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 accidently 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!"

Featured Poet - Hera Lindsey 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

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

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.

Frances – 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."

Lara Prideaux (COVER ARTIST) — 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.

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.