lisa Bussi featured: sam sax featured: sam sax Sophie Furlong Tighe

33 34 35 36 37 39

Ava Chapman

40

Sophie Furlong Tighe featured: sam sax

41 42

CONTENTS

3

Doldrums (in the cinema) Judith Beheading Holofernes / Crocodile Version While You Were Out ANTIZIONIST ABECEDARIAN

Alice Gogarty Alice Gogarty Jess Sharkey

44 46 47

Kristen Poli featured: sam sax

48 49

featured: Mary Maggic december

Ava Chapman

51 62

1

opposite: raudona Keegan Andrulis

Used To She’s ironing pillowcases when I bring it up Quick into short corners, easing back out.

It went well, I tell her, as well as interviews do Heat makes pressure, pressure runs smooth She says they were a wedding present, 1962 Turns that one over and starts again new I’m told they don’t make them Quite like they used to She lets words become vapid When she can’t get a hold Some details I skim over Just lightening the load And we dance like this Weathered wrist to socked toe Gliding past points of no-entry as we go She doesn’t mention any sleepless nights 12 heads to ten pillows, turning out the last light No older than I am, the whole world in her sighs I wonder now what she’d think of him?

The interview. The man in the suit.

All of my nodding, qualifications perused I wonder if she’d stand it, Walk out? Let him have it?

I wonder if she’d crumble, Move up? Commute?

60 odd years – don’t make ‘em like they used to Comes reply after a good while, And no, suppose, they don’t, I say As I do, as I would, every other day.

8

And I remember then How I thanked him for his time She finds old stains Sleep escaping tired eyes Cloth that has housed more Dreams than I dare harbour Strong as ever that first day Left down the back parlour She tells me she doesn’t like ironing really Just pillowcase creases are the ones can’t stand Because, as she says it, says it simply: “There’s enough in the way of good sleep ‘sides that”

Emer Tyrrell

9

Notes from Zipolite

On the beach: Dried grasshoppers, Chocolate cake, Full nudity.

In the town: sandia juice, a lighter chained to the desk of the convenience store, disappearing tortarias.

On the road: A home-made motorcycle.

Personal effects: my sticky back in the taxi, my lover’s slick forehead.

Don’t miss: the view from the old commune, the junkie in the lifeguard stand, My lover’s zinc-white nose, Baby whales breaching.

10

Kristen Poli

Aya

I feel the rasp of a sari train on the road behind me Clustered embellishments scrape on the roughness that presses into my feet Pulled threads like water Soft skin blushes in steam The arch that curled into a hand The hand curled into an arch The sari is a hip balancing a child It is hot oil in a scratched, cast-iron pan The scythe pauses at the neck of cane— It is the gold stud at the nose’s flare It is twisting onto itself, twisting and parting, breathing Its lightness is heaviness that drags at the movement of my legs, lifting against them.

I am weight blooming into the ground through skin and cloth.

The beadwork snaps from taught threads, clattering I am fibres shearing apart I am parsed Naked, cloth-moulted, replete

Yashodhan Nair

11

Dandelions

Coming into Sheepmoor, past the Naming Stone I saw a host of Dandelions, waving me on towards home And I wondered if the dandelions felt snubbed or second class When we learned a Daffodil poem for our Junior Cert exams.

We called the Dandelion hurtful names when I was just a kid Don’t pick them, all the kids would shout, cos they’re called Piss in the Beds I tried to recall if I had touched them just the day before?

I often had an “accident” and me Ma was keepin’ score.

She said I was just lazy and she wasn’t one bit pleased.

And my sister and brother knew my shame and always loved to tease.

When the Dandelion became a Jinny Joe we’d hold them, very gentle, We’d send them off for Easter Eggs, feeling quietly sentimental We’d watch them fly out on the breeze, like children leaving home Until we lost them in the trees, and they went off to roam.

The Council planted Daffodils all along the main road entry But I smiled to see the Dandelions at the Naming Stone, in plenty They are like me, and you, my friends, making their way in the world And I’d rather see them any day, with their common yellow petals unfurled.

12

Maureen Penrose

The Whitethorn Tree

The whitethorn tree is also known as the ‘fairy bush.’

The bush or tree is said to be a marker in a fairy path.

They are often seen standing alone on farmland, held sacred by the people of the area. In 1999, a tree was set to be destroyed to make way for a motorway.

Renowned folklorist Eddie Lenihan sent dire warnings that misfortune would follow not only the people who would cut down the tree but would pose a danger to any motorists driving over the spot. In the end an effort was made to build around the sacred fairy tree. The whitethorn was my mother’s favourite tree. She walked the old roads in the Limerick countryside, catching wafts of its scent. thorny ditches arrayed in white summer dress

Gerry McDonnell

13

Chief of the Parish Church Choir

Every morning, my grandad assumed his favourite role: Chief of the Parish Church Choir. He would don his long robes and purple scarf and conduct his ensemble with his own regal renditions of hymns. Arthritic fingers swept the lifeless organ free, leaping down from the lofty pipes into the pews, shaking each hand of the congregation.

Yet away from mass, my grandad was a real crooner, a rugged diva of his time. His uncouth verses sung at every gathering were decanted to grace the divine piano’s music. He would repeat the chorus incessantly, yet not to practice refinement. The melody grew more coarse, sloppy, and wonderful with each round, never wanting to play the final chord.

Melody is a fit of lavender anger. A serene, seething refrain. I remember your tune Grandad, always getting the last word of an argument, the pedal relishing the sustained key. A cacophony followed you from the raging kitchen, scampering up the banister to the piano room. How I would listen to the new tune and quietly sit as he taught me. I could chime in, small and offkey, learning how to serenade and apologise.

14

Katelyn Davis

Beachcomber

Beachcomber, six shells silently asleep one step they’ll crack and imitate the sand; from there they’ll sink, or crushed they’ll simply cease to be. Your step - the shells in your command.

One imitates the curves of a young friend, another wrinkles like a baby’s palm.

One purple, freckled with no certain end, The fourth is black and half-submerged: a clam.

You do not see the final shell for she Is hidden well - fearing your looming shoe.

Beachcomber miss each one, look at the sea distracting with fresh foaming white on blue.

For it won’t matter if you dip your head; this is a graveyard, every shell is dead.

Gracie Shearer

15

Golden Scoundrel (ode to Hare) Gilt arse flicker Jig-foot, shake-the-heart I tremble, struck like a copper bowl In this unending day.

That golden scoundrel left me quiet on the road with the hoards of roe, their pelts black remembering a new night comes.

My car is a red nothing in this landscape.

Did they dance on the tarmac bright hooves frenzied, pull each other into the spring quickening?

Yes, Yes, I think so.

And my car, disco lights blaring into sweet-as-caramel eyes like a fog horn.

At the edge of the road a ditch waits like a grave.

Spears of grass already mourn.

Thank the brilliant bodied hare and his warning-light tail flick-booking through elephant footed beech.

Thanks to him for thirty lives, and thirty more. * Jig-Foot, Shake-The-Heart, Scoundrel are all names the Hare has been given.

16

Susannah Violette

Reincarnation is a Thing

She is always obsessively dying.

Each day, her heart cracks in two, split like an almond.

She hoards her skin to herself deep in her apple tree room, walls offer themselves to her ripe.

Serpent coiled in those boughs striking to uselessness at soft stomach, jelly thighs.

Ripe she dies again, opened like a woman spread.

She is reckless with life but her bedroom door is a coffin lid.

Oops, she’s died again!

The thought of hoovering, the acid burn of a shower, any reason to keel over.

She is made of mirrors, silver skin shows up all the mess.

When she goes for a walk ready to die in the woods, there is only trees.

Susannah Violette

17

Arsène Lupin Strikes Again The familiar ring of the card terminal had assured victory once again.

Another brilliant manoeuvre by the one and only Arsène Lupin! Through my expert utilisation of this child’s travel card, I have stolen hundreds, perhaps thousands, from the public transport authority! A bastion of a government which serves only to undermine us.

He claimed the lone empty seat amidst the crowded bus.

Of course, utilisation of this card necessitates that I plan my bus journeys accordingly. Embarking only at peak travel times. The influx of customers distracting the bus driver ensuring I can slip through unnoticed. This is a consideration that only Arsène Lupin could account for!

The bus rolled through grey suburbs, though he barely took notice of the world outside the window.

But what if an inspector boards? You expect Arsène Lupin to not have accounted for this?

Parbleu! An adult’s travel card has been prepared for such an occasion. The chip inside run over by a magnet. If an inspector were to check this card, it would be quite unreadable. And should Arsène Lupin be taken to task over this, he will simply feign ignorance. “An invalid card?

But inspector, it was working when I got on the bus. The driver can assure you.” Yes, the great Arsène Lupin can never be caught.

The bus pulled into its terminus, a sprawling megastore on the edge of town with over 200 dedicated parking spots and air conditioning. As he disembarked, the realization that he was metres away from his target had a dizzying effect on him and he found it necessary to collect himself by the trolley bay.

Calm yourself Lupin! Cooler heads must prevail if you are to succeed.

From the safety of the bay, he observed the customers milling about the shop floor. It was, of course, not his first visit to this store. He ran through the store layout in his head; the goods sold in each aisle, the location of the security desk and cameras, every single point of egress.

18

It almost seems unfair how ill-prepared they are for this. They are not to know until it is all too late that this is the stage for Lupin’s greatest heist yet! _ He passed through the store listlessly, piling inconspicuous items into his shopping cart as he went.

A fantastic disguise indeed! No one will suspect an ordinary shopper. Naturally, I could steal all this if I wanted to, but that is a trifling matter. Hardly one worthy of the great Lupin’s time and energy. No, I will stick to the plan. While I am paying for this, they will not suspect that I have already secreted away what I truly desire on my person. No need for overcomplication.

He continued to pile more essentials into his cart until he had convinced himself that this was enough to throw anyone off his scent.

Now, it can begin.

He swung his cart around to Aisle 18: Homewares. It was empty.

My brave Lupin, surely fortune favours you.

Quickening his pace down the aisle, he arrived before his quarry. He reached out his hand, holding his breath as he did so, and grasped a single 40W LED GLS Bulb with a warm white glow.

Mon Dieu! Finally it is mine! I hold it in my hands at long last! But now is not the time to get cocky Lupin. Quickly, you must away!

Glancing around over both shoulders to ensure he was indeed alone, he stuffed the bulb into the pocket of his overcoat and made his way to the cashier. _ Emerging from the store in the heady aftermath of victory, he felt lighter than air.

Brilliant Lupin! Brilliant. Truly you are without equal. How sweet it would be to see their faces when they realise what they have lost. When they realise that it is all too late. When they 19

realise that they have faced off against the great Arsène “Excuse me.” A hand gripped his shoulder firmly. The world beneath him seemed to give way.

Oh Christ Oh Christ Do I pretend I put it in my pocket by mistake? They wouldn’t believe that? Will they call the police? They’ll call the police. In the movies they always call the fucking police. Oh shit. Oh fuck.

Would they believe that I just did it to see if I could? That’s all it was, that’s all it ever is. Just to see if I can do it. I can pay for it and I will pay for it. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I just needed to see if I could do it.

His captor’s fingers tensed once more on his shoulder. It took all his resolve to turn and face them.

“You dropped this at the till.”

A woman in her 60s faced him. He looked down at what she was trying to hand off to him. It was a travel card. A child’s travel card.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone”. Grinning, she pressed the card firmly in his palm and went on her way.

He gazed vacantly at the card for some time, processing the events that had unfolded. Coming to, he stuffed the card in his pocket and smirked.

Of course, the great Arsène Lupin can never be caught.

20

Hugh Conlon

When Antonia Met Lara When Antonia was four - it is her cot memory, whatever that means - she found Lara in her parents’ bed. They had a mahogany four poster with a light green canopy. It had been rescued at an auction in Wilsford, delivered to them by a man supplied by the auction house, frozen for weeks in the outdoor shed to kill moths, and then smashed through the wall and into the biggest bedroom that looked out onto the beech tree. Antonia’s whole house fell away from this bed. Antonia could remember waking up from a nap, leaving her bedroom and heading through to her parents’ room, climbing up their bed, clinging to the upper groove of the mattress and finding at the very top, when she stretched out her hand for a hold, Lara. Lara was sleeping. Antonia felt her soft face and it was like flour. Her skin was pink and dented by the pillow and her hand and her one silver ring. She was lying on her right side.

Antonia understood that this woman was naked. Antonia understood that her cheek was soft. That is all.

Antonia climbed back down the bed. The green canopy hugged itself around Lara, still asleep and grunting like a micro-pig, as if she were a pearl.

And then, sometime after, Antonia’s father invited Lara for dinner. Antonia and her mother had to open one of the Ottolenghi books and make Chargrilled Broccoli with Chilli and Garlic and Charred Shrimp with Coconut Dressing and Crisp Lime Leaves. Antonia’s mother was stressed. Her mother was always stressed when she had to open the Ottolenghi book. Antonia played with her Sylvianian families nicely in the corner and watched her mother stressed and charring. Antonia’s father put on a red shirt that she had not seen before. He ruffled his hair. Antonia focused harder on her Sylvanian families, on how strange they felt: not like skin or fur but something gone.

Antonia had once held a taxidermy mouse.

And Lara arrived, and she had an accent which meant she pronounced Antonia like Ant-onya.’ Hello Anton-ya, she said. I like your mice. Antonya sat in the corner and she watched her father pour Lara a glass of wine, her mother pour herself a glass of wine, Lara gesturing - she used her hands a lot, Lara, as if she were slicing something in the air. And then they ate and Antonya went to sit with them, which was maybe the first time she sat on a grownup chair and had dinner with her parents instead of earlier, at five, in the kitchen 21

not the dining room. But she was not sleepy. And Anton-ya’s father sat far back in his chair and stared at Lara, who prowled further and further into the centre of the table, hands fluttering, until you could no longer see Anton-ya’s mother, or the prawns, or the broccoli. And then Anton-ya’s mother had a migraine. Sorry, she said. They just come on. And she went to the sink and washed up her glass of wine, which she hadn’t finished, which swirled bloody down the drain. And she said she would go upstairs to bed.

Come, Antonia, she said.

And so Anton-ya packed up her Sylvianian families, slowly, dragging it out, watching her father ruffle his hair, watching her father watch Lara and watching him grab, at one point, onto her slicing wrist.

Come, Antonia, her mother said again. You are overtired.

Goodnight! Lara said. And thank you for dinner - delicious! And Lara took a charred broccoli into one of her hands and held it by its tail as it squirmed, and dangled it down her into her throat.

And when Antonia was nearly asleep, her mother got into her bed. Antonia had never slept in the same bed as her mother, who was against attachment parenting. She felt her mother next to her, in all its strangeness. Her mother was still and quiet and Antonia, lying very neatly next to her, matched her breathing. You could not be sure whether Antonia’s mother was asleep or awake, by her breathing, which was always regular and always shallow.

Antonia’s mother never filled her lungs completely, even in the deepest of dream states. It meant she fainted ‘simple faints.’

Downstairs, Lara and Antonia’s father were laughing. Antonia’s mother turned on a static white noise from a sleep app on her phone and, swamped, she and her little daughter, christened with an ‘i,’ slept.

But Anton-ya dreamt about cats prowling and pouncing in the garden. And she dreamt that she was a Maine-Coon, massive and fluffy, with orange fur and green eyes, eating mice, snatching birds, slicing their necks open, sitting in the middle of the garden and yowling from the gut.

22

* If you were to ask Antonia’s mother about Lara she would say: she is a fabulous presence. And if you were to ask Antonia’s mother about Lara and Antonia’s father, she would say the same: that Lara is a fabulous presence. And if you asked Antonia’s mother what made Lara such a fabulous presence, Antonia’s mother would say: violence, that Lara had violence inside. And when Lara leaned so heavily over to snatch the plate of charred prawns, you felt that there was something there that might push you and send you flying into the air. And Antonia liked that video released of the Rajneeshees meditating and then dancing naked and crawling like animals with full pubic hair and long dangling bodies. Antonia’s mother was never naked. She had Issey Miyake Suits and Kenzo jackets and Agnes B trousers. She had Emma Hope shoes and a mink stole and little bags made of skin: snake and leather and lizard.

She kept the labels in a notebook in her dressing room. She never tore labels out of clothes. She always cut them off. She always had nail scissors in a case in her purse to cut them off with and she always had her purse because she was never naked. Antonia’s mother would not break anything intentionally: not clothes, not china, not a relationship.

And whenever they ate sprimp when she was growing up, charred or otherwise, Antonia’s mother made Antonia rip their heads off for her. Antonia loved the quick, brutal motion and she was good at it: efficient, light in the wrist, curiously running her fingers along their tendons and looking into their eyes.

Maya Kulukundis

23

2

opposite: a painting Eléonore Maréchal

I Married My Highschool Sweetheart: Are Crushed Toes Cause for Divorce?

Madam, — It is a Truth universally acknowledged that Us Girls perch unregenerately on whatever is closest.

This September I fell into a new rear bedroom, and well! The past five months have been golden. But today — at approximately 16.37 (GMT) — I made a fatal mistake. After an afternoon spent hunting for a) Aubergines, b) Red Peppers, and c) Dolmio Creamy Lasagna Sauce, my bones finally ventured back to our broken little flat.

I crawled up the stairs to the dulcet tones of a certain LLL*. She welcomed me with her usual cheeky wink and that famous beckoning smile. I obliged. (The pious uplift of a LIDL haul is not to be taken lightly!)

Hope clung to our stomachs as this Sacred Bag crossed the kitchen; Gulls raised their beaks in a soaring crescendo; and finally, with reckless abandon, I flung myself across the Last Frontier. Then. There. That was the pivotal moment! As I plummeted from Heaven to Earth — the city shook with an unmistakable crunch: Toes on Toes.

In the aftermath of tragedy we circle the stages of grief.

But something in her face led me to believe that this transgression would not be easily forgiven; that en route to acceptance, I may just have to curl up and die.

— Yours, etc, A SINNER, Hell. *name anonymised for GDPR reasons.

26

Julie Smirnova

KISSING IN TESCO February 2021 She spits with disgust, dropping her shopping, Scarf ends swinging like two ends of a tall tale: “THEY WERE KISSING IN TESCO” Third Aisle, I’m told.

Right in front of the seasoning rack.

Trying too hard to spice things up, perhaps.

Trying too hard to keep things in, perhaps.

Her nose His mouth Wrapped up in The feeling in the pits of their stomachs Lowering The tone of the spice aisle With its dirty history Of underhand procurement Advances initiated By uninvited hands.

Still, there is purity Momentarily, potentially In the breaking of passions Right here, consensually Matched by the Once-sacred exchange Of a set of shared Saliva salts In full view of those Desperate to look away Not here, not yet, Not Tesco, not a Tuesday Emer Tyrell

27

Close to Home

Like a dog with its nose in piss I am spreadeagled maternal hands buried deep in my scruff and in my bones I haven’t shaken the stench of you, yet.

I think I like it down here.

There is a hole still in my bathroom door your size six Vans (or were they size nine) I think of your teeth whenever I close my eyes but I am not interested by suffering any more anyway, like I said I am not interested by suffering any more.

So if you would just stop by and boot my door in again for old time’s sake?

28

Catherine McGovern

P.3

CAWHILL

29

it’s a very good apple picture it: hammered male student of german philosophy, (and very possibly their intersection? marx? anyway.) with robert-de-niro-taxi- driver-esque mohawk will stand up and come to say i am fucking celestial. i do not exist. then leaves, just like that, for a smoke. abrupt. mid-way through conversation about how yeah, it is a bit lonely like, the specific rules of hurling, and some unheard joke.

in a pub with six others, four of which are flatmates, two of which are sleeping together, (nervously, i might add).

he is delicate, somewhat terrified and she promises her friends that the sex isn’t bad.

the beer-foamed mouths. the girls venturing to the bathroom in flocks.

something about matching pajamas and jocks. something about the -tick-ticking of clocks.

oh god. not the music.

and later, the nietzsche-wannabe sees bunch of liberal americans, amateur acapella group, (i know) returning, buzzing. nauseatingly bubbly from some show. on the way-home tram and when they get off he announces:

30

let them burn in my holy rage. get them on their back.

then stomp on their skulls with my boots. crack.

one will write that down in her notes app, and wonder if the other boy now walking a pace or so behind

thinks about her naked when he touches himself.

she doesn’t think she’d mind. two are drunk and grateful for the company but not enough to quiet the relentless humming of is this really it? someone said that the best friends are made when the night is utterly shit, so you’re all stuck together in starchy despair. and one wants to ask mr. pseudointellectual doc-marten if it’s really a simulation or if he just doesn’t care. it’s a very good apple, but it’s still just an apple, and you are still just a kid. and they didn’t hurt half as much as you’d hoped, those farewells that you bid. no, home doesn’t pull you back like they all said it would. and the frozen chicken in tesco express doesn’t taste any good, and the walk there at four, on a sunday, to keep your fumbling shell heaving, makes you want to hunt down and disprove this so-called air that you are breathing, hypothesize something pretentious and sudden and stark. like sartre calling for the priest on his deathbed? you don’t have to be smart, only sad to understand, since apples remind you of bashing knees into chests of drawers in the dark, in rooms that you swore you knew like the back of your hand.

Eloise Rodger

31

Noticing Natural Body Wash in a Boots

I still think the fuzzy mother octopus chomping on its Slow young among lovely corals is not good.

Their insides probably splatter mess on the sea urchin beds All the better for their blood blooms Mother nature’s nature doesn’t cleanse it of any Sins it commits. Just because giraffes might naturally Organise themselves to starve another giraffe Doesn’t mean their giraffe’s spleen doesn’t rot into acid Natural body wash is brilliant Natural flavourings even better You know what they love? When its really sandy Kind of pottery or more acoustic Its legs are twisting and stab murdering Crunch squish Stab stab Screech howl - i really do wail Condemning to flush mush and rancid white mud Risky tiny holy maggots

32

Maitiú Charleton

Bees.

I had a dream last night that I was covered in bees I was lying face up in my bed, the thin linen spread over my nose and they settled onto it. And they would not move.

And when I rose they moved to my body and they move all over it their serrated little legs leaving sores on my back as they bit and crawled and scratched and I couldn’t scream to brush them off they moved from my fingers as I reached for them in the bathroom mirror, escaping into the folds of a nightdress I never owned. Taking shelter there, leaving a line of angry red dry skin on my back.

There is a dead bee curled up on my porch, it’s been there for a week, when I saw it crawling to its death as I sat in the morning cold, and forgot it.

Today there were two spiders where the bee should have been, dancing around the doorframe, crawling so fast they must have floated. Two little spiders in love.

Dead little bee on my porch.

My fear of bugs doesn’t consume me anymore, I plan on living and dying with them.

Coco Goran

33

Home Invasion You see them and you think Droppings. You’re Not wrong, they are Exactly the tiny Black grains of rice The website describes. The Culprits snuffle in The inset photos. Their Round furred bodies, the Alien discs of their eyes would Almost have been endearing Once. The droppings Are to be disposed of Carefully, soaked in Disinfectant, or a mixture Of water and bleach, Bagged, and binned. Hantaviruses, The website whispers, salmonella, E. coli. Plastic gloves are Snapped on, holes Blocked, traps Sprung. Contaminated items Pile up before The washing machine. When The last towel Is thrown into the drum, A whitish baby silverfish Squirms on the tiles Underneath. Death Comes quickly in a big plastic Thumb: just like That, all your niceness Utterly undone.

34

Róisín Ryan

French Movie Actress Tits

I’ve been walking around my grandparent’s house like a zombie for a week now. My heart is heavy and nothing tastes like anything and I leave trails of period blood behind me like a snail. I keep trying to make sense of everything that happened between us but I can’t and it makes me sad. I look at my French movie actress tits in the mirror before taking a shower and cry because no one appreciates or even sees my French movie actress tits anymore and they don’t even really look like French movie actress tits so why did you tell me that. And then I eat things like yoghurt and pickles and read Vonnegut and put on pants even though they’re itchy and why can’t we all just agree to wear yoga pants and be comfortable.

I listen to music and walk my dog but she keeps tugging at the leash and making me walk all funny and your rejection is already embarrassing enough to live with so why won’t this fucking dog cooperate. I give up and sit down and she sits next to me panting very loudly.

I look at her to try and make her shut up because I’m mad but she’s a dog and she doesn’t understand passive aggressive behaviour. So I accept the panting and watch as the fog clears and I look at her again and I sob.

Lisa Bussi

35

A VERY SMALL ANIMAL

last night i took pictures of myself in a borrowed leopard print robe in my head i was beautiful, the imitation cat skin open like a book down the middle proust or some other lonely queer whose obsessions make clean taxidermy of the temporary body. disgusting to look upon oneself in any capacity but especially here—face rearranged in the split approximation of pleasure. glamorous for a moment then gone. it’s not the lens but the living who fathom eternity. my face so full of wonder it’s sick. how many men have passed through this room, these lips?

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featured: sam sax

The Rumpus

EASY FAST QUEERS yom kippor —to deny oneself hunger is to deny oneself— —hunger is high glut & fructose syrup— —cult of luxury & fried drive through windows— —life might indeed have ridden here on the back of a screaming meteorite— —but still here we persist in this annual trip around our sun— —who throws its goodness upon us so we might grow grains to fashion into pancakes— —o pancakes! could there be a more perfect representation of the circle— —how we are returned to ourselves to feast, drenched in the sweet bloodsap of trees— —once a year my people fast— —ask ourselves not to eat in the grease theaters of slaughtered meat farms— —to not cut the blushing necks of fruit stems— —for one day to let nothing pass between our lips that isn’t begging forgiveness— —atonement is a word with the letter o buried inside which is quite factually one perfect pancake— —i make my annual catalogue of misdeeds & sins, deny water & my mother, turn my suffering inward—

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—apologize to everything, living & dead— —in my youth i bttmed for gods and carnival goldfish alike— —i knelt before false prophets & gargled bacon grease— —i ate when i wasn’t hungry— —i have a hole in me— —the hole swallows everything— —i will be forgiven— —nothing—

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featured: sam sax

Foglifter

Postcard of Paul Henry’s THE POTATO DIGGERS

Tacked to my window, & sun-bleached by June.

Manus texts me in January: “I love Henry.

One day I’ll get one of his at auction” & I splay across the bed watch the colour rise from the two women until they exist only to outline the sky. *** This is how power reproduces.

Like strawberries: horizontally; in controlled climates; without ecstacy.

Sophie Furlong Tighe

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sentences which are all true & which i mean very very much

i am biking performatively like a miyazaki heroine thinking of being on a talkshow with god like leaning on the long couch of eternity, fake laugh, we discuss what you deserve and i hesitate. all of my therapists agree i have an incredibly normal amount of self esteem and want the right amount of love from everybody and always act sanely in the face of pain. everybody else’s therapists are bored of hearing stories about how wonderful i am and how heartbroken everyone was when i left the party early because i had food poisoning that one time in detroit. at the end of the talkshow i lean in real close, conspiratorially, to hear the quick fix for loneliness and in the shock of it all he gives me your soul and i cradle it before it shatters. or i shatter it.

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Ava Chapman

Judgement day

I put my fingers in Lila’s mouth & instagram tries to sell me the ring of lipstick on my knuckle.

She drives me to the bus stop, tells me to text her when I have my shit together & twitter recommends luxury soap.

You have to be a better person, sometimes. You have to change.

Train your algorithm like a dog or desire. Google, “puritanism” Google, “chastity” Google, “healthy diets for sustainable weight loss.”

Let the surveillance state know that you’re good and willing.

Show Lila the nice new ads.

You won’t get to heaven via the incognito tab after all.

Sophie Furlong Tighe

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LISP

there are more s’s in possession than i remembered / my name hinges on the s / is serpentine / has sibilance / is simple / six lettered / a symbol / different from its sign / sound shapes how we think about objects / the mouth shapes how sound spills out / how the speaker’s seen / a sigmatism is the homosexual mystique / my parents sought treatments / i was sent to a speech / pathologist / sixth grade / a student / she gave exercises / i was schooled / practiced silence / syllabics / syntax / my voice sap in the high branches / my voice a spoonful of sugared semen / i licked silk when i spoke / i spilt milk when i sang / when i sang sick men tore wings from city birds / so i straightened my sound / into a masculine i / the s is derived from the semitic letter shin / meaning my swishiness is hebraic / is inherited / it’s semantic / no matter what was sacrificed / the tongued isaac / a son against the stone of my soft pallet / still i slipped / my hand inside my neighbor’s / waistband & pulled back pincers / sisyphus with the sissiest lips / split tongued suidae / sassy & passing for the poisoned sea / now when i say please / may i suck your cock / i sound straight / as the still secondhand / on a dead watch.

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featured: sam sax

Poetry Magazine

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opposite: Doldrums Alice Gogarty

(in the cinema)

Chair chair chair glint of light tiny pinprick of a reflection into my eye stretching out in all directions thinly and boldly. Eye so small to see the whole being two screws into the wood four more and two to stage left the heart the Coeur of the room fill it up float it down wait for the finishing bell just another minute just one more and we leap out of the scene in a tremendous ball of laughter ridiculous ridiculous watch out !

– the music’s closing in.

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Alice Gogarty

Judith Beheading Holofernes / Judith Beheading Holofernes, Crocodile Version

Jess Sharkey

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While You Were Out

I have been contracting with dead relatives through the government.

The halls of records have been good for me.

The clerk in Perth Amboy behind the bulletproof glass has been good for me.

The transactions have soothed me at the local level at the state level at the federal level I confirm my citizenship over and over again for a country that has made no effort to know me.

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Kristen Poli

ANTIZIONIST ABECEDARIAN

after you’ve finished building your missiles & after your borders collapse under the weight of their own split databases every worm in this fertile & cursed ground will be its own country. home never was a place in dirt or even inside the skin but just exists in language. let me explain. my people kiss books as a form of prayer. if dropped we lift them to our lips & mouth an honest & uncomplicated apology— nowhere on earth belongs to us. once a man welcomed me home as i entered the old city so i pulled out a book of poems to show him my papers—my queer city of paper—my people’s ink running through my blood. settlers believe land can be possessed they carve their names into firearms & use this to impersonate the dead— visitors here on earth. who but men blame the angels for the wild exceptionalism of men? yesterday a bird flew through an airport & i watched the border zone collapse beneath its wings.

featured: sam sax

The Rupture

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opposite: featured: Mary Maggic

december

at the party you say: this is exactly how i imagined real adults lived & i agree, arranging ourselves into the past’s future it’s cold, i make up with a friend i walk into rooms in other people’s houses that are going empty soon my clothes are always too big they don’t let you take pictures at the museum so i mostly remember the elevator & then the receipts cy twombly circles around my cut nails nighttime bus rides new blue clothes i cry about my own paranoia and avoid falling on ice though the skates hurt my legs and after, bruised, cold in the kitchen i ask my friends to pose for reference photos, for a painting that will never be made bruised foot, poem, testimony, cry again, blank hotel, small confession try to foster an objective relationship to pain, to panic

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everyone who works at the travel certified covid test centre looks about 25 & exhausted so i feel bad for asking any follow-up questions but there is a surprising amount of blood on my hands & poetry is ending so things are starting to feel urgent

Ava Chapman

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CONTRIBUTORS Keegan Andrulis is a pasta fazul enthusiast.

Emer Tyrrell is a final year English and Drama student who still begrudges having had to choose between them for her major. She is from Longford and despite her love/hate relationship with the Sligo train, still feels a strong pull towards home. An embarrassing amount of her poetry from the pandemic is set in supermarkets – it was a REALLY exciting time.

Kristen Poli is a writer from New Jersey based in Dublin. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Bespoke Magazine, Púca Magazine, and The Asbury Park Press.

Yashodhan Nair is a medical graduate from Cape Town, South Africa, currently completing an MSc in Immunology at TCD. He uses writing as a way to explore the legacy of the past, his family, queerness, and primarily as a reprieve from science.

Maureen Penrose is a second year student of Drama and Theatre in Trinity College. She came as a mature student and is 67 years old. She has been involved with a number of Projects in her local Draiocht Theatre in Blanchardstown and is a member of the Blanchardstown Clown’s Chorus.

She likes to express herself, her thoughts and her feelings through rhyme. She is loving life right now!

Gerry McDonnell was born in 1950 and was educated in Trinity College Dublin, where he edited two issues of Icarus. He has had five collections of poetry and a novella published. He has written for stage, radio, television and opera. In recent years he has been writing haiku and haibun. He has been published in journals around the world, dedicated to this traditional Japanese genre, such as The Haibun Journal, Drifting Sands, Presence, Kokako. He is a member of the Irish Writers’ Union.

Katelyn Davis is a second-year English and History student, born and reared in the thrilling border region of Galway and Offaly. She likens this to Eve Babitz’s LA lifestyle. In her spare time, she enjoys watching racecars go vroom, getting Luas fines, and inhaling peroxide fumes in the hairdresser’s chair. She’s never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm.

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Gracie Shearer lives below the Ochils. She misses them dearly, takes them massively for granted. Anything she writes stems from here.

Susannah Violette lives in the forests of Germany with her husband and two daughters. Nature is the blood of her work. The animals both within us and outside of us fascinate her and her poems become liminal spaces where the edges of these worlds blur. A Pushcart Prize nominee Susannah has had poems placed or commended in the Plough Prize, Westival International Poetry Prize, the Frogmore poetry prize, Coast to Coast to Coast Pamphlet Competition and appeared in various publications worldwide most recently Bloody Amazing (award-winning), Pale Fire, For the Silent, Dreich, Alchemy Spoon, Finished Creatures, Channel and Strix.

Hugh Conlon is another victim of the senseless violence that poisons the streets of Gotham City. After witnessing the brutal murder of his parents, Thomas and Martha, in Gotham’s notorious crime alley, he swore to avenge them. Taking up the mantle of the fearsome Batman, Hugh fights doggedly to protect the denizens of Gotham from vice and villainy.

Maya Kulukundis is a fourth year English student currently writing her fiction capstone. She is influenced, of late, by Daisy Hildyard and the idea of a second body and is wondering about her own second body and the threadlike connections between one person and the world. She is incredibly excited to be a part of this edition of Icarus, under such wonderful editorial supervision, and has found Icarus to be an integral part of the development of her writing during her time at Trinity.

Eléonore Maréchal is a final year Philosophy and Economics student from Rueil-Malmaison in France. She loves it here and she is definitely not ready to leave Dublin.

Julie Smirnova: I’m 22. A final year politics and economics student. The wife of Laoise Legend Lynch. Heaven from Hell, Wish You Were Here, Souls and Fishbowls, etc. Are these our golden years? 22 dirty rings? In the end, all that’s left to do is love each another, so I hold onto sun-kissed cats and Otis Redding and wardrobe doors that never fully close. Christ — if that isn’t nice I don’t know what is!

Catherine McGovern is from London and still gets very excited by the Luas and the hills and the sea of it all.

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CAWHILL is unfortunately not available to give a short bio. Last I heard from them they were plucking their feathers and diving off the Cliffs of Moher to “see what was on the other side”. Rest assured; CAWHILL will be back on campus shortly to continue their friscalating shenanigans and offer further deliberations on Samsara. Regards, Beezie Eloise Rodger is looking to drunk-talk politics with ghosts. She is gossiping with statues. She wouldn’t like the world to be her oyster nearly as much as she would like the lampposts to be her friends. She is in your walls.

But not in a weird way. In a sexy way. She is desperate to stand barefoot on the pavement, in the dark. Deadpan the universe. Feel it staring straight back.

Maitiú Charleton is from Dublin. Right now, he thinks that you can donate to the ICRC (Red Cross).

Coco Goran (she/they) hails from Southern California but now haunts all of the coffeeshops Dublin. They study english and film at Trinity, and they don’t do much else other than walking, dancing, watching movies, and writing cryptic poems and plays in her notes app. Find her multimedia art on instagram @colettes_musings.

Róisín Ryan is from County Limerick. She’s doing the M. Phil in Irish Writing and is Literature Co-Editor over at TN2. Sometimes she’s Róisín Ní Riain, just to keep you guessing.

Lisa Bussi: I’m Lisa, pronouns she/her, and I’m a second year Drama student (as you can probably tell). I’ve worked on some Players shows and have filmed and been featured in a few short films over the last while. More importantly though, I’m a compulsive oversharer! xoxo Sophie Furlong Tighe: Aoife Cronin are u free for a smoke??

Ava Chapman is alive & well (?) in Dublin today, doing various arts stuff.

Has a newsletter called Triptych. Loves u all.

Alice Gogarty is a first year French and Philosophy student. She can do no more than offer the reader a few choice words to chew on. Here they are, let them in gently: Whao! Blah! Yack yack yack!

Jess Sharkey is a semi-professional comic book artist, oil painter and illustrator. She is an art history student at TCD, practically lives in the 66

National Gallery of Ireland and is currently a drawing student at the RHA. She also has a crocodile tattoo that turned out like the lacoste logo, it’s been seeping into her paintings somehow. More of her work can be seen on her instagram @jessyphus :)

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MASTHEAD editors Gabi Fullam would really like to know where she stands with you right now. Read her stuff in The Liminal (Tallav Media), Breaking Ground Ireland (forthcoming, Cúirt Festival), Fruit Journal (forthcoming), Hands and Knees Newsletter and at The GalPal Collective. She is president-elect of TCDSU (: 0) and a recipient of the Uplift fellowship (Irish Writers Centre/ Words of Colour). She appreciates people who have integrity.

Alex Mountfield knows which side their bread is buttered on. You can read their work in Gold Soundz Zine, Púca, Violet Indigo Blue Etc. (forthcoming), and Exploding Appendix Dossier (forthcoming), as well as in back issues of Icarus. Poetry via email @harkheraldpdf.

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MASTHEAD featured contributors sam sax is a queer, jewish, writer and educator. They’re the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and ‘Bury It’ winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They’re the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Granta, and elsewhere. Sam’s received fellowships from The NEA, Poetry Foundation, MacDowell, and is currently serving as a Lecturer at Stanford University Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, ‘91) is a nonbinary artist working at the intersection of hormones, body and gender politics, and ecological alienations.

Maggic frequently uses “biohacking” as a xeno-feminist practice of care that holds the potential to demystify invisible systems of molecular biopower.

In 2017 they completed their Masters in the Design Fiction group at MIT Media Lab, and recieved the Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in Hybrid Arts (2017) for the project “Open Source Estrogen” and a 10-month Fulbright research award in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2019) exploring the connection between Javanese mysticism and the plastic pollution crisis.

Maggic is a current member of the online network Hackteria - Open Source Biological Art, the tactical theater collective Aliens in Green, and the Asian feminist association Mai Ling Vienna, as well as a contributor to the radical syllabus project Pirate Care and to the online Cyberfeminism Index.

Megan Luddy O’Leary is an artist and illustrator. She draws, paints, writes and occasionally makes things out of clay and embroidery. She loves poetry. Her practice often involves drawing multiple images, one after the other, in order to create a sequential visual poem. As an illustrator she often interprets works of poetry, prose, film, or historical documents into visual imagery. Her themes include but are not limited to: the domestic, the everyday, cooking, the history of women, generational knowledge, the city, repetition, love and magic. Through use of spontaneous, intuitive markmaking and extremely saturated colours she attempts to convey both vividly and tenderly the everyday existences of women.

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Icarus acknowledges and thanks Trinity Publications for making this issue possible.

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

Serious complaints should be made to: The Editors, Icarus, Trinity Publications, Mandela House, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Information concerning copyright and permissions can be found at www.icarusmagazine.com