Icarus Vol. 73, No. 2 (2023)

ICARUS 73:2

VOLUME LXIII, ISSUE II

by Cathal

by Ava

“We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no!

We've got to go through it!”

First we thought about who was writing, and then who we (us) were writing for, and in those thinkings, we eventually thunk that one just couldn’t be so sure. Boiling this down, we found that the Whos and Whats of people and things were less important than the Wheres of where they were.

The directions of the Wheres which we found within this assembly of pieces seem to fundamentally point to, from, and inwards.

Among the infinite points along numerous vectors, we found ourselves often returning to the varying degrees of authority we have over the representings of our subjects.

How strong we feel about the Whos and Whats are often shown/obfuscated by the way we position them: alongside/against — ourselves/others.

Much of this art is preoccupied with the distance between people (longing to be closer, longing to be further...), the distance from or closeness to nature, and our own gaps in knowledge. We all have a subject matter and a positionality to that subject matter when we attempt to create art.

We can use writing to address our subject matter face-to-face, to write ourselves away from or out of something, or to meditatively/reflexively understand ourselves. In doing so we also, implicitly, orient ourselves towards the reader.

A poem or a painting or a photograph contains many directions – the direction of the vision of the artist, the direction of the vision of the subject (if the artistic subject can look back), and the direction of the vision of the viewer. We are happy to be caught in these crosshairs, attempting to understand the many Wheres – turning toward, turning away, turning inward.

-Cathal & Ava

ONE TWO

The Shape of Oil by Julie Smirnova

Sunshine 106.8 Doesn't Reach Russia by Julie Smirnova

Vanessa by Charlotte Moore

B L A C K B I R D by Eloise Rodger The 18th of November, A Poem for Francis by Elise Carney Frazier

(Self-Portrait) by Violette Smith

The Waiting (Self-Portrait) by Violette Smith

Passing by Nicole Hur

Moderate Fog by Lily O'Byrne

Koshka by Lara Prideaux

Cover: Just Missed by Lara Prideaux

Books Back by Kim O’Leary

Mother of Dog by Grace Anne Culhane

Black Algiz by Yeva Huseva

Same

Twice by Alex Mountfeld

by Inés

Turning Toward

The Shape of Oil

Julie Smirnova

Someday I’ll pull colours across a page and write life into linen and the Hill Street moon will always die in a puddle; you will always kiss me at the door; I will always run up the stairs wishing that you were behind me. For now, our quiet bodies belong in November. Yet they draw closer: waiting for a dent of light to lift purple from beige, or at the very least, bury him in her memory.

Sunshine 106.8 Doesn’t Reach Russia

Julie Smirnova

The sun plucked me from your skin and turned me yellow; I burnt yellow like a million little suns. You grew tall, curved under the weight of grief. Birds don’t fy to Moscow since oil drowned it. When light shines on the river she screams red orange green blue. I’d like to climb back up the sky, a foothold in every raindrop every cloud, and sit forever in your arms when you had two — one for both of us — I’ll keep a diary of everything you said. The heat burnt rubber. Hopscotch traced soil: one two three to ten. A knife kissed your toe and I spread mayonnaise on rye bread; the rings of wheels I leapt between I held your hand I swam in ponds / mosquitoes ate sweat off my nose / she fed me sugar cubes / I robbed them. Crouched in raspberry bushes. Cut my fngertips and bled them pink. Mum swirled sour cream in bowls a fork crushed seeds. The train always carried us back. I never stayed long; less as I got older. Friel said we only exist in the need we have for each another. I can see her (she sees me). There lies my one unremarkable dream: to be a key and a lock, in one unremarkable heap.

Vanessa

Charlotte Moore

Vanessa has an endless heart.

Her heart is not her own. It has been borrowed, bestowed: Her heart is a blessing.

Vanessa’s hand was there to stop me shaking, Like the strong right hand but soft, present.

I am withered, dying very fast while Her heart envelops and does so by growing;

I dry my small eyes and let my neck work.

My heart has been very splintered And too full so sinking.

Novembers ago I was needing baptised againAbandoned bagels, shoegazing-

This time, new eyes and more ravaged I feel faces loving me quietly;

I look into her voice and it smiles.

I come clutching just tissues that can’t Bear more moisture; offering only that.

Saying sorry but I want to go home so badly.

The lackingness leaks and it is weak: I want to throw a stone but my fngers strangle feathers. I am pooling and swelling.

Asleep on your lap I am having a nightmare.

Vanessa’s moon is always round; The Copernican Revolution is true in her.

I am saying look there is an orbit Around a void

She holds me and her laugh is very gentle: Her playful exasperation is called Wisdom.

I can cry but she will be there when I am not weeping Just as in Today, giving me more tissues, giving me apples.

Vanessa’s heart is endlessly light and refecting It is a generous gift. It is a gift itself giving.

Bountiful and unquestioning Safe.

B L A C K B I R D

Eloise Rodger

You wrap the baby blackbird in a tea-cloth. Put the shoebox not-too-close to the fre.

You are eleven years old and this creature is now yours to keep safe. This is a nestling, maybe. Tiny, featherless thing. Someone is going to tell you, years later, that you should've let it be. Its mother would’ve been watching.

But you couldn’t see a nest – and you didn’t know any better.

In the morning, you come downstairs, slipperless, hair damp with cold.

And the stillness of the bird, the aching quietness, will make you stomach-sick. You’re really really sorry.

You will confess this to no-one.

Without even meaning to, you have done a very terrible thing. Bury her in the garden. You worry you didn’t dig deep enough. That the neighbour has dogs.

Then again, there are so many dead things just beneath your feet. That night, spiders will follow you in fours and it will probably be a punishment. And, you won't have anywhere to put the queasy paradoxes of existence. You don’t even know what that means. Little wings and childish hope and having just very bad luck. That is the easiest thing about growing up. Here, things are swipeable, sortable, no-strings-attached. Here, there are various compartments and don’t-do’s and medical names for that. The barefoot tenderness of dimly lit life. Fumbling for what feels right and true in the dark. Love that swallows you whole, swells up around your ankles. Guilt that crawls into your gums, fzzes in your teeth.

You don’t have to do that anymore. Get dirt beneath your fngernails.

The 18th of November, a poem for Francis

Elise Carney Frazier

This story is simple.

We met and we were friends.

We wandered around the city at dusk.

We sat on benches Until the night met our feet.

Six months later, I went outside In a strange place South-East of our home.

I begged to fnd you in the afterlight.

How can I tell you what I cannot understand? That this is love, And all I’ll ever know of love, And all I’ll ever need and want and more.

'Sanctity (Self-Portrait)' & 'The Waiting (Self-Portrait)' by Violette Smith

This House Is A Metaphor For Us

Featured Poet - Liz Quirke

Behind the bay window’s triple vantage of evening dark, we relax together in lamplight, Tiffany blues and reds, stained-glass cascades rain like starburst as metal-mottled dragonfies careen down shafts of light. I’ve flled the walls for you, frames holding paint and ink, landscapes deep with romance, skies of colour fushed cumulous, kiss-swelled and demanding as our nights are. If a day comes that my own language should fail to present itself, I have arranged other poets’ words at eye height so you will learn of all I mean to say to your heart.

Memento Mori

Featured Poet - Liz Quirke

It’s a new year in Rathass and the gravediggers are at it again. At a crematorium up the country, there’s a backlog. My day-dark mind conjures bodies stacked idly in cold rooms, toe-tagged to await animation from one form to another. I see it all – the curtain’s swish, the swelling blaze. Our tribe has suffered many deaths, we are made small by each church-bell toll, every candle famed to life in perpetual memoriam. At the mandatory rites and rituals, rarely are the lost remembered in ways other than abstract, to mention cause of death invites a corpse to sit up and speak, their words too much, so speak low, speak quick or not at all, the man-dug hole is surely deep enough to hold us all, by now.

Passing

Nicole Hur

Last night, I watched you pick a persimmon, your hands hovering beneath the hot bulb. You look softer as a ghost, a paper lantern fickering. I wonder

where you are now. Perhaps still feeding stray cats— or even reborn

as one. In a past life, I was a dog person & a niece. But now I scan the neighborhood cats

for a resemblance. Is it wrong to wish

you will remain this way forever? Unfading and fickering. I fear what God does

to non-believers. Remember when you set the kitchen on fre? Your face, pale as a moon, fickering beneath the hot glow. I prefer it this way—before the fre, before God can move the fame.

For my Aunt

Moderate Fog

Lily O'Byrne

Single man cold morning

Springing dog

Check the weather app and make decisions

Warning: moderate fog Well then, Just sit and look

Be overcome by the sight of

Single man cold morning

Springing dog

the love that exists between thoughtless kicking of pebble onto shore

And bounding stampede in answer four strong paws chasing the shallow foam

Fur will be towelled off by careful warm hands upon return home

Close eyes and wish hard

To be:

That dog seal bird

A knitted scarf piece of fresh bread graffti on old wall, chipped, Painted over.

Opposite Page— 'Koshka' by Lara Prideaux

Books Back

Kim O'Leary

Why thank you for this reddish-brown hairy stocking

Such a benign token of our friendship. You must trust that I will wear it, you know how cold my little toes can get!

When thoughts of you come mustering in the mould

I swagger alongside the oath of denial. Turn on the lamp and read beside me And churn and churn until I think of something else.

Poor things are better than you

Ah yes I recall now your stupidness and buffoonery. Cyclamens are cheap and grow in staggering, neighbouring, fourishing gardens

I’m saying that you are unoriginal.

Mother of Dog

Grace Anne Culhane

Dog vomited on the couch last night, Making the move to eat it back up but caught by me instead. Big brown eyes and shaking. (Caught in the act, caught in full vomitus fight.) That couch is never going to last the lifespan of Dog. There is nothing as pathetic as a it tries to eat back sick. Sniffng mush as if manna, some self-made miracle choke it down as if foreign to its own clammy, panting mouth, gaping, it, savours it, swallows it.

Making a holy show. (Bad dog) (David versus Goliath) Myself versus Dog in the epic battle of trying not to eat sick, (which side are you on?)

I don’t know why skin is crawling at the thought. Rather cyclical (From dog vomit and to dog shit You shall return.)

It wasn’t sorry until I saw him.

I wasn’t sorry until I saw him. Head bowed as if in prayer (faced with me, I am his Almighty) And now I am playing God, (Dog)

Cleaning up sick he is giving me the “mom I threw up eyes” (Bless my father for I have sinned).

I am my dog’s keeper, what would he do without me? What would he do?

What the rest of us do and get sick, quietly (along the darkened rows, kneeling, heads down), on the way home.

He would get kicked out of clubs and grip the edge of the bus seat

(Text BIBLE to 50404)

Tail be -tween his legs, praying Dog playing God, what has he done this time?

He would keep himself on a tighter leash

He would sit on couches and hold it in (“O sinner be not discouraged”)

Hold back and bear down. (“Mary, Mother of Jesus please be a mother to me now”)

Birthing a new kind of animal, a newly caged beast

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks

He can’t teach me how to get sick.

Same River Twice

Alex Mountfield

good bye — for everything: red-dyed agricultural fuel

adulterative, all-loving nailed to the sky

perching on the power wires hanging out to dry all the men of my life holding hands

singing the chorus

— don’t bore us

— get to the chorus

some denature in the alcohol

some methyl in the spirit

stroking, a dry clot, like thin bridges between beloved others

a quiet class war leave every bridge unburned beloved others for everything for everything oh darling i

dnt know why it’s called an irish exit literally just ur leaving lady

not gna see u at the function may be not gna o kay see u later baby

oh darling i

goodbye darling good bye

Opposite Page—

'Black Algiz' by Yeva Huseva

Inés Murray Gómez

“I never smoke unless I’m drunk, you know? It’s gross to me, but I’ll have one if I’m drunk enough”, one of the girls across the room was saying. She was playing with her straw. I watched her swirl it in her untouched drink, dreading and hoping for her to knock one of the ice cubes out of it. “I keep telling him he should quit, it’s so gross,” she was swirling it faster with every lap. I was sat leaning forward on my chair, my hands gripping the seat by my thighs. I kept on watching her, my thumbs had started rubbing the seat as if on their own and my knuckles got white from holding on to it. The straw went round and round and faster and faster. The liquid had started to swirl in the glass, forming a small whirlpool with the ice cubes spinning in the middle. “And it’s so annoying when he has to go smoke outside!”, her wrist jerked suddenly. My hands gripped the seat harder, I ft the edge of it in the fold where my palm meets my fngers and pushed on the hard plastic as hard as I could without hurting myself. “I really wish he would just-”, one of the ice cubes clinked against the glass and some of the drink splashed out onto the hand that held it. When she felt it, the girl’s eyes widened and her mouth opened, but no noise ever came. I stretched my fngers forward, keeping the palms on the seat, and then gripped it again. I looked down at my plate for a moment, and the chicken bones were still as clean as I had left them. When I looked back up, the girl was looking for something on the table in front of her. Her neighbour on the right side, whom she had been talking to, didn’t seem to have noticed she’d ever stopped. He was a young man, strawberry blond and oddly thin, staring vacantly in her direction. Though he was not unattractive, he had that odd facial angularity that men here often have. As if his bones had grown much quicker than his fesh, and I wondered if it would soften with age or if any weight he put on would only ever go to his belly.

Lauren was asking me about the food, if I liked it. I said something and I’m not sure if she heard, but then she broke into a tangent about an essay that was due soon for one of her modules. She split her time between looking at me and at her boyfriend sat by her side, whose name is either Ronan or Ryan. Her voice was oddly high pitched like she was tense, and I couldn’t quite make myself pay attention to her words. I looked at her and smiled and nodded when I thought it made sense to, but she seemed more interested in talking to Ronan/Ryan and I got the feeling that she was only including

me in the conversation because I looked awkward or something. I looked down at my plate and saw by the chicken bones the leftovers of the shrimp pasta that one of Lauren’s roommates had prepared and that I’d only tried to be polite. I never liked seafood. I kept on looking at the odd twisted bodies of the shrimp and it freaked me out that they looked almost foetal. Suddenly I could feel my breathing getting diffcult, I knew it was nothing but I couldn’t help myself. I was checking my face out in the refection of the knife laying on the plate but I wasn't red or swelling or anything. I looked up then and the blond guy’s face was turning away from my direction to look at his plate. I was embarrassed that he’d probably seen me stick my tongue out to check if it was swelling so I looked back down to check if I was blushing. Then I let go of the chair and looked at Lauren who was talking to Ronan/Ryan and told her that I needed to go outside for a smoke, she glanced at me still half smiling from what she was saying and told me to just text her when I needed to be let back in.

I walked down the fve fights of stairs and out of the front gates and was suddenly met with the strawberry blond guy already smoking on the wall that enclosed the front garden area. I stopped as I saw him and considered going back in. I was holding the box of cigarettes in my hand and pressing on the edge and then he turned around and saw me. He got up and waved me over to him. I went over to him and sat on the stoop like he signalled. “What are you smoking?”, he asked. “Benson, my friend gave them to me”, I felt the need to explain. “What are they like?”, he asked. I held up the burning cigarette in my hand to him and he waved it away. “No, sorry. I can’t share if you ate the salad, I’m allergic to peanuts”. I put the cigarette back in my mouth and looked away from him, I was still pressing the cigarette box into my right hand. “My brother was allergic to peanuts”, I said. “When I was ffteen he-” A loud shout came from the door of the pub across the street. A big guy in an apron was pushing two young men away from the pub door. “Come on lads! That’s enough!” They were stuck together, the one closest almost concealed the other with his large body. They were twisting around in odd jerky circles, an awkward pair of dancers. I Hadn’t noticed the blond guy get up until he called to me. “Let's get out of here.” I gripped the cigarette box tighter, and stood up. I felt burning, my left hand jerked forward. I watched the flter fall still burning red as the young men toppled over into the pavement, still stuck together in their strange embrace.

The Fish and the Knot

Fionn Duffy

The endless splashing of chlorinated water shimmered in David’s ears: the constant hum of this sweltering arena whose Olympic-sized pool he now sat in front of, staring at the white starting block he would soon be leaping from into that exhilarating underworld. On the base of the block, he read a black number 4. His eyes panned from left to right, surveying the currently occupied lanes. It would be good to start Summer Nationals with a win in the heats. He slouched back in his foldable chair. Behind him, he overheard one of the two volunteer timekeepers sitting behind him talking about how this was their young one’s frst time at Nationals: “They now have her doing fve sessions a week, not including the gym!” David raised a brow. This was his fourth year being part of his club’s ‘Performance’ group. Five mornings a week at 4.30am, his mother pulled him out of his unfnished dreams to speed along the empty lamplit roads into the pool in town. At 8am, he’d plop onto a quiet bench at school to begin his homework. At school the lads all called him “The Fish”. They had actually studied a poem that year called ‘The Fish’.

Like ancient wallpaper”

Well David’s skin was red, especially around the eyes because of his goggles. And his hair was frizzy and smelled like a package holiday. But at least he was in good shape. “Beast” was his other nickname at school. Once, at a school football match, the rich and popular Kevin O’Connor spent the game groping David’s equine right thigh and remarking incredulously to the rest of the bench.

David brought a hand to that thigh now, caressing the ultra-thin layer of supposedly carbon-fbre infused fabric that made up his racing togs (and took him 20 minutes to pull on in the men’s bathroom, drenched in sweat and talcum powder). He remembered walking home from school once as a kid, along the bend, tearfully grasping and pulling at his big fabby quads cursing his parents.

David now felt down to the smooth naked skin just above his knees. He had only cut himself once shaving last night. He spent all evening shaving because his coach always said men waxing was gay. David liked having shaved legs. It made him feel like a statue. Whenever it was time to shave his legs, he shaved all his body hair. Hair below the neck was the earthly punishment of puberty. He wanted to feel smooth. He wanted to be felt smooth. Now he felt only the hot cotton of his grey team

“Here and there

His brown skin hung in strips

Opposite Page: 'Figures in a Bar' by Alice Gogarty

hoodie. But David liked wearing his hoodie before racing. With his hood up, he was a dormant volcano, an Olympian. His eyes bore in the starting block now; he was a lion. His hood was kind of tight though. He grasped for the drawstrings and felt a knot. Of course.

Three months ago, they were sitting face to face in an empty group changing room at Regionals. Caitriona Bakalova’s dusky fngers glided down the drawstrings of his hoodie.

They’d met for the frst time during the icebreaker session at the start of the inter-provincial training camp in January. She had been howling with scandalous laughter at the centre of a group of girls when he entered the hotel conference room. They were put on the same team to build the tallest structure possible out of marshmallows and spaghetti. They argued constantly resulting in her accidentally stabbing him with spaghetti. At this moment, she decided to call him “Leo”, a nickname her teammates soon began using too. They lost, but out of the chaos came a spindly spaghetti fgure that Caitriona named Gina.

Caitriona crossed the drawstrings. David watched her left eye; the shadowy amber surface of Mars, as seen from above, expanded for miles and miles out from a perfect black hole. She was completely focused on the task at hand. Murmuring fuorescent light bounced off her clear nail polish. She looped the strings.

At Regional Championships Caitriona waltzed up to David’s team area and interrupted his high-stakes Uno game to give him a big wet hug. She brought Gina. As she left, the whole paddock turned to David, wide-eyed, to ask who she was. His coach later patted him on the back; “Not bad,” he said. David shrugged his shoulders, his eyes trained on the matte blue tiles running along the edge of the water. In the afternoon, before his 200-metre butterfy fnal, he found an empty changing room where he could be alone and enter the zone. Kanye West was blasting in his ears as Caitriona quietly entered the room, saying she had a fnal too.

There was a thin tan-line on Caitriona’s right shoulder: a line of desert sand. A little diamond ring hugged the cartilage of her right ear. She pulled the drawstrings tight. “There you go now David!” She now looked him in the eyes. He looked down and chuckled. “Thanks,” he said. David had thought of her frequently since camp. Suddenly there was a knock on the door and a chorus of giggling.

As David left the changing rooms, his paparazzo teammates pressed him for details:

“What happened???” “What happened???”

“Nothing.” David replied.

After Regionals David began texting her. She became one of his few Snapchat streaks. He hated texting. When he texted people, everything felt so concrete. In conversation things were fuid; there was tone, body language, smiles; the person he was talking to couldn’t just walk away. But on text he couldn’t fool anyone.

He was David Nolan.

He started watching Love Island on her recommendation, but he couldn’t watch it every day for eight weeks. He didn’t think she’d be interested in movies or books, so he didn’t talk about them.

She replied less and less to his messages until there was total silence.

The swimmer in the heat before David was now barrelling past the fags. He held the knot between his index fnger and thumb. On his way to his race this morning, he had seen Caitriona laughing away with her teammates as usual, but he did not say hello. Maybe they could never have had a good conversation, but he wished he had told her how beautiful she was.

David stood up and carefully pulled off his hoodie, leaving the knot intact.

THE DAVINCI CODE

FEATURED POET - Hera Lindsay Bird

It was a hot summer morning, 500 years ago in Italy and Leonardo Da Vinci was busy at work, inventing the modern helicopter. He stood in his workshop with the sun beating down on his various ancient looking parchments and took a sip from a historically accurate beverage out of a historically accurate cup. Suddenly, a long dead bird came fying into his workshop half a century ago! Leonardo Da Vinci laughed anciently, like a great man from the past might. He went out onto his balcony and looked out over all the brick coloured houses made by dead Italian people, stacked to the tits with frescoes and ivies and little brown dogs running everywhere and people carrying loaves of bread around in their arms, like soft gluten purses, like vigilante mayors of breadtown. I love ancient Italy! It’s my home, he thought, while simultaneously inventing a complicated water device with lots of intricate levers and screws that is too hard to explain to normal level intelligence people but rest assured it was good.

He leapt hugely off his balcony and went for a tall walk down the street, becoming constantly inspired by observing the world and all the momentous inventions he was going to do for it. If electricity had been invented he might have waited for a traffc light, but he didn’t have time to invent electricity today, or traffc either, or even to play the lyre beautifully with his long homosexual fngers. He was late for the frst day of the Italian renaissance!!!

When he got to the frst day of the Italian renaissance, Michelangelo and Botticelli and Italian Shakespeare were there plus a lot of other famous dead guys listed on the Wikipedia page they had all taken the day off from their jobs which was painting giant winged babies for art and doing heaps of other famous as shit enlightened men things like making up classical philosophies and growing massive beards out of chin modesty.

I have invented the helicopter!!!!!! Leonardo Da Vinci shouted, striding into the offcial renaissance headquarters, knocking several large tables over and absentmindedly punching a grandfather clock in its big ticking face before stopping all of time for a few minutes, and then inventing time again but even more accurate than the frst time around. Damn I love being an inventor, he said, and kissed several handsome young nearby men who all loved it, mouthwise.

What is a helicopter? Michelangelo asked, like a little bitch. Michelangelo was jealous because the only thing he ever invented was painting on ceilings which is a dumb place to put art because you have to lie down to look at it and get the back of your head all dirty

But Leonardo laughed, because that was the kind of guy he WAS, the kind of guy who knew what helicopters were before they even existed, before even the kinds of metals that could make them fy were dug out of the earth, but he wasn’t laughing in a mean way, but in a joyful and ahead of his time kind of way.

A helicopter is a machine for fying, he explained and showed them his drawings which were museum quality, and rare looking, and Botticelli was like ‘well what does a helicopter do’ and Leonardo recounted the entire plot of Mission Impossible which he also invented on the spot and did all the noises for especially the part where Tom Cruise is climbing along the top of a moving train with his skin getting wrinkled because the train is going so fast and then he sees a train tunnel coming up so he ties the helicopter to the train and the helicopter has to fy through the tunnel and tom cruise climbs backwards along the train and jumps onto the helicopter and blows it up still inside the tunnel coming towards him and nearly gets decapitated by the helicopter blade but doesn’t and divorces Katie Holmes and the train driver looks up horrifed through the window at him as if to say did you really just tie a helicopter to my train inside a train tunnel and then blow it up that is really dangerous katie holmes is too good for you and then Tom Cruise takes off his sunglasses and says Mission impossible, more like mission........accomplished, and everyone from the Italian renaissance just bursts into tears because they’ve never heard of Tom Cruise before, nobody had, Da Vinci invented him too, as a private joke.

You are really good at this renaissance thing, Italian Shakespeare said to him, stunned and overwhelmed, but Da Vinci was so humble he was just like ‘thanks, your friendship means a lot to me,’ and then suggested they all move on to lay the foundations for capitalism and banking.

At the end of the frst day of the Italian renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci walked home through the picturesque streets of his historical birthplace and at the fading sunlight which looked like an enormous fre burning somewhere very far away which of course he knew astronomically it was and all the black cats yawing hugely with their long dead mouths and the fowers on the windowsills completely fucking abundant with bees and thought with a happy tear in his eye I wish I was still alive, because of course he knew himself to be already dead in the future, he was that brilliant. His genius was both a blessing and a curse. He couldn’t see fowers without inventing a vase to put them in, he couldn’t stare directly into the sun without inventing a pair of tinted aviators, he couldn’t see a beautiful man without inventing a kiss directly onto his mouth.

Leonardo spent the rest of his life inventing cool things and drawing famous paintings and even a picture of a guy with four arms and four legs rolling around inside a huge circle for medical students to put on their pencil cases in the future. He looked up at the sky and knew scientifcally why it was blue, but that didn’t stop him from thinking it was beautiful and in later years when he died and went to heaven God was like ‘don’t tell the others but you’re my favourite of all my children’ which made Jesus super mad, but if Jesus didn’t invent anything except for eternal life and who wants that, da vinci didn’t, he wanted to be a big pile of sad homosexual forever bones so he said thanks but no thanks, stole a mousepad from heaven’s giftshop and came back to us here on earth, where we still visit his bones to this day and say these were the bones of a great man, he wore them inside his body like a meat clotheshanger, he wore them like a wild horse wears the skeleton of the wind, he wore them towards the possibility of the future which he was inventing as he rode the horse of his own mind onward, whispering the name of beautiful things to come and in doing so, calling them forward into existence, he wore them like patience and was kind to all who knew him, goodbye Leonardo DV you extraordinary son of a bitch goodbye goodbye we love and miss you every day

'The Place Promised In Our Early Days' by Harry Pierce

Turning Inward

Garlic Poem #2

Megan O'Driscoll

All of my poetry is about garlic, all of my garlic is about you.

Crushing it under the side of my big knife, I live my fantasy cooking for you.

Chopping my garlic, I am a real person, a person with someone, someone to feed.

I’m not good with knives and I’m good with feeling, but if you watched you would see I’m getting worse.

Sitting down to dinner without you I get the strangest feeling nothing is wrong.

'Maynooth, Autumn 2022' by Jim Xi Johnson

In Walsh's Pub

Grant Burkhardt

Half of Walsh’s Pub is here for the band, the other half are drowning out the music, Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that works just enough.

Four men, tucked in the back corner table, young but their beards age them years they give no cues, the playing simply starts, alertness is essential.

The sound is small, they play for themselves. Fiddler, strummer, singer, fouter, fute traded out on occasion for a saxophone–it functions but doesn’t work.

What we manage to hear is lovely stuff, the reverent gallery bows heads, closes eyes, feels the history of the ballads, connecting to ancestors, gods of their land.

I try it, to see what I’d see, and nothing’s there except the music. It’s not my land, there’s nothing so trad to me in this, all I hear are the strings.

Eyes closed I feel the pints too, so when I come to I blink away the vertigo, I see you’re looking at me, eyes flled with some knowing, something I don’t get but might.

The song ends. The patrons wait a beat, make sure it’s done, then applaud. We slap our legs with free hands to make known we approve, but hold eyes, bare feelings.

You take a step toward the louder side of the bar, holding onto me an extra measure, I follow, body unable to stop what eyes had seen, that the music doesn’t sing to us, that maybe neither of us has gods.

No Forever

Claudia Friel

the day I heard My Way

Sinatra’s spirit wafted through the heavy air, over the hill in the backroads behind my secondary school

& we were drinking desperately; my demeanour screaming: too-old-to-be-loving-this

but I think Igot away with it –

the newsletter that Sunday said: local hero-girl did NOT supply the warm carbonated piss, that spilled all over the school’s front steps

& no ants were drowned in the making of that day.

though a little time was taken to pry some phantom excess through –

whatever it was we used to say in the way that bored kids do

& all this time, us drinking –him really, really drinking –those words into their graves; looking at each other; through each other; (a long way past the eyes) –

to somewhere the newsletter each Sunday says: here it is; this is forever.

Sméara Dubha

Shane Leavy What a year for blackberries! For once, they survive the rain and they bulge, plump, mirrored black and maggot-free. My fngers stain with purple, and my lips, teeth.

I was upset, and running high above the Glencar valley where the forestry road clears to a glade of pine stumps and dragonfies, and frog spawn in pools, squirming with weird, legged tadpoles.

A hot day in late summer, I was drenched, so I slipped my t-shirt off and wedged it in the belt of my shorts and ran sweat-slicked and cooling, swatting off horsefies.

I ran with the joy of late summer in my heart, dissolving my pain in the arcing swallows, the foxgloves, the plump hazels.

Then hunger hit.

How I gorged in the stillness on blackberries, bursting sun-warm in my mouth, all strange sweetness; enchanted.

And whether my bones end here or buried by foreign mountains, that day I was gluttonous, like an infant, ag piocadh sméara dubha.

Chopping back the hedge in late summer

Shane Leavy

It’s a day for frogs and daddy long-legs.

My toes and feet are wet, spotted with seeds from grasses, foxgloves, weeds.

Too hot, too wet, to wear a top, so my t-shirt hangs on the holly branch as I snap-snap-snap with the clippers.

Laurel leaves, and thicker laurel branches fall in clusters; cranefies, startled, drift, dragging their heavy feet, and a frog

hops, once, stunned in the drenching grass as I carve away the tangle of the hedge, cutting clear the cobwebs of my head.

La Grua

Fionn Duffy

“CINCO. CUATRO. TRES. DOS. UNO. RUAIRI.”

Pablo’s voice blares in my headphones as I watch the camera at the end of my two-metre-long crane begin seesawing downwards.

“CAMARA CINCO.”

A dusty box tv sitting on a stool to my left shows me I started a little too low. I fick my stare up to the fat screen monitor above. It displays, from a slight leftward angle, a blue trapezoidal table occupied by four shadowy guests split by a spotlit host, Mónica, at the short end of this unfnished pyramid.

“CAMARA DOS.” The monitor cuts to Camera Two with Mónica at centre of the frame now welcoming our audience: “Hola, hola, hola. Buenas tardes!”

Is she wearing a hoodie?

“¿RUAIRI?” Pablo barks. I look back to the box tv and jerk the frame right as I twist the dial beside the joystick on my little console to zoom in. I eventually fnd Manolo.

“¡ENFOQUE RUAIRI!”

I twist a smaller dial for the focus, squinting at the old convex screen. It’s impossible to know what’s in focus.

“CAMARA CINCO.”

I look back up at the monitor. Manolo’s shaved head is looking crisp as ever. It helps that all the lights are on now. I think he has a moustache, but it’s hard to tell with the mask.

#RIZANDOELRIZO suddenly appears on the top left corner of the screen. Better late than never lads. ‘Rizando el Rizo’: ‘Curling the curl’ directly translated; ‘Uncurling the curls’ more properly translated, but neither really roll off the tongue. I peek around the crane to look at the set itself. Mónica is wearing a hoodie. Interesting. I mean it’s a perfectly fne hoodie (I like volt green!) but for a debate? (Is it a debate? I didn’t read the brief, I just saw the word ‘debate’, and ‘debate’ in Spanish (deh-bah-tay) could mean news for all I know.)

“PUBLICIDAD RUAIRI.” Zoom out. Recentre. Get the camera low.

“RUAIRI.”

Above my head my left hand trembles on the joystick while the other attempts to cup the base of the crane. I pull down.

“CAMARA CINCO.”

The crane smoothly rises but the camera tilts down rapidly leaving the subjects awkwardly hanging at the very top of the frame by the time the frst commercial break begins.

“¡MIERDA RUAIRI! ¡PUTO DISASTRE!”

I stare at the wrist of my impatient left hand. Along a pulsing vein I watch a single bead of sweat pop out.

Along my beating wrist, I watched a single bead of sweat pop out, like a timelapse of the growth of a plant. I felt my temples steam as I counted the tiny little bumps on my grey technical graphics desk, slightly upward inclined for convenience. Through the open door I saw her skip into the woodworking room across the hallway. We had no classes together, so I always looked forward to waiting for TG after breaktime on Thursdays because she’d be there surrounded by us boys, laughing away. Sometimes she’d ask me to pull down her hockey stick off the top of the lockers and we’d talk. I once told her she was pretty and she smiled at me, her green eyes shining as if a bucket of soapy water had been thrown on a dusty old Mercedes for the frst time in years. I soon knew where all her classes after breaktime were. I’d make sure to glide past the doorway every time just in case she’d see me.

“You’re nice,” she told me, “But I’d rather be friends.”

These words clattered around my head until Mr O'Donnell strolled in and shut the door.

Seven years later we’re all sitting on benches around our professor Fernando, a short balding man wearing the only navy feece I’ve ever seen him in. As he reads from our evaluation sheet in his barely comprehensible accent, I imagine the bathroom cubicle I’ll be heading to immediately after he fnishes so I can cry and wonder why I ever came to this country, how I ever had the hubris. I think of how I brought the camera way too high before the second commercial break or how I accidentally knocked into the crane during the credits. I stare at the ground as he mentions my name for, I think, the frst time ever. I feel the eyes of my classmates, all sympathetic apart from Pablo. I imagine him coming over to me to tell me how we practiced for two weeks, and I still couldn’t get it right. I struggle to fnd the words in Spanish so that I can tell him, “I tried my best! Chastising me does not help! I wasn’t born fucking yesterday!”

“Ruairi,” my professor says in Spanish, “Out of all four groups in the year, that was the best cranework by far!" cranework by far!”

world

Featured Poet - Hera Lindsay Bird

It wasn’t the upside-down crosses in your mansion or even the lone, giant cigarette burning in the sky.

You walked me around and I watched the back of your head suddenly overcome by the feeling of knowing I was beyond what could be recovered from the dark pixels of the forest vibrating in a virtual wind distant panpipe music blowing through your speakers

It’s not that I didn’t love you before it is just – there are some things which cannot be said and some feelings which, if articulated too early and forced towards the surface go blind & it’s better to hold them off, or wait them out & never say their name aloud until the pressure of what is unspoken becomes impossible to hold back and articulates itself within the body like mice, running wild through a feld of burning grass.

The train disappears underground and comes back up again The cigarette distributes its vague cancers into the sky

Outside the sky is fring navy shadows like a T-shirt gun And spring is on the wind like wif

When I was miserable you came and showed me card tricks

When the moon was full we pissed into the bushes like animals

I watch you sleep, like a security guard looking at a famous painting with a searchlight

walk me to the graveyard on the edge of your map nothing must hurt you, not even me

I knew I loved you when you showed me your minecraft

Barely a trace

Featured Poet - Liz Quirke

Before you were born I made promises to fold myself leaf over leaf to become whisper barely leaving a trace of my touch

Before they were born I shared what I believed was the sum of a life lived for another I became whisper quiet barely a trace left of myself

Garden Sketch by Vanessa Nunan

CONTRIBUTORS

Julie Smirnova is a 23 year old PPES graduate who currently resides in Teach a Sé. Her debut poem “I Married My Highschool Sweetheart: Are Crushed Toes Cause for Divorce?” was published in Icarus 72.2 last year. She is delighted to report that the relationship survived, as did Laoise Lynch’s toes.

Charlotte Moore —Anna Rice wrote this bio.

Eloise Rodger would, more than anything, like people to stop asking her about it, because she actually, truly, really doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. Not the tiniest fraction of a bit. And she’s convinced you don’t either.

Elise Carney Frazier is a third year English Literature and History student who watches Fleabag bimonthly, consumes infnite cups of tea, and practices pre-emptive nostalgia – in and outside of her poems.

Violette Smith — Hi! My name is Violette Smith, and I’m a frst year at Trinity in the CLAHA program. I’m originally from the States (Massachusetts), but I also lived in Greece (Paros). Sometimes I forget that I’m a photographer but when I remember, I take some pretty cool photos, some of which I post on my Instagram, @violett7s (this is a shameless self plug by someone who is not a narcissist even if she takes a lot of self portraits).

Nicole Hur is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hanok Review, a literary magazine devoted to Korean poets and poetry. Her work has been published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Rogue Agent Journal, and The Poetry Society. She frequently writes about her hometown, where food and family play a dominant role in daily life. You can fnd her on twitter @nhurwords.

Lily O'Byrne is busy understanding what Frank O'Hara meant when he said "pleasant thought fresh air free love cross-pollenization."

Kim O’Leary thinks that it's okay that Isaac left the band. Leave them alone, they miss him too.

Grace Anne Culhane. 22. Really just a little guy who likes KC Peaches and submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Just found out that coconut milk hot chocolate is really yummy. Everyone say thank you Cathal for letting me know about that email or else I would not have written this bio.

Yeva Huseva, born in Luhansk, relocated to Odessa in 2014 and then a Galwegian convent in 2022 before attending Trinity, has always used art as the stabilising force in life. Loves ink and oil painting.

Alex M. is from the District of Columbia.

Inés Murray Gómez is an Irish/Spanish writer currently in her third year of English.

Alice Gogarty sometimes wonders if she can touch the sky with her hands. (It doesn't seem likely.)

Fionn Duffy is a fnal year Film & English student from Galway and writing about himself like this leads to identity crises and watching the dance sequences from Pablo Larrain’s Ema on repeat. @fonnduffyy on Instagram

Harry Pierce hopes one day he'll get over it and fnd that it never really mattered at all.

Megan O’Driscoll is going to try everything twice. You can collect the issues of Icarus in which she appears like shiny Pokémon cards, or read some of her recent work in The Martello, and Celestite Poetry. She is the editor of Sweet Tooth and a Carpo girl.

Jim Xi Johnson is an Irish-Malaysian photographer based just outside Dublin. His photography has been featured been featured in An Áitiúil Anthology, the Martello Journal and Orange Peel Magazine. Outside of photography he enjoys calm music, long walks and longer video essays. For more of his work check out his Instagram, @jx.jpegs.

Grant Burkhardt is a poet and short fction writer. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Claudia Friel would like to remind you that everything is conscious (genuinely).

Shane Leavy is a writer and researcher based in Leitrim, where he runs creative writing workshops, with work published by Trasna, Popshot: The Illustrated Magazine of New Writing, The Stripes Magazine, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, Infnite Worlds Magazine and Jacked Crime Anthology. Other interests include history, heavy metal, woodcrafts, and befriending neighbourhood cats encountered on runs.

Vanessa Nunan — My name is Vanessa and I am from Donegal. I am in 4th year European Studies. I love football, painting and making icecream. Life is good.

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS

Hera Lindsay Bird is a writer and bookseller from New Zealand. You can fnd her writing online at www.heralindsaybird.com.

Liz Quirke is a poet from Kerry. Salmon Poetry published The Road, Slowly in 2018 and How We Arrive In Winter in 2021. She was conferred with her PhD in 2022 from the University of Galway.

COVER ARTIST

Lara Prideaux – For me, painting is a way of processing my thoughts and consequently discovering new personal perspectives. I start painting unsure as to how it may turn out, this allows me to have some sort of a conversation with the materials. Each painting is a playful new territory, where the rules of colour, shape and material force me to fnd new routes of representations, helping me to see things in new light. I like how each painting transforms through this search for some kind of visual characterisation of the idea I have in mind. The fuidity of the image gives me a sense of freedom within the thought or feeling I'm having, which I may otherwise feel stuck within. It's a source of movement and expansion through observation, both physically and internally.

EDITORS

Ava Rose Chapman is trying to get better at writing. She is the Chairperson of DUPA, Trinity's photography society, and is completing her dissertation in History.

Cathal Eustace is trying to say less/working on it.

sincerely, thank you for reading