Icarus Vol. 71 No. 2 (2021) by Icarus Magazine

ICARUS MAGAZINE

VOLUME LXXI, ISSUE II

Trinity College Dublin © Trinity Publications 2021

EDITORIAL “There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors.” — Helen Rosner, Christ in the Garden of Endless Breadsticks “A literary revenge is the most humiliating of all punishments To be stretched on the racks of the poetry industrial complex.” — Hera Lindsay Bird, Hate

We are mighty concerned with the purpose of art; the change it can or cannot bring, the minds it will or will not change. I don’t know, I think it’s good for loads of stuff— comfort, agitprop, revenge (!!), understanding. It doesn’t have to be for anything at all. Sometimes, I think the best thing it can do is exist. What the work in this collection does is just that – something which is much harder than it sounds – it exists. Not just on pages or in notebooks, but persistantly in mouths and minds. It exists in the way all the best things do— everywhere. There is one Latin alphabet, but inside these pages are its thousand, shining doors. What goes without saying yet still must be said is that selection for this volume was a difficult process. We recieved over 130 submissions, and I am grateful for all of them. I hope everyone who sent work will do so again, and that everyone who didn’t will consider us the next time an idea strikes. This is the second edition of Icarus which isn’t allowed to have its own party. There’ll be one soon— we’ll all wear our best pyjamas and give each other bouquets of flowers, and then we will sing. I promise. Thanks to Aoife for her patience and her birds. Thanks to Catherine for the beautiful cover. Thanks, snoozer. — Sophie Furlong Tighe

Icarus is proud to present poetry by Mark Ward and Dimitra Xidous alongside the work of Trinity students and alumni.

COVER ART by Catherine Ding

CONTENTS Cover Catherine Ding Rewatching Friends during quarantine Jessica Foley 6

billboard Ava Chapman

for SOPHIE Olivia Mangum Lehmann

featured:

june Olivia Mangum Lehmann Fictional Whatsapp with brother Gabrielle Fullam

Slitting the Chicken’s Neck Fisheye 10 A Yield A Constant 11

I am very afraid of being murdered, do you think I will be murdered? Gabrielle Fullam Facebook Messenger (2:20am) Maria Cullen Diagnosis #2 Maria Cullen Vehicle of the Future Maya Kulukundis Some lies, exposed Ferdia Foley

Dimitra Xidous

headflat in ranelagh Vanessa Nunan 29

VILLAGE 100 YEARS From Now 30 12 Fionn O’Sullivan extract:

Equinox J ack Fanciulli 13 from Couplets 14 Phelim Ó Laoghaire RSVP ASAP 15 Alex Mountfield elegy- sophie x. 18 Alex Mountfield

32 34 36 38

Gasp! Ferdia Foley

jesus christ drinks american beer by Alex Mountfield

October Márie Hussey

Scream if you’re having a good time Robert Quinn 40

If you seek Márie Hussey

You are a Mad Thing by Robert Quinn

CONTENTS

extract:

‘Four Guinesses’ Shane Murphy

featured:

Mark Ward

2. Maleficium - 1690 4. Working from Home - 1995 7. Catnap - June 2020 Diagnosis Inheritance A Man in Love raudoni du Keegan Andrulis

shadow prose Siena Swire

October Charlotte Moore

Strain to See Glory Charlotte Moore

On Children’s Lit Charms! Creative Team

austerity measures a Mess Helena Scanlan

Biographies

Rewatching Friends during quarantine by Jessica Foley

“it’s about sex, love, relationships, careers, a time in your life when everything’s possible.” The episodes shudder from one to the next you crawl, subterranean you have long missed your stop. Drain-like, diverted the slick sheen of the unfailingly predictable. “it’s about sex,” a calendar of bowls sporulates around you. You need to buy batteries “love,” you want to throttle Ross “relationships,” has anyone called you today? When was the last time someone called you? What did you do? “careers,” what have you done? “a time in your life” done? (the ticker counts down, not up) “when everything’s possible.” 6

Wind up the laugh track. Your friends murmur on-screen the days flicker outside your window you’ve heard the earth is spinning faster, lately maybe you’d notice if you cared to look

are you still watching?

for SOPHIE

by Olivia Mangum Lehmann

—after “Whole New World/Pretend World” do you remember the mist in november the branch that held the moon full and loving and kind permeating the floating tendrils of clouds held up by the bassline held me tenderly on the ground tied me to the earth i wanted to take off my shoes, let you guide me through the trees then upwards a whole new world and in june the taste of wild raspberries, the juice your words bursting in my mouth sweet sour mother tongue spoke: not joy but relief, safety, hope round sun leaked and dribbled down my nose my chest i looked into your eyes i thought that i could see…

and in february the bus rides winter coat on plastic seat in metal cage the wheels spun off beat so i turned the volume up nothing then but you and me our destination breaking from the road’s intention the self drawn out from noise we mapped and dreamt promises of a life uncontained

june

by Olivia Mangum Lehmann

malibu barbie breath-stink haunts my room molds silicate skin flows under the surface corkstop windows with screens powerless to keep out mosquito blood tracks on the wall deadly results of perfect aim crusts around lips excavate pus like mascara tracks like dandelion seeds fly backwards like the mad dash that turns zero to eight o’clock i discovered sunburn peels off in cruel water

Fictional Whatsapp with brother by Gabrielle Fullam

Him: Me: Him: Me: Him: Me: Him: Me: Me:

Hey. Hi. Nanny told me there was a fight. Yeah. I guess. Sorry I couldn’t be at dinner tonight, INo. It’s fine. What was it over? I was the worst. But I was also right.

I am very afraid of being murdered, do you think I will be murdered? by Gabrielle Fullam

We are still best friends when I send you a voice message on the verge of tears, (Your best friend is my ex-boyfriend and he is ignoring me) I tell you: I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t have to I don’t want to make this awkward for you I don’t know if you’ll understand this But I need to know is he angry at me? Is he going to murder me You tell me what I want to hear: no, he’s not – he is busy with exams, he is handling it all well The caveat is all men are capable of all things, you feel bad for me. And so you tell me: This will be a long voice message But the headline is: you do not have to worry. You do not have to worry. You do not have to worry. You do not have to worry And I am warmed by this, and by you. So I emerge from my frozen bedroom, down to my kitchen (on the ground floor) My mother, on a rocking chair while the dinner cooks beside her Nose buried in a newspaper. The headline is: Girl, 16, Missing.

Facebook Messenger (2:20am) by Maria Cullen

In College accommodation Nestled together Flammable Russian dolls I hear a phone ding through the wall At night Come lick the condensation from my tongue It would surely be less intimate than this

Diagnosis #2

by Maria

Cullen

I will be writing sick poems for the rest of my life.

Vehicle of the Future

by Maya Kulukundis

It was of more and more importance each year, it had been decided, that everyone convene for her grandmother’s birthday. They had to go, not that her grandmother much knew anymore. They had to go as a sort of tribute to someone still alive but fading fuzzy-out. Mary got a flight that evening. Her pick-up from the airport was a Tesla, something she did not think was possible but that, in the hazy, film-stunt way that travel happens, was. The windscreen was designed to curve in such a way so that it felt like a video-game, so that the air outside seemed but simulation, sliced through like cookbook butter with one easy joystick push. This was a car that sliced the same lines as the tree branches and then graphed them into the shins of its windscreen wipers. The doors were cushioned with pillow leather which felt not like cow-hide but like the inside of your stomach, if you were to look, with an ultrasound. It was as if, to design this car, someone had searched back further: first to drawings and then to stories and then to the void. Mary leant into the muscles of an infant tiredness. It felt possible to knead your face into the Tesla’s stomach. Her brother would be meeting her there. He said that his name was, now, Axel. He introduced himself as Axel when he met new people and he was adopting mannerisms like a slight bent shoulder and a claw in the fingers. He said, ‘It’s Axel’ and there was no questioning him. He was developing a new kind of way to hear music. He said that songs, when they were pressed into CDs or played through computer speakers, went through an anti-noise

exfoliant that tore away the crowd and the crack and the guitar feedback. Axel wanted to make music sound like a record again, without what was flattened in the pressing. Axel said that, once music was digitalized, it was no longer listenable. It was no longer listenable because it didn’t have layers to it, he said, it had become a packet, no longer frothy and rummaging like the pool of a performance. You could click it and passive-hear it and even if you were to attempt to listen further, he said, if you dunked your ear deep into it, there would be nothing there. He wanted to be their father in the eighties meeting their mother in eighty-nine and swinging low like smog and smoking and eating on the street with plain-clothed pigs and no see-see tv. He was growing all of his hair bushy and his eyebrows knitted together and the hairs stuck angry around his middle, frantic-escaping to swallow the knots of hair on his chest and arms. She was not sure how his hair could have grown so black when hers was brown. She wasn’t sure at what point in their adolescence he had darkened and dirtied. He scratched the floor so as to put splinters under his fingernails. Mary was twenty two and graduating with no ideas or inventions or theories, even faux-wise ones on music. She did not understand the desire for depth or dirt or the urge to scratch, pick, rummage. She was past that. She wanted to peel her skin and hair and muscle off with a peeler and become two dimensional. She was quiet with few friends. She was a virgin, still. Something about the adult world had failed her or scared her and so she had retreated. Mary used blackout curtains and earplugs to fall asleep and in a few years, when she had discovered that you could, she would begin using prescriptions. And why would you want to put the noise back? They passed an office block. In the glass of the closed windows were reflected the cars, the pylons, the roads, the road-signs. The reflection doubled the surroundings; creating its own mirror-horizon. This is probably, she thought, what they felt about concord: the plane that broke the barrier and carved open a post-sound, vacuum space within which it could sprawl- endless, aimless. Here she was, in old jeans and a stained jumper with a full bush underneath and sweat between her legs and under her arms and on this smooth seat she felt so gulpingly clean. How impressive, Mary thought, that technology had become so powerful that it could strip you back and make you aware of something lost or internal or clean in a world of shit and piss and waste and

radiation and plastic and fast-fashion and space-junk. We have gone forwards in order to push ourselves back. See, they were in the age of noise cancelling headphones, little white beads that you put into the ear and that made you hear the blood pulsing around your head. Like shells when you were four. She thought of her grandmother who with each birthday sunk further into the scrubbed-pure silence of embryonic peace. You could recall the younger woman if you needed to. She had rubbed oil into their skin in the bath, Mary and her brother, and they had snailed at the spine into the bath-enamel and fixed shut their eyes whilst they stiffened in wait for cold hair-washing water to be poured. You could recall all of this if you needed to, but it stung. Now there was a nurse to wash her grandmother, every morning and evening, with non-scented lathering soap. There was no sweat in her grandmothers’ bed. And she was calm, like this car, and silent, like this car and looking inwards with a soft face. She was neatly sugared with sunspots and her eyes were beautiful cataract-blue. And she was peaceful like a baby and it made Mary ring like onion or citrus prick desire. She would never again be the scrubbed-bath child and so stung desperate for the wordless cocoon. Mary wondered if they might arrive late, late enough that the others were drunk already or full already and burping and smoking cigarettes and lying around like mangy cats. How odd it was that they had an evening birthday dinner for a woman who was fed puree upstairs with a plastic spoon at four. If they were indeed late and late enough, Mary could slip straight up the stairs to her grandmother’s bedroom that smelled of nothing but cardboard and sit still on the adjacent armchair and count the set rhythm of her breaths in and out, in and out. It was humid and misty that evening. The tires spun and the mist was kicked up, becoming rain then steam then breath, when Mary blew back, that fogged the windows so that there was no view of the outside. And the car pushed further into the swirl of the road and lifted slightly from the ground, tires gliding and the air inside passed from driver to passenger, circling and slinking around and around and around and swallowed back into its own warm mouth.

Some lies, exposed.

by Ferdia Foley

It was Spanish, well, it might’ve been French. Red oak, fed smoke, and then poured it back out again. My mother’s incense holder, carved in the image of an ancient witch. We watched Chaplin on the big screen, outside. Well, it probably wasn’t Chaplin, but it was something in the dark, something black and white, projected, when I was young. We saw a Beatles tribute act on holidays. We saw Chris Tarrant too. Let’s play charades, I’ll go first. “who wants to be a millionaire?’ A genuine and authentic antique necklace? Some sweets, some candy, maybe, for you?

When they first came round, or when they first got popular, It was harder to tell. Nobody knew. Head shops and Oxfam, Only a bead-door barrier between head shops and Oxfam. Head shops, a chemist, and Oxfam. My mother’s incense holder was probably a bong. Many of our ‘antiques’ are probably a bong. I’ve never watched Charlie Chaplin in the moonlight, None of those men looked remotely like Paul. I’ve never met any gameshow hosts. I feel so much older, but I still feel quite small.

Gasp!

by Ferdia Foley

And just when you’re going to tell her that you’re thinking of going to France! To work picking grapes! Your both knees buckle with drink and you fall and she checks to see you’re okay and you dance, you both dance, until you both fall! You both fall! And you smell the forgotten sups that other people sloshed, that your hair is now eating and then it’s been a year! And you still miss your granny and you dream about sex with europeans – but like real Europeans - and you’re still planning on figuring out politics, and you’re still dreaming of Niamh and your tax-back, and you’re far too drink to gut up so the two of you lie on the ground and you laugh and you do a forward tumble! away from security. 20

October

by Márie

Hussey

Every day I wake up and write my stupid little poems on the train on my way to work. Want pulls me out of bed, dressing me caressing me whispering sweet somethings in my ear. But it is fear that has me here, frozen, poised with my hands dangling over the keys of my laptop, about to send an email. About to lie, again, slowly, when they ask about identity I shrug and say I like to read. I think maybe the thing in my throat is jealousy Of all the terrible afflictions we have normalised Of your jokes, laughed at by almost everyone in the room. When I sit silent drinking. You, all of you, unabashed, unashamed, unconscious maybe. Reminder! I have a secret appointment tomorrow! I don’t know what lies I will have to tell about it the last time I said I was going shopping and honestly you should know I never go shopping alone. I guess this is what they mean when they talk about isolation How you can text someone every day and tell them nothing How you can love someone by yourself. without their input.

If you seek

by Márie Hussey

All you are is all around me, 8 gifts for the alter. Number one is a toilet seat, number two a bottle of vodka, number three alexa. Your fingers long and cold a closed fist around my outstretched hand until you pull away, retreat, fold your body inwards and put in your earphones. Murder an innocent. Set fire to my house. Slice the world into pieces. Let your mother buy my drink. Burn and flood and hurricane through, I will be here waiting. Black out again get us kicked out of bars I will ring a taxi, take the bus home alone waiting for you. Ignore my texts, miss my calls, laugh off my needles I will be here waiting. Yet, you may leave me. Yet you may feel left by me when all I am is laying you down for a long rest while I ride off into the sunset and you scrabble around the bushes in darkness, wet. You hold all of my cards, you can queue the next song. You can drop me off around the corner from my house and take your own drive west. I will not hold you. But I will be here, waiting.

billboard

by Ava Chapman

i saw a church billboard at the end of a tennessee road that read “open mouths get fed” but what about my DRIED / scorched tongue waiting in the open air what about the honey in the cupboard unused and sweet, delicious and stagnant what about the yellow meal tickets and grumbling stomachs of nothing last night morning bus rides he stole my lunch & i cried, cried, cried every silence building itself up into the secret that keeps us whole & begging

Slitting the Chicken’s Neck featured: Dimitra Xidous

In time the hold of an orange tree anchors memory between two points: 0 & after 0. As a matter of distance, time is a wide eye; the eye, sharp to a point. To cut, precisely, in time, is to make a straight line that breaks the circle &creates

a gash, in meaning, splitting time in two – into the moment when & the moment

after when. In between two points in time the slitting of the chicken’s neck renders a void – an empty space, an O. O: an orange; an orange point, in time; in time, 0,0 – in time, a sudden opening between worlds.

Fisheye

featured: Dimitra Xidous

Focus on a single point: growing up, I always feared fish, eating fish. All those bones, thin needles holding the fish together on the plate. Like a row of precise stitches, these bones were thick as spider’s silk; a threading of white on white on white – fish, plate & bone reflecting & scattering all the visible wavelengths of light, to the point of being indistinguishable in my mother’s eyes. Years later, in the backseat of another time, the grey overlap of memory swallows me up, & those bones come back – a familiar hold, a white light scratching out all the black in my throat. I try to be like my mother then & pick at the flesh of your sentences; find, then throw away any word that could hurt me. I fail. So instead, I focus on a single point: the whole of my hand wrapped around you, the tightening of my grip, like a spider spinning thread around its prey – the tip of your cock bulging, between the circle of my index finger & thumb, like a fisheye.

A Yield

featured: Dimitra Xidous

A field where the earth is turned over & turned over & turned over. Tilled until dirt gives, until dirt gives in – an offering (σώμα) after another offering (χώμα) after another offering (αμήν). A field, tilled & turned to yield body – a piece of earth, turned & tilled until it stares up at heaven like an open hand. An offering, open & flat out like the sole of a foot touching down. An offering on how to keep the body grounded from the sole of one foot to the other. To ground the body onto ground. Like grief. Maybe grief is bare feet touching down. Maybe, to be barefooted in grief is to touch down, to press down on the earth – σώμα χώμα αμήν &amp; the earth offering up: tilled &amp; turned over & turned over & turned over the body gives, the body gives in – yields, like an orange.

A Constant

featured: Dimitra Xidous

Somewhere, there is always a circle: a woman contemplating the afterlife. In this language I say the letter O; in another, O takes possession – mouth becomes O; O becomes mouth. In this state of becoming, woman is a portal, an opening. A fish lands on the table. Being of the first order of circles, the eye is attuned, can recognize the season: the slow curl, that yellow grin (re)surfacing. There is no water here, no sea. Here, there is only air. Bodies contract & expand, contract & expand, contract & expand; one contortion after another after another. The fish sucks; the fish sucks; the fish sucks. All for nothing. Meanwhile, the woman recalls a good fucking. Together, they exist in time, in the grip of a possessive O. The table, made of tree, remains constant.

headflat in ranelagh

by Vanessa Nunan

VILLAGE 100 YEARS From Now

(a mosaic of excerpts from primary school copybooks) by Fionn O’Sullivan

I’m down under, it’s all very orange and glass is shattering, well, almost.

A poor family wanted to escape from the evil money-lender, so the family went to the country but the evil man followed them, they then crossed the river Shannon and escaped. Life was good for Oisín, he had married Niamh and he was having a good time until he found a shamrock and all of his memories from Ireland came back. The river is more polluted. There are apartments...cars...satellite dishes and more entertainment...SPACESHIP DEALERS GET YOUR SPACESHIP TODAY. I think we won’t end up like them because we were already trying to stop it by making all cars electrick, and we’ve got medicine to stop us getting diseases. We use phones, computers and the radio as well as television. The internet is a sort of way of communication and a way of finding out information. The benefits of the internet are you can find out information. The disadvantages of the internet are that not all the information is true. Japan is doomed A tsunami has just hit

Cattle —> Butcher —> Meat —> Meat Minced —> Burgers An absentee landlord was someone who was a landlord but wasn’t there. Potatoes caught a disease called blight, this was bad because most of the people in Ireland only ate potatoes. Rather than staying in prison was taken out of prison strapped to a wheelchair and then shot by the firing squad. He was born in Gujarat, west India in 1869. So he sent two of my friends to try and free as many people as possible from a concentration camp. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 381 days. They don’t cost lots of money, they are good for the environment and they don’t run out. If I was the Presedent I would higher the tax for the richer people and reduce collage so that it helps students and homeless people. I know someone who can thatch your roof with straw. Sadly, our team didn’t win, but it was fun nonetheless. Well, I was in a terrible rush, to get to a place that I can’t tell you. Sorry but the rest of the diary has been ripped

Adult / \ Birth — Death

Things I learnt at IMMA: When your 90 you can still have fun painting and doing art. I am a mortal, I won’t live forever. The images that come to mind after reading the poem are the sea, a dog, and a beach.

Equinox

by Jack

an extract

Fanciulli

Two people standing over a body. CHARACTER 1 is constantly fidgeting, removing items of clothing and putting them on differently, almost like they're glitching. while CHARACTER 2 is stoick and cold, with very little project to the audience. There is a long, high pitched ringing sound that continues throughout the scene.

CHARACTER 1: What happened?

CHARACTER 2: I know him.

C.1: Who is that?

C.2: He slipped through the factory walls. He came out of a bombburst shadow on the wall. They churned and spat him out like an unforgiving womb and he tumbled onto the pavement, naked, shivering and covered in petrol. He was sprayed with phosphorus fertiliser and he stood up. This was his seminal state. His flesh became carnal and he could taste his acrid tongue.

C.1: Where did he come from?

C.2: He locked himself out of the industrial grind and walked along his reflection. He would wander and walk without direction, and never look for it. He was not seen and eventually, he was seen. He was anthropomorphised and he stood up. He placed a torch to the breast and set it alight.

C.1: What can be done?

C.2: He walked along his reflection and fell into the canal. He could not see. It is much deeper than it looks. He could not breathe under the water and he could not swim. He could not see the bottom. It is not clear, he may have been pushed, but he could not see. He was tangled by the moss and the bog, somewhere between the mud and the scum.

C.1: What time is it?

C.2: He’ll float along the river, limp and limpid. He’ll be dragged along by the soft tide, pass by the reeds, the swans, the haggard men under the stone bridge, the rusted barge, the wooden banks, the shopping trolleys, the leftover cans, and once he’s reached the end, he will simply float up the other way. He won’t be touched.

C.1: What is this?

C.2: He worked in an office. He would sit in a chair from 9 to 5. He worked for a company. He lived in his car. He talked on his phone, he had routines and shifts. He watched pornography and comedy shows and laughed with the audience. He wore condoms and pulled out. He lived in an apartment. He bought food to eat, he went out at night. He dropped acid. He lived alone. He lived in a housing estate. He travelled. He worked out at a gym. He always felt uncomfortable looking at naked men in changing rooms. He chewed his nails. He couldn’t sleep without listening to ambient music or recorded rain sounds. He prospered in his own way. He pulled his own knickers down. He shivered in the outside cold.

C.1: Is he dead?

C.2: Can't you hear the water flowing?

from Couplets

by Phelim

O’ Laoghaire

Choke me. The world remains wholly unchanged. / The sky just lay down and took it. Then he just got up and just walked out of there, just now. / She didn’t slam the door, or shout, or scream. She didn’t move at all, she just kept going. / Tigers sleeping in the past. Your dwarf is mine now. /

Soon your battery will be low and your children hungry. But have you got what it takes? / When no one was looking, no one was here, the fridge broke. You were not here, I did not see you, when the fridge broke - it was beautiful. / Twelve year old Ben touches his imagination in the dark. His imagination touches a nerve, touches hearts; operates the techniques of the soul, fully, with uncanny dexterity, Ben’s trembling imagination touches the moon as you would touch an organ donor’s hand. / Stay forever but after this is all through I’m taking the car. I’m getting out of here. / The All is aflame. The flame is published here for the first time.

RSVP ASAP

by Alex Mountfield

julie’s got the cash out the money comes so easy these days fingers starting to stain before being noticed (skin of hands worked into grain leather gloves) “and how exactly are you going to make a living?” dad always asked answer: pass it around until no one knows where it comes from big black hound on the train — it won’t meet her eyes it rests its jowls on the sticky vinyl floor / snuffles at the door why would queer boys wear collars when their dogs don’t owen takes the trash out men in suits bleach each bank on the high street suppose it’s that time again guts sucked to the smalls of backs street-crossers cross streets at their approach the last pigs in the pen

old women in the china shop menthol cigarettes tangled in their teeth sucking on black teabags shredding buttered toast with their acrylics always peel back the paper on fags you didn’t roll there might be sewing needles wrapped up inside michael clears the cache out something profane pressed against the other side of the glass “it’s just another one of those days...” you must hold it under your tongue until it dissolves completely those missing girls they find sometimes in the squats no one crossdresses for mother’s love we keep our spines hackled tonight there’s a medicine for each wound one day, we will all be beheld

elegy - sophie x.

by Alex

Mountfield

isn’t there something in me like a fucking weapon?, like a piano the size of a mountain, or the tuned woodwind cavity of a skyscraper: hot breath howling out through an aperture like screaming ourselves hoarse in the club, or a steaming trepanation in the skull, just to discharge the pressure of being embodied, even if only for a moment (just like we never said goodbye)

jesus christ drinks american beer

by Alex

Mountfield

they don’t teach you this in sunday school, but god only hates fags who aren’t pretty enough for tv so let’s go put our makeup on, babe we’re going out tonight, we’ll dance our way out of hell summer in the city always tastes the same we buy bottled water from the boys outside the station they pack it up so quickly when the police roll past grinning, laughing, shiny plastic disappearing into backpacks ‘pop star’ and ‘cop car’ is a perfect rhyme — too bad there’s nothing new to say about either they’re building a new hotel on 9th and F hey, don’t worry — there’s a ghost for every empty bed in our country, Kathy has to keep the Change smear of wet hot american carbon spread across the pavement (maybe everyone thought she was better off that way)

Scream if you’re having a good time

by Robert Quinn

Turmoil on turmoil, the bins outside on fire on New Year’s Eve. Bundled at the window watching them put out the flames -What can you do but say Happy New Year wow. Happy New year wow. Happy New Year wow. What a great show. I’m the star of the second act, sat in a parked car alone eating a burger, A crow watches me through the windscreen, a child stares from a car on the right, I get no lines, I have nothing to say, I just listen to the radio and carry on. Where’s the fun in sitting there by yourself And hoping the radio doesn’t fall into static? If the barometer dropped right now, right here, I’d really be done for. Walk out to face the world alone, by myself, no magic, no icing, bird’s morning lark chewing my earthe sun burning down on my pale skin, scalping between my hairline and my nose, the sky descending, see all that alone, just me, only me, saying nothing as it goes. Or when the plates shift, the couch pillows shake for my own cat’s claws to emerge up between the ridges. Am I to laugh at all that by myself ? Who would I sit beside when the curtain drops? No fun to fall backward off the couch and hit the floor by yourself. I’d miss your part. Miss you blotting out the sun with your finger, cutting a wire when you’re ready for the dark.

There together on the way back from Tesco, clutching the bags sheltered in alleys together when it started to lash. If that’s the spot you’re picking, I’d gladly self-destruct there too. The world’s most beautiful major malfunction. Pouring 7up over our laptops before someone else gets to us. We’re in it now. On our way down the stairs together. Might really be in it now. That might be okay, you could work on your downward dog in the eye of the hurricane. I could be there with you, finally getting into woodturning after all my talk. When the wind blows in the carcass of old magazines we could pick off the flesh and cut out the cool photos for our collage. Checking Twitter every now and then to see if we’re hallucinating the world crumbling before us. I can’t tell where I should turn just yet, it’s still spinning. Need you there for memory of cards I’ve picked for magic tricks, for skagged lips softening the glaring dawn over Weetabix. Every morning I’d reach up and revitalise in their perfect comfort from the drain. I can’t stumble my way in the dark, navigate the oozing amusements in the carnival game. Deception making it look easier than it actually is to knock all the cans down off the shelf in just one throw. You could be tempted to pay for the better hand, - or you could just laugh at your misfortune and walk away, put the arm around the other, hand in the back pocket of the other’s jeans and walk away. If it does get dark and the carnival closes early and I come home empty handed (with no golden monkey that I wanted to win so bad), trudge through with the feet that ruined the park - I won’t mind. If I’m losing sight of my footsteps ahead of me I can always reach for you I can run my finger down your nose And make out the features of your face in the dark.

You are a Mad Thing

by Robert Quinn

Something else, You are a mad thing The things you say- me metaphorically drooling as I follow behind youA 24/7 Instant Crush trespassing my dreams. Following you past my bed-time To waste time on the streets of Dublin, my nose all runny, My feet pulling me, ostracized by the meal I last ate, letting myself pursue a hunger I’d like While my body is there pleading with my heart to collaborate. Things about you, ways that work so well Like comforting resolutions of well-made films That work around things about me, sometimes bitter Like fanatics who saw it before it got really big And when you’re near that part of my mind is rewired, Remastered (2021), goes off with friends to see friends in Marbella. While it’s in your hands you could have me listening to something I hated And thinking wow I could love this, I could listen to this again now and love this You are a mad thing Happiness from the touch at hands, Even after sitting through a 3-0 loss, That kind of thing That kind of sedation that holds a magnifying glass between us and says that’s all it is Here right now, this hour, all it is, And I’d want to slow the hours down

But time would just keep begging me to accept it’s natural progress I’d say no, I just can’t bring myself to go even when I need the jacks. There’s some sort of release I can’t decode that draws me to you, Something the government should be desperate to find. We’d all be millionaires if they saw you, A constant method to excite and relax, That’s something I’d always pursue, Wouldn’t matter if it was heavily taxed

‘Four Guinesses’

by Shane Murphy

an extract

Even though he was late, Eoin’s arriving surprised me. From just a few metres away, I caught him from the corner of eye, rather than seeing him come from the bottom of the path and pretend I didn’t. I was looking up at the top windows of the Georgian buildings that lined Parnell Square. — It’s great to see you, he said. I felt maniacal then, like my chest was filled with moving gusts of wind that I could ease by screaming. Instead I spoke in short answers and gave him big questions that I hoped he could take a long time to answer. It was factual to me that if I moved my smile to talk a bad laugh would come out. We came off the footpath and onto the doorway where a school table was stationed in front of two young ticket sellers who also had big smiles. They handed over strips of printed paper and loose change from a tin box to the front of the queue before allowing them to pass along the corridor and into the theatre room. When we reached the desk Eoin paid for our tickets while talking to me about what he had been doing since he saw me on Tuesday. He was researching his dissertation on Russian literature. I took a conscious interest in this by trying to remember a lot of similar sounding names to endear him, like Abramov and Albov, names I remembered by imagining them in isolated print across my vision. He slipped his two euro change into his front pocket and handed me a photocopied playbill. We walked past to the showroom in single file. The ceiling and walls were painted a flat black and rows of seating sloped like a tiny cinema room. We seated ourselves in the middle and stuffed our coats by our feet. Eoin was wearing plain a grey t-shirt with a tight v-neck. We sat silent like everyone else until the play began. I looked around timidly with my head hiked up like a meerkat. The play was introduced by an older man who thanked us for being there and 44

gave “special appreciation” to the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival for their encouragement and support throughout the development of the production. He didn’t speak for long but he did make a lot of self-deprecating jokes and referenced his own personality a lot which made this feel like a charity event and we were all his generous friends. He hoped we would enjoy it. I can’t remember the name of it but it was a drama of four priests living in a parish parochial house I assumed somewhere in the country. The basic plot was about one priest, the one with blond hair, and he was struggling with his faith because he was a gay man. I supposed there was a lot of important allegory and imagery to be considered, but none of it really landed with me. There was only one prop involved, a table which ghoulish stage directors inelegantly decorated as both an altar and a bed after each scene on rotation. The actors moved and spoke with large, arched affects I supposed the messaging of the play was to be reaffirming, because in the end when the main character came out to god and the other priests they accepted him, but it was just vindicating a fear of acceptance rather than challenging it. It felt sadistic, like they were pinching misery. There was so much minute mediation throughout the play of stock emotions like despair and guilt that everything became scrambled to the degree of being flat and illegible. By the end, I felt like I was just told being gay was a deep, emotional and sentimental identity with its inherent trauma and joy, not a series of acts you carried out. I am not gay, I do gay things, like having sex with men and confusing jealousy with attraction. At an emotionally low moment when the closeted priest cried on his knees in service to god, Eoin reached down to my lap and raised my wrist over the armrest to set our hands jointly on his stomach. For the rest of the play he rubbed the inside of my forearm. He didn’t look at me when he did this, which gave the impression that it was something affectionate and normal. When the big lights were switched on, everyone applauded but no one stood up. I clapped as politely as everyone else, which I put to evidence that there was nothing I missed that everyone else picked up on. I concluded that the play was poorly done just in general.

2. Maleficium - 1690 from Nine Lives

featured: Mark

Ward

He says that mother sent him when she died. Murdered for being a witch by another to save themselves. The devil, he strives for wit, tch, but this is cowardice. He changes from a cat into a crow itching to feast upon her eyes. I don’t want this. You cannot choose which gifts you are given. He follows her to a tavern and shouts Witch! transforming his frame into Satan for all to see. The town screams Witch! They burn her the next day, sandwiched between rope and stake. Next time, he twitches, you will be the only true witch in town. Embrace your power or die. Decide which.

4. Working from Home - 1995 from Nine Lives

featured: Mark

Ward

My supervisor took a shit in front of me. He owns this place and won’t let me forget it. Even when not looking, doors must be left open so he can see me. Work is his gateway to power, details don’t matter unless used to berate me. He gives out until he bores even himself, then is inappropriately affectionate toward me, beyond suggestive, he lies across my lap, waiting to be touched, unwilling to touch me. He looks cute like this and knows it. I stroke his face. He purrs, stretches, diminishing me: he is the width of the world, watch how everything revolves around him. His mood shifts. He bites me but never breaks the skin. He disappears into his office, yells hold my calls and sleeps, dreaming of catching me in his teeth, his limbs efficiently breaking my neck so he can drag me home and make a gift of me.

7. Catnap - June 2020 from Nine Lives

featured: Mark

Ward

I sit with him before he goes to sleep, is put to sleep, and pet him. He bites me. I let him. The anger that started this sequence has faded to a lack of sleep and sadness. I cast him in history but each myth is just a story he slips through, a passing vessel to tether him to as we avoid the call, the room that sleeps only him. His brain actively decaying, the vet says, lullabying us to sleep with his guesses. All the tests are negative but still he pisses, scratches, shits and sleeps all day. He stares at me completely lost, his entire world exhausted. I sleep to avoid his gaze, the days until the appointment. Language fails. You put a child to sleep by tucking him up in his bed but an animal is induced to sleep. I whisper to him through the sedative. I promise him at last a painless sleep.

Diagnosis

featured: Mark

Ward

Like the naming of a god; irrevocable, the wrath of having the upper hand temporarily, a name can plant seeds scattering its shape across memories until its laugh, soaked through with sweat, derails the days utterly. When you name a god, you must plan your escape; impossible if they live inside, if they hear your words before your face, before your brain can fight them, can sieve their on-high curses from your city. Deities feel neither tiredness nor pity. Naming a god is a marker, indelible, a strikethrough linking distinct histories, episodes unnamed, bad days, situations and mysteries into the always capitalised A in Anxiety; the lowercase days are erased entirely leaving panicked flesh, shallow breaths, recovery. You only name a god when you can submit to the notion that you need saving. You berate the body for the affront of drowning in pinhole days, replays of relays of worst cases, nursed traces of nuances in nuisances you patrol the floodgates fixated by the weight of water.

Naming a god is a stark lore, irreversible, each deviation from the carousel crippled with diagnosis, you wonder if this is it again, each day framed with a battlement, where incised words let your nerves relent, and lapse into silence, for a moment, content.

Inheritance

featured: Mark Ward

the internal drone of being powerless to protect your family as they traverse the day; a fear of the permanence of words, opinions braced like playing bumper cars with the street; the ability to let a moment cast its light despite the glare of life’s undertow; more empathy than you’ll ever know or want to know or think is fair; the flair of telling a detailed story diminished by overexcited repetition; a calculated omission as punishment whilst still adhering to work’s guidelines; one last visit to the bathroom before leaving, wearing too many layers in this heat; the spectacular feat of loving deeply those who deserve you to; a face and frame to grow into.

A Man in Love

featured: Mark Ward

The wrinkles on my knuckles split their seams coughing blood in protest at your gutter mouth. Your guttural protests seem wrinkled from your spilt body, knuckles dragging on the floor, your coccyx bruising the dirt, your body ragged and rankled adrenalin flutters your hackles. Sick cocksuckers, you raged holding your rankled ankle wrinkled to you at right angles. My fist flutters off your dirt, my blood borders these gutters that your cough tries to dispel. Rebutted by this spell, your protest is the itch in your throat unable to wipe the love from his eyes. 52

raudoni du

by Keegan anDrulis

shadow prose

by Siena Swire

When you died, your shadow remained. Brief and intangible, it lingered a while. I made sure it stayed. A vacuous premonition, like tattoo ink contour, froze in your porch gravel. A snapshot of grey. And you were stuck for a while, stuck beneath the ground, the same ground surrendering itself to the chiming choirs of rusty asthmatic buses. The frequency had hurt our ears. To the very surface prickling Eve’s ebony feet, to the home of tobacco glass, of smiling tin foil and the cavitied shoes of zombie drunkards in shining armageddon slurs. We would sit there, your basketball stand our starved back-brace. We sat right there, all sprawled out, crassly, inelegantly. Merely masculine, nothing more. Your fear of the dark rattles like warm sponge through my mind now, for now it consumes you. Now you are defined by the exteriority of shading, of silhouette, of nothingness. I ruminate upon that, provocatively. You have not gone towards the light, you have blocked it altogether. When you died, I thought of Magritte and his lubricated apple, ethereal in its suspension which is mid-air, and purgatory. I considered its elusiveness, its shyness, concealed amidst a bubbling stew of blood and guts, and racing veins. It seems to mimic an estranged organ, pulsating and detached. Perhaps all gentlemen have apples for hearts, perhaps their orthodoxy actually consecrates sin. Then I consider outline and tracing. I smirk and deify its levelling quality. Would the perpetrator of this painting’s genesis suffer such praise in the removal of this levitating fruit? Would the kidnapping of this iconography perish this creator’s entire livelihood?

And so I think of you, and your shadow, and your non-presence. I think of the sanitised vacuum of nothingness you now inhabit, and how appealing the tyre grit grey skin of your temporal corpse now seems. And in the seconds before you officially and eternally depart, I hear white: ‘So many three-legged dogs are about at the moment’.

October

by Charlotte

Moore

And she writes And I sit Clenched. Like a limpet Nothing lucrative leaks; The dull descends. “Say you wanna move in, tell your girlfriend I’m sorry...” A complicated snippet (Other people have complications too ! I must recall that As I swim in the mess of the dam). I need to watch the sunrise once, At least, freezing in the fountains Of the great deep The great waters that prevail And hold up the stone-heart whale As it takes tackle and learns to mend (wonder, again, about the relationship Between the serpents and the dinosaurs)... 56

That tree leans so far and bends so stiff And fluid at once. My lace sleeve Seeps ink so quickly. Nothing is novel. Funny to blink, feel stinging, See the dead around you, Feel the cold, long For comfort, wish for end death Unto life fuller and fruit That tastes like a jewel beheld. I envy the teenagers Who look the most ludicrous and outcast I wish I had said, on schooldays, proudly “I am misfitting.” But I pulled on my jeans and rubbed my face In the token of beauty which stank of lies And I tried to be skinny so boys (one boy) So boys would want to kiss me And they didn’t, or I didn’t So it would have been better use of my time To don a pair of two-toned tights And spiky shoes And walk about With flowers in my hair.

Strain to See Glory

by Charlotte

Moore

Home again In the dark With a flurry of new-fallen snow. Sorry for wanting to die Just When I look out at the big world I want to die beneath it! I revel in the thought Before it electric shocks me Into stagnation. (O TAKE ME, O SOMEBODY!) To be taken upwards Without curses and heaving No moaning on the way But then To leave maybe a man With a mission to manage Aloner now, without a hand for holding! Not that he necessarily exists. I have these tendencies to make realities Out of my own fictional patheticisms. 58

I go to bed early because I fear the figure Of myself that I see Hand-wringing weep-faced On the garden path. Maybe I will provoke a little child poet But I think In foresight I’d rather not. Sun on buses is cold comfort In February When the wind isn’t as there as I am And every thought a thought of Not you. (O, WIND ME UP AGAIN) I am drastic, but not spun Disallow contempt I’m living.

On Children’s Lit

by CHARMS!

Creative Team

Kharms is sitting on a chair downstage stage right. Interrogators A and B stand opposite him, downstage stage left. Upstage, interrogator C stands opposite a mannequin. A: Would you like a biscuit? B: They’re sugar biscuits. A: Well they’re not really sugar biscuits, Those haven’t been around for years. They are in fact just sugar cubes. No biscuits to be found really B: You can pretend they are sugar biscuits if you like. A: Yes, you like to pretend don’t you Mr. charms KHARMS: It’s Kharms A: KHarms? Right. Now, as I understand it you are a writer. KHARMS: Yes A: And it has come to our attention that your, how to say, ‘writing’ is not in keeping with the ideals of our great Soviet country. B: I think that’s putting it lightly. A: Yes to put it heavily, Mr Kharms, your writing has been attempting to corrupt the very future of the Soviet Union, has it not? Kharms shrugs B: How would you summarise your political views, Mr Kharms? KHARMS: I don’t care. B: Sorry?

KHARMS: I don’t have any. A: I don’t think you understand KHARMS: It is possible to have no political views B: I’m afraid that it is NOT possible. Violence right cheek. A: Mr Kharms I’m going to ask you again - this is no laughing matter, this is not like one of your silly little stories - Summarise your political agenda. KHARMS: I do not have a political agenda. Violence left cheek. B: Wait. Wait a second, Grigor. What about the political idea behind your writing. Tell us about your poetry for children. KHARMS: I attempt to write a kind of trans-sense poetry. I try to go past the restraints of reality and causality to get to something more real than our present day life. I want my readers to separate themselves from contemporary concrete reality and to call on their imagination to live. B: Right. Well, your “trans-sense” language is antithetical to the materialist purposes of Soviet artistic literature, it being based completely on a mystical and idealistic philosophy. Your negative portrayal of contemporary reality harms the Soviet formation of the rising generation. So you are, in fact, partaking in anti-Soviet activities. A: At the base of that anti-Soviet activity lie political views hostile to the existing political structure. KHARMS: I would take ‘Existing,’ ‘political,’ and ‘structure’ all with a pinch of salt. C: You said you don’t have political views. KHARMS: I don’t. C: To deny the existing political structure is to hold a political view. KHARMS: My views are personal, not political. Violence under chin A: Your views are counter-revolutionary.

KHARMS I’m not counter-revolutionary. I make every effort to seclude myself from current political questions. C: You have to have a certain kind of privilege to do that, don’t you think? You have to see yourself as above everyone else. Better than the rest. You couldn’t care less what us working men do with our days and if it’s not in some kind of manifesto you’re not interested. KHARMS: I don’t read newspapers. C: What? KHARMS: On principle. I don’t read the papers. C: I didn’t ask if you read the papersKHARMS: Newspapers are a kind of manifesto. A political manifesto. And, as I have mentioned, I do not engage in politics. A: How do you see the future of this country? KHARMS: I don’t. A You don’t? Violence nose. KHARMS: To understand the future you have to understand the present, and I have wholly and willingly detached myself from the present. After consciously withdrawing from present-day reality, after isolating myself from the influence of this reality, I have found myself profoundly hostile to the contemporary world. I don’t see myself ever being able to approach it. C: That’s fantastic. KHARMS: Excuse me? C: You disgust me. B: Grigor, please. [To Kharms] Isolating yourself from reality won’t protect you. And I don’t believe it’s how you intend to protect yourself either. You want an armed revolution. KHARMS: I don’t. Violence right cheek B: How do you see the future of this country, then?

KHARMS: I don’t. Violence left cheek A: You don’t see a future for this country? That sounds as good as counterrevolutionary to me. KHARMS: I believe that it’s impossible to change the structure of society without armed struggleB: RevolutionKHARMS: But, I try not to think too deeply about this point. It profoundly contradicts my philosophical views. A: Which areKHARMS: Which reject the necessity for armed struggle and violence of any kind. Violence under chin, step forward B: You have consciously set yourself against the present social and political order. KHARMS: I can’t say it was consciousA: You want the destruction of the present order. KHARMS: What is the future but the destruction of the present. Violence under chin B You believe the Soviet political system must be destroyed. Your sole aim is the restoration of the old order of things. That is what you write about and it’s what your friends write about and it’s why you’re here. KHARMS: I don’t know why I’m here. C: Maybe you should read the papers. KHARMS smiles. Violence: Interrogator C hits the mannequin against the back of the head. Kharms slumps forward over the table. A: So you have admitted that you consciously set yourself against the present social and political order. Famously being not a very political person yourself, you must have been helped by people close to you. Others must have strengthened your desire for the destruction of the present order? 63

KHARMS: Yes. B: Nikolay Zabolotsky? KHARMS: Yes A: Igor Bakhterev? KHARMS: Yes B: Alexander Razumovsky? KHARMS: Yes A: Jurij Vladimirov? B: And Aleksandr Vvedensky. KHARMS: Yes. B: Well, Mr Kharms. That wasn’t so difficult was it. C: Please. Have a sugar biscuit. Have a sugar biscuit. Have a sugar biscuit. Interrogator A tips over jar of sugar cubes

Note: This scene is an excerpt from the play CHARMS! which was devised by Doris DeVries and Elishka Barnes with Daniel Hickey, Signey Lury, and Patrick O’Leary at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in December 2020.

austerity measures a Mess

by: Helena Scanlan

there is a Messiness, always. it is - slugs around the sink, lightbulbs not working, screwdrivers for doorknobs, pipes groaning and then, silence. the noisy boiler is broken and it is very cold. wake up with a numb nose every morning google is frostbite still a thing google how much new boiler costs google where to buy balaclava - no lightbulb in the bathroom and no hot water in the tap nose numb nose numb knows numb hot water bottle on face to warm nose through wishing faces were reheatable by microwave convenience is key when frostbite a possibility nose understandably blocked for the season and the wet rash of sniffling becomes your trademark it takes three years to afford a new boiler three winters full of Mess, and not much else (hard to achieve things without heat)

and spaceheaters eat electricity not sure exactly how, but they do, mam says so maybe they use the cable as a straw to slurp up the electric like a zappy milkshake wish i could do the same put a fiver on the electric card but it will need to be topped up again tomorrow but never more than a fiver at once but there is this awful loud beeping when the electricity runs out but never more than five - sister has a spaceheater in her room and promises she never turns it on swears down but must be lying who, in the infinite chill of our night, could resist plugging in instant warmth? she must have left it on anyway, the electricity is low (lower than usual low, low baseline) seethe with jealousy, perhaps anger, but definitely, definitely jealous coveting her illicit warmth when BEEP - shit BEEP - fuck BEEP - wifi gone and phone not charging and lights out and kettle not boiling and tv screen blank and sisters spaceheater definitely off for once anyway

- it is dark again and i am so cold as always, a bit of a Mess

CONTRIBUTORS

KEEGAN ANDRULIS Keegan Andrulis is a pasta fazul enthusiast. AVA CHAPMAN Ava Chapman was almost named Kindred and is from Los Angeles. They, regrettably, spend most of their time making Spotify playlists. CHARMS! CREATIVE CAST CHARMS! debuted online from the Samuel Beckett Theatre in December 2020. It was devised by Doris DeVries, Elishka Lane Barnes, Signe Lury, Daniel Hickey, Patrick O’Leary. Much credit is owed to Daniil Kharms. MARIA CULLEN Maria is a third year social work student whose work focuses on female friendship and her experience with chronic illness. This is Maria’s third time being published as a poet which she does to impress her Grandma. Someday she hopes to be able to hug all of her friends again and to write a poem that won’t worry her mother. She thinks that if her words make you smile then that’s a job well done and if they make you sneeze then that’s showbiz baby! CATHERINE DING Catherine is from Hong Kong. She is currently in her first year studying English Lit and Film Studies. She likes painting studies of people she sees around her or in public, mainly because she likes the idea of really getting to know someone’s face who she will never see again. JACK FANCIULLI “Just as youth is wasted on the young So too, are big boobies wasted on the nuns” JESSICA FOLEY Jessica is a PhD student working on the brains of tropical butterflies. She wants her eventual Wikipedia page to be as ambiguous and unsubstantiated as possible, so you’re getting nothing else.

CONTRIBUTORS

FERDIA FOLEY Ferdia Foley sings Nilsson sings Newman in the shower. He is a fourth year English student. GABRIELLE FULLAM Gabrielle Fullam is a Punjabi-Irish Lucan-based writer, predominately writing scripts for theatre and personal essays. She is a Philosophy and Sociology student and is author of Hands and Knees, a (sort of) monthly newsletter. Her recent virtual plays ‘Gull’ and ‘Do As I Tweet, Not As I Do” are available on the DU Players Youtube account. MÁIRE HUSSEY Máire Hussey is a Junior Sophister English and History student. She’s from Dublin and likes to read. MAYA KULUKUNDIS Maya Kulukundis is a third year English Literature student, raised between Delhi and London before coming to Dublin. Pandemic- stuck in the UK, she has come to miss Dublin terribly and is writing increasingly about feeling displaced. OLIVIA MANGUM LEHMANN Olivia Mangum Lehmann is a junior freshman geoscience and geography student and a mullet enthusiast. CHARLOTTE MOORE Charlotte Moore, popstar turned poet. ALEX MOUNTFIELD Alex grew up in Washington, DC. He studies political science & sociology at TCD, and works as an administrator at a regional nonprofit arts organization. In his free time, he enjoys baking bread and nurturing those manky pots of herbs that you buy in supermarkets. SHANE MURPHY Shane Murphy lives in Dublin, Ireland. He remains unpublished.

CONTRIBUTORS

VANESSA NUNAN Vanessa is a second year European studies student who likes to paint when she is not playing with her friends. Most fond of themes of intimacy across all art forms! FIONN O’SULLIVAN Fionn is a third year neuroscience student. His campaign promises include turning the Provost’s house and GMB into a new department and student centre, respectively, and converting the rugby pitch into an adult-sized playground. VOTE VOTE VOTE ! ! ! PHELIM Ó LAOGHAIRE On a day like today: down by the seaside: looking among the people: which were you: so many terrains: it’s difficult to keep track: the weather is so changeable in these parts: these days. ROBERT QUINN Rob is from Naas. He loves football and Izzy. HELENA SCANLAN Helena’s favourite colour is green, what’s yours? SIENA SWIRE Siena is a second year English Studies student. She is often accused of ‘flowery’ writing in her essays yet secretly revels in it. Featured: MARK WARD Mark Ward is a poet from Dublin. He is the author of the chapbooks Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), and the forthcoming full collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). His poetry has appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Skylight47 and many more, at home and abroad. In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series. He is the founding editor of the LGBTQ+ poetry journal, Impossible Archetype, now in its fifth year. astintinyourspotlight.wordpress.com

CONTRIBUTORS/MASTHEAD

Featured: DIMITRA XIDOUS Dimitra Xidous is a poet and writer now living and working permanently in Ireland since 2011. In 2019, she was awarded a Markievicz Bursary for (S)worn State(s), a poetry collaboration with Kimberly Campanello and Annemarie Ní Churreáin. She is the author of Keeping Bees (2014, Doire Press) and Μηδέv | Oὐδέν (2020, Doire Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, gorse, The Stinging Fly, Room Magazine, The Real Story UK, and The Dalhousie Review. (M)other, M(other), her collaboration with Irish-based artist and printmaker Ria Czerniak-LeBov is forthcoming from gorse editions.

Editor: SOPHIE FURLONG TIGHE Sophie is a drama student who can’t act. You can find their work in Sonder, Wax Nine, ROPES, and the moleskine they left on the 123. This is their favourite thing they’ve ever done. Public Relations Officer: AOIFE CRONIN Aoife Cronin is a final year sociology student. She likes bright colours, maoam stripes and drawing pictures of birds.

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.

again, thanks.