The Attic

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cover image: “6.32”- Catherine Gaffney Laura Hope “Tuba animals” -Theresa Ryan Design layout: Aisling Deng Hugh McCafferty Martin McKenna Conor McKinney Dave Molloy Tom Morris

Sky Open Letter to some cherubs Caora/ Silly Grin Lovelock Hope Seeds The Prodigal Josie and Richard Pygmalion 100 Dollars Notes on contributors

1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 11

Land How The Ass’ Uppance Came 1 Dig 3 Waltz 4 Tsunami 6 To The Shadows 7 Brother 8 “Nine Lies of Mervyn Cumiskey” an extract 12 Notes on contributors 13

The Attic Published in 2009 by Trinity Literary Society.

Box 30, Regent House, Trinity College, Dublin 2.

Copyright of the Trinity Literary Society. But we are not evil, so the rights to individual pieces remain with their authors. If you would like to contact any of the authors featured in The Attic, then please get in touch with us via e-mail: literary@csc.tcd.ie All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system (anyone know what that is?) or otherwise transmitted in any form of by any means, electronic, mechanical, telepathic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers or authors. Again, if you want to do any of this, get in touch with us via the e-mail address.

This publication is part-funded by Trinity Publication and Trinity College Dublin School of English. It claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to the head editors. Guess how you get in contact with them? Yeh, the e-mail address again. Opinions expressed in this publication do not represent those of Trinity Publications, The Literary Society, Trinty College, Ireland, nor perhaps, the writers themselves.

Acknowledgements Sincere thanks to Michael Barry, William Brennan, Nathan Cardy, Sam Coll, Liza Cox, Clare Doherty, Catherine Gaffney, Avshalom Guissin, Laura Hope, Madeline Janoch, Elaine Maddock, Luke Maishman, Stephen Matterson, Hugh McCafferty, Ciaran McCollum, Martin McKenna, Conor McKinney, Kate McNamara, Dave Molloy, Gill Moore, Niall O’Brien, Gearóid O’Rourke, Theresa Ryan, Diane Sadler, Terry, Cormac Walsh and everyone at CSC, DU Publications, English Department, and Chaplin’s Pub for their support, hard work, and friendship. And finally, thank you to all our members, and everybody who submitted their writing.

A special thank you to Eimear and Judith for their commitment and diligence.

The editorial team: Head editors: Aisling Deng & Thomas Morris Head of prose: Eimear Blee Head of poetry: Judith Crozier Please enjoy this magazine and its contents responsibly.

The Attic

Foreword Forward! Fly! From daydreams to nightmares, the mind is a powerful thing, but the imagination even more so.

The most harrowing grit-entrenched horrors and lilting light dappled romances are the ‘tick and tock’ to the running of its heart and soul. This publication has been a culmination of the two; a real labour of love. From initially building castles in the sky, to not quite hitting the ground running, its birth was a topsy-turvy one. So we thought it was quite apt to have a similar layout- one with two intertwining sides, tumbling together. The two covers represent the earth, the grounds of reality from which the imagination’s tricks and treats fly sky high. And where the two meet a new realm emerges, a different experience unfurls each time. Digging with pens to finally draw a map to these few gems, we’ve buried our treasure here for you to discover. We hope you enjoy and present to you... ...The Attic!

Best wishes, Aisling Deng

The Attic

Open letter to some cherubs Little ones; your faces are aglow and those ruddy cheeks brighten the street- your clear, sparkling eyes are certainly a joy to see.

Your throwing-arms are wonderfully developed for such miniature frames. Please- stop breaking my windows; and if you scrawl graffiti on my door again, I will throttle you all slowly.

Caoimhe O’Gorman

Caora She lay there, her legs poking feyly towards the rapidly lightening sky.

“We’ll have to do something about her.”

“Have you anything in the boot we could use?” I asked.

“Only a screwdriver.”

“If you want to beat in a sheep’s head with a screwdriver at 6am at the side of the road then be my guest.”

“We’ll leave it.”

Silly It was shortly after my seventh failed attempt to lift the remote that I realised (a) I was not a Jedi, (b) that I’d lied on the census and (c) I would, after all, as my father had suggested, have to get a job.

Conor D’Arcy

1

The Attic

Grin When dusk fell, the musty floor-length curtains were pulled shut. Hot water filled the teapot, and the 5 o’clock News switched on. As the grown-ups settled, I wandered to the back garden. Gooseberry bushes stood in unruly rows under the eye of a cobwebbed rake. On the right, roses clambered into the next-door neighbour’s climbing-frame, barely restrained by the wooden tips of the fence. At the base of the garden shone the greenhouse. No more than 7 feet high, the outside glass was mottled and cracked. Inside though, the world lived anew. Vine after vine after vine of fleshy red tomatoes hung from poles stretching from the concrete floor to the rafters. I stood, surrounded by soil and greenfly and seeds. Indoors, by the fire, she held court, telling the same soundbite story to anyone who hadn’t heard yet. After this, laughter normally followed, herself included. Much later on, when only close family remained, I found her alone in the kitchen, staring into the fridge. ‘It’s too full by half now.’

Sitting in hardbacked chairs surrounded by pictures of sympathetic popes, she replayed scenes aloud: ‘I had made him shepherd’s pie for his lunch. But he came in, and asked would I make him a sandwich instead. So I did. Before he left for Belfast, you see. He ate it, then he got up, and before he left he said ‘you’re very good to me, you’re very kind.’ The last thing he said, ‘you’re very good to me, you’re very kind’.

My uncle Paul came back in from the undertakers. ‘I didn’t know what to do with his false teeth, so I’ve got them in my pocket.’ We gawped, repulsed but interested. Wrapped clumsily in toilet paper was a pipe-stained pink-gummed smile. Paul looked around, and grinned. From the sideboard he took the silver sugar pot. It was empty. Nobody uses sugar in a family of dentists. He slid the teeth in, replaced the top and called her. She lifted the lid and her husband’s dentures winked back.

Laughing, Paul put the pot back on the sideboard, the teeth smiling within. Outside, the greenhouse watched through the back door. A nosy stripe of light fell through the window, sliding behind the couch, focusing on the table where, next to the paused calendar, the teeth sat alone and metalhidden.

Ailbhe Malone

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The Attic

Lovelock

An eye in a casket of hearts is around us I love how that sense sleeps sequestered inside us!

Whose slithers of song with sweet harp sounds do play us - A march or a dance or a thought to belay us, So still to that bed of hot lips in December,

Which closes, and opens, around all I remember,

And captures a light, and a flame that is mine, And captures a light, and a flame that is mine.

Yet blossoms with mere corral buds and a whisper, For an eye that opens in darkness is helpless - How I hate the way that this light appears lightless!

And closes and closes that truth just between us, That rhapsody of dreams, that mirage inside us, As sharp as a bed of fine needles beneath us,

Which cuts with a fury only silence could leave us, Which closes and opens without key to release us, And follows eternity though an echo of time;

And eternity is lost in an echo of mine; In snaring fat flames which flare only to scorch us,

In hearing numb truths which speak only to dumb us,

And close, and close, those black passions between us, Whose arrows of wisdom are lost in our darkness, Whose night controls day, whose thoughts become mindless, Whose mind tears in two for vain love of the loveless, And closes the eye that had opened to blind us, And seals the casket that had opened to catch us.

3

Tom Helm

The Attic Hope Seeds I pressed my cheek to my mother’s back as she carried me into the bush outside Kumasi, the cloth pulled tight and knotted beneath her breasts, a machete in her hand, an empty bucket balanced atop her cropped hair. Her pulse sounded in my ears like the throb of a distant city.

She piled the green, ripe cocoa pods until she built a steeple on her head.

Later she spread the pulp on the cement where it sweated until the time was right to take the seeds and dry and rake them in the sun.

Then she took my hands, and we walked barefoot over the seeds to soften them. This is how I learned to walk.

“If you walk on cocoa seeds,” she said, “no path will be too rough.” She said, “My daughter is cocoa; cocoa, my daughter,” and I thought that anything left in the sun would become like the sun: the beans that turned golden, the white laundry that bleached as it dried on the rocks.

Like spiders we made our home facing the rising light, but growing up my skin got darker, and one day my neighbor— he stretched me out—the floor familiar— his sweat and alcohol crushing my breath, the stain a spreading shadow.

Night gathered, and the dew dripped from my mouth.

Beyond me women pounded cassava in their wooden bowls, and somewhere my mother wrenched the chocolate fruit from the tree, the oblong pods a force driving her into the ground.

Sunlight took its turn on every wall.

Erin Rhoda

4

The Attic The Prodigal The stinking odour in the pig-house was acridly tangible. It moved solidly through the air like a pulse of foul gaseous dung. He was used to it though, and as the sunlight roused him, peeping through the overhanging clouds of hay, it only lulled him softly from his sleep. The floor of the sty was rough and fibrous with dry dung so that even the slats used to drain the shed were sealed with the pig faeces. Somewhere in the half-light, he could feel the heaving stomach of the sow as she exhaled a balmy breath flavoured with nuts onto his face. The air washed over him like a gripping, stinking sweat, but he was still glad of her company and the powerful heat she exuded.

He moved his hand and set an empty whiskey bottle astir, clinking as it rolled over the contours of the shit-plastered floor. With effort, he pushed himself into a sitting position, savouring the gravity that seemed to be twice as strong always after drinking bouts. His brain ached, his lips were dry and sore. Another hangover - great. He sat naked in the growing light of dawn, teasing the pig-dung from his face that had hardened, clumping his bristles together as he lay. Last night was a hazy blur. Needless to say, however, he knew exactly what had happened. It was the same thing that had happened day-in, day-out for the last few months working on the farm. He had searched for mental oblivion in a bottle of whiskey and found only transient relief. He winced as he plucked some more dung from his beard.

He got to his bare feet and, ignoring the sleeping pigs, took a piss in the corner of the sty. The bright, yellow urine splashed against the wall and returned to swim around his calloused feet. He had grown immune to the squalor of his surroundings and threw any humility to the wind, cynically teasing himself that the pigs wouldn’t mind - after all, they were his family now. He stepped clumsily over the sow to the low wall of the sty and climbed out and through the door to the open air. The overwhelming freshness of the air burned his throat. Before him, the outside world was set alight, like colour bursting out of the blackness of a Polaroid picture. Far off, on the horizon were the mountains of Vermont, snow-capped even in summer. In their shadow stretched acres upon acres of untilled forestry - primal gardens of Mother Nature stretching almost infinitely across the landscape. The cold, cementcovered farmyard was only a negligible blemish on that spectacular countryside. He hadn’t the heart to care anymore though, and so ignored the scenery to get a good start on the long day ahead of him.

Naked as sin, but for the dung plastered on his body, he strolled along the length of the shed with the pig sty in it until he came to a drinking trough. He stared into the murky water to see a dirty, bleary-eyed, worn man staring back at him. He had been handsome in his youth, undeniably so, but a lifetime of toil and alcoholism had left its mark. His strong, masculine cheekbones were now covered in bulging, crimson varicose veins and he had a purple, fleshy scar under his left eye. The scar was a trophy he had earned from a bar-fight long ago, but all he could remember from it was the sight of the star-speckled sky above him as he lay numb from the drink on the pavement. He found himself on the ground outside bars very often, and was too familiar with the coppery taste of his own blood and the spectral-like feeling of not being able to move.

He dipped his hands into the face of the man staring back at him from the depths of the trough and splashed his face with the icy water. The water turned brown and floated down onto his chest, draining from his face. He began to rub the pig-dung from his skin, often scratching with his uncut nails

5

The Attic

to dislodge the shit. It was spread on him like filthy, cracked wallpaper. In the distance, he heard the farmhouse door shut and the farmer’s wife presently arrived with a plate of bacon for his breakfast.

She turned the corner and, blushing, set the plate on the ground before cursing his blaggardness and the cheek of his nudity. He ignored her and continued to cleanse himself, whistling as he did so. She bustled off, muttering angrily something about telling her husband, but he didn’t take heed of her. As soon as she disappeared back around the corner, he took the plate of bacon in his hand and shoved a rasher ravenously into his mouth. He savoured the salty flavour, but also felt the bittersweet guilt and remorse of eating one of his contemporaries. He took up his tattered clothes from beside the trough (cleaned, pressed and doused in some fragrant perfume - a present from the farmer’s daughter, left there before dawn) and dressed himself quickly before setting off to work on the farm.

The day went by quickly and without incident, punctuated by his unexplained disappearances to the pig-shed, where he sneaked gulps of whiskey from behind a two-by-four to make the work more bearable. He fed the pigs and chickens and repaired a dilapidated fence on the boundaries of the farm. It was still bright when he had finished and he headed off into the nearby town with the pittance he earned from his job as a farmhand. He talked to no-one there, but only bought another bottle of whiskey to keep him going through the night. When he returned to the farmyard, he found the farmer’s daughter sitting and waiting for him by the pig-shed. She had brought him his dinner every day since he arrived and had long-since begun to demand a fee in return for the vitals. It had begun with a quick peck, behind the pig shed, but in recent times, she wouldn’t acquiesce until he took her, fully and bestially, on the stacks of hay above where the pigs slept. Then she would slap him, and call him a scoundrel and run off back into the farmhouse, her urge fulfilled and her scratch most fully itched. He didn’t mind this behaviour, but for that every night, when she walked to the pig shed with his dinner in hand, her face was alight with a coy, lecherous smile.

That night, as the sun scorched the deep crimson horizon, he lay outside on the hay, bottle in hand, letting the ubiquitous music of nature wash over him like oil. Above, he could see the bats, veering and jolting, catching flies in the hazy twilight. Beyond the farm, the fields rippled in the summer breeze like a velvet sea of ardent green. The first star appeared in the sky - the Northstar - a lonely prodigal, like him, swimming the vacant tracts of space high above. In the shed, the pigs grunted contentedly as he returned inside for his third (and final, he promised himself) nightcap of the evening. Nestling up beside the sow, he felt his consciousness drain once more into the heady atmosphere of the solid odour that haunted the sty. He could feel the heavy fumes wrap around him like ether, and the dripping sounds of nature flooded over him in the colours of a dream.

Tobias du Nord

6

The Attic Josie and Richard Josie was a proud woman. She taught at the local secondary school and ate egg mayonnaise sandwiches every day in her car at lunchtime. She couldn’t stand to be in the staff room with the rest of the teachers. Unlike the many hesitant heroines (who could never seem to find a reason for their particular emotion) in the romance novels she read obsessively, she knew exactly what inspired her disdain. It wasn’t the sometimes-rough talk, the cliques or the mention of children (because, of course, Josie didn’t have any) that propelled her towards her metal haven. In fact, it wasn’t exactly the many jokes that flashed from the lips of her co-workers (as she had previously supposed), but it was their laughter that made her an exile. The roaring sound of their combined amusement, necks and fillings exposed, was too much to bear. It sounded like the sea during a fierce storm, the white-rush of an avalanche or the surprisingly loud crunch of a car crash.

The hyena-like sounds of her students also isolated her. But in the classroom setting, she could master her feelings, and restore order amidst the thunderous anarchy. She did this through the severe schoolmarm persona that she could never adopt in the presence of her peers. Her wooden ruler was vital in the transformation; she repeatedly struck the solid desk with it in order to stun the pupils into silence (the frenzied sound of laughter being replaced with that of blunt violence) and if that failed, she sentenced those responsible to detention, using it like a gavel. The headmistress sometimes remarked upon Josie’s peculiar methods of discipline when she saw the rows of girls sent from her class to the cafeteria after school. While the students were in their own personal purgatory, Josie herself scurried home to watch Countdown. With pencil and small jotter in-hand, she thought for the umpteenth time that Richard Whiteley was quite dreamy, and longed to run her hand down his long silk tie.

Kirsten Southard

7

The Attic Pygmalion “Dost thou desire her foully for those things That make her good?�

Arms up, curves down Ribbed ripples run up toward the breasts.

Cream skin, hard as bone.

Trace lines, of swollen, pressing, pushing muscles Under skin, see statues, drawings- pen and paper In that form.

She does not live, cannot.

Half-clothed in mental flesh, Real bone shines through white.

Lie there, taut skin that beats to finger tips, tendon-plucked fingers That dance off hips, Roped muscles, buck thighs, Dig hands in skin.

Still a wound tongue, That flicks and twists;` Mind crammed through lips, Iron passion in each stamp, Prints itself half-pressed.

The whole drawn up, By fine hair, pulling wires.

A life that writhes in shining wires, A life that pulses off drum skin.

A life, a life that has a spine, That bends and heaves, That thinks and breathes, That pushes upward, with biting Force and blinding heat.

That ties me with its shining wires, That cuts skin, shaves hair, Rips stomach And makes blood thin.

Half-thought and in full measure.

P R Zont

8

The Attic 100 DOLLARS

Lucia’s was a bad idea for lunch, I could tell right away. Daniel, my boss, said they had good open faced roast beef sandwiches, but the old time circus/space odyssey theme gave the impression that the restaurant owner could use some psychoanalysis, and maybe also an ass-kicking. Not to mention my general distaste for old people and little kids. They swarmed about the place like ants. A plastic circus monkey dangling from a CCCP rocket ship slid over my head guiding me to the hostess station where a desperate looking twenty-something herded a pack of obese kids to their booths.

They limped in circles around her like I imagine veal cattle escapees might waddle back toward a farmer with a pail of feed. Daniel was near the back drinking cherry soda. Our table, apparently one of several usually reserved for birthday clientele was supported by four inverted feet with different colored eyeballs set in each toe and callused grins. I sat by the daddy foot with the crown and mustache. Was there any blood still on me?

“You’ve got some ketchup on your elbow, Charlie.”

I told Daniel that it wasn’t ketchup, and wiped it off on the booth cushion next to me.

“Murdering children again? Hey, as long as you don’t touch my kids I don’t really give a shit.”

The waitress who came by to take our orders seemed amused by the comment until she noticed some residue on my neck. I tried to dab it away with my tie.

“No really, what’s the deal Charlie? I mean talk about unprofessional work attire, showing up with blood on your face like that. It’s not even past noon.”

“You wouldn’t have believed it. One of those new Acura SUVs ran over the carcass of a deer or something out where they’re doing all that construction off interstate 5. For god’s sake, I mean, it’s the first day of the year warm enough to drive to work with my windows open. I light up my fifth or so cigarette and next thing I know this lady tries to pass me. She rips right through this carcass like it wasn’t there and I get a nice splash of cold muscle and fur across the face. It was like something out of a cartoon.”

Daniel gazed up at the rotating cellophane moon above us.

“Anyway, I was just kind of in shock. I pulled over and got out of the car. There was an ear and possibly some grey matter on the seat next to me and who knows what else across my shirt and pants. I’ll spare you the details. Shit though, you should have seen it.”

“Yeah.”

“I was so thrown off, I had to just stand there for a minute to keep myself from vomiting. I guess the woman must have realized something was wrong. She pulled over, and when I walked to her window she looked horrified, couldn’t even speak to me. She was a good looking lady, actually, had two kiddos in back all strapped in to their car seats. God, I must have looked like the boogie man.”

“Did you ever notice those plastic monkeys up there in the moon?”

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The Attic

His eyes, fixated, seemed to change colors with the shifting light as it spun slowly. He looked at peace, which was unusual for him.

“God damnit, you’re not listening.”

I looked up at the moon. Sure enough there were little monkeys crawling around inside.

“She gave me a hundred bucks, anyway. I’m not sure why. It’s not like I was hurt or anything. I think she just wanted me to go away. Didn’t want her kids to see what a man covered in deer looked like.”

“Oh good, so you can pay me back.”

“I don’t owe you any money.”

The waitress brought our sandwiches.

Jeffrey Becklund

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The Attic

Jeffrey Becklund Jeffrey Beckland grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota. When he was sixteen he found an abandoned goose egg in the lacrosse field of his high school, still warm. He borrowed an incubator from a girl in his choir, hatched the egg, fed and raised the goose until it flew away out of my life forever. Her name was Maxine.

Conor D’Arcy Conor D’Arcy is a struggling second year student and noted ‘dogger’. With no friends and even less hope of attention from a member of the opposite sex, his days are spent playing Street Fighter 4, masturbating and writing about his petty existence.

Tom Helm Tom Helm is travelling...we wish him a lovely trip.

Ailbhe Malone Ailbhe Malone is 22 years old and likes dancing, dinosaurs and making lists.

Tobias du Nord Tobias N. renders his biography useless by the use of a pseudonym, and, as a result, will merely say that dystopia is his opiate.

Caoimhe O’Gorman Caoimhe O’Gorman is a JS English Studies student with serious reservations about all of this. Any criticism, for preference constructive, sent to cogorma@tcd,ie would be very welcome.

Erin Rhoda Erin Rhoda of Washington, Maine is earning her M.Phil. in creative writing at Trinity College as a national George J. Mitchell Scholarship recipient. Erin is a 2006 summa cum laude graduate of Colby College in Maine, USA. Kirsten Southard Kirsten Southard is in her third year of History of Art and English. She loves a good cardigan, the smells of summer and the Visual Arts Society (which everyone should join, because it’s great!)

P R Zont P R Zont is a 19 year old from England, now studying English and Russian. *Editor’s note: not as great as the Literary Society.

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The Attic

Brian Arnold Brian Arnold is from New Jersey, USA and goes to The College of the Holy Cross. He really enjoyed his time abroad this year and will miss Trinity and Dublin along with all the debauchery and friends he has made. Extra Tomatoes! This poem is for Caitlin.

Adrian Buggins Adrian Buggins’ biography is negligible.

Joanne O’Leary Joanne O’Leary is a Senior Freshman studying English. She is currently working through exam stress by self medicating with tea, the Coen brothers’ box set and ‘To Bedlam and Part Way Back’. She hopes to one day live in a country with distinguishable seasons.

Dan Sheehan Dan Sheehan is currently in 3rd year studying English Literature and Film Studies. He edit the Books Section of ‘The Record’ . Last Year he won the ‘Best Short Story’ prize at the National Student Media Awards. In terms of vague plans, he hopes to do a masters in creative writing/Playwriting somewhere in the world at some point in the future.

Anne Marie Walker Anne Marie Walker is a third year Visiting Student whose home university is the University of California, Riverside. She is studying for a BA in English Literature with a minor in Creative Writing.

Her imagination runs wild to the point where she doesn’t pay attention to where she is going and that’s how she wound up at Trinity.

Kerri Ward Kerri Ward is a first year student of drama and English from Dublin. She has won many national and international poetry competitions including Feile Fileochta, Listowel Writer’s Week, and the Patrick Kavanagh Centenary Award. She is seventeen years old and lives in Tallaght with her family.

13

The Attic An extract from: “The Nine Lies of Mervyn Cumiskey” Next, as a gnarled old nobody, haunting the whistling woods and windpolished creeks, I cobbled a currach of clattering reeds and mauled a mast from a maple-sapling.

A sail I’d saved, a secondhand pelt, and rigged up a rod with redcurrants weighted.

Adrift, I dozed on the dimpled mirror, angling me hook to hunt for no tadpole, that wanton Salmon, scholars’ windfall, who schools the skilful who seize and scour her…

Well, gilded Mullet, and Gudgeon I gathered, so flat grey Flounder, fat pale Carp, the wee white Bream, the wintering Bass, the frogchewing flintfanged filigreed Pike, old Trout, shy Tench, and tyrannous Lamprey, the cardinal Sturgeon, the cunning Eel, but scarcely a sniff of me Salmon I gleaned, til doleful by dusklight, when dredging the mere I was jerked in the water and jolted awake by a heave on the hawser! Heartily bounded the sinewy Salmon from splashing grotto, sleekly transcending me snatching and grovelling, bogged in the slippery sedge— but I clung to me hitchline, trusting its tautness to hold!

Grappling that godling by glow of the dawn, I bludgeoned her shining brow with me paddle, and dragged her brokebacked to me bogborn prentice.

I sat, and he scurried to slice up me treasure, (the labour of decades, the dream of me youth!) but the simpering mucksavage scalded his thumb on a charring fillet of her cherished flank, and sucked out the sense from that sovereign flesh!

That was that, then; there I was with an ignorant philomath, and impotent fish.

Adrian Buggins

12

The Attic up from the ground like he was waving to the crowd that were there only to see him. His captive audience tore up clumps of soil with a frantic, trembling pace. “Oh Jesus Christ no! Please no!” I can still see my father crushing him in his arms, hot angry tears welling up and spilling out from the corner of his eyes. I think there are few things more unsettling than seeing your father cry. Fathers are the strength in a son’s world, they only cry when it has fallen apart. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t move.

The whole scene was so surreal that I couldn’t even blink. The dull light, the twisted branches, the dead child; were all like the components of some gothic painting that I was viewing through layers of glass; soundless.

Everything was quiet for a while. The clearing where we found him was quiet as my father knelt down with his child in his arms. The house was quiet for days as we all slowly starved ourselves, sitting silently together from break of dawn to blink of dusk. The neighbourhood was quiet, as if any raised voice was an insult to the dead and half dead alike. Then things became very loud very suddenly. They said that my fingerprints were found on his neck. They said that my blood was underneath his fingernails and his under mine. They said that I murdered him and then they took me away.

My parents were broken beyond repair. I kept repeating what I saw, trying to remember every little thing from the moment he vanished but it all fell on deaf ears. They were just shells now. My father had to testify of course, his cracking voice seemed so far away, but it was the neighbours that really finished it all off. Some spoke of seeing me drag him towards the trees, others saw me leave on my own, hands soiled with dirt. Nobody looked at me from the witness stand; I think they were afraid of what I might do. But I wasn’t going to do anything. I hadn’t done anything. Why couldn’t they believe me? Why would they say all this? There was no one to fight my corner, no one to tell them about all the times I’d protected him or watched over him, no one to say that I’d loved him. I did love him. Once I was sent away it all became too much for my mother. On Tuesday 5th of April, one year to the day since they found Marcus, she walked into the ocean. My father stopped coming to see me after that. Not that I was surprised; he had lost everything, everything he loved but then, so had I. I keep saying it, but no one will listen. There’s no one left to listen, but I didn’t do it. I swear I didn’t do it. I didn’t mean to do it.

Dan Sheehan

11

The Attic wanted to hear. They kept asking me what I meant by the word “disappear” and I kept recounting a version which according to them was impossible. Fuck impossible; I saw what I saw. Regardless, they gave up on the Q&A and began the search.

Marcus was an awkward child at the best of times. Even his birth was ridiculously complex. How a child could be premature, upside-down and stuck all at the same time and survive the birth is beyond me, but at least he got everyone’s attention. Nobody craved more attention than that child.

I know he was the great hope for my mother’s sanity so a bit of favouritism was inevitable but it bordered on the absurd at times. She would spend hours and hours on the floor of our kitchen with him playing with coloured blocks. Hours and hours and hours. With coloured blocks! You couldn’t even build anything with them, their sole purpose was to keep an infant entertained by their bright colours and the woman, with a big smile on her face, sat there day after day to keep Marcus happy.

He probably didn’t even realise what was going on. It was madness. Or how about the fact that he would cry on cue whenever either of them turned the focus onto me? They said I was being paranoid and ridiculous but it’s true. I can’t tell you how he knew but he always knew. Devious little bastard couldn’t share the spotlight, even for a moment. Meanwhile I could have been developing into the greatest academic prodigy the earth had ever seen or setting the sports world alight with my athletic talent, and she would have been completely unaware. Now, as it turned out, I was an average student with no discernable sporting ability whatsoever but that is not the point. The point is that as the eldest child, I was far more deserving of any preferential treatment. But I let it go for awhile because he was a baby and you can’t really argue with babies; you just end up looking like a fool.

Believe me, I’ve tried.

They combed the beach and the woods nearby (my mother fainted again when they mentioned the woods) for hours. Men with torches throwing Marcus’ name back and forth in the dark, waiting anxiously for a response that never came. Women sitting up deep into the night in my kitchen, hands furiously wringing, kettle steadily boiling. My father wouldn’t search with me. He searched with Rory Burke from down the road while I zigzagged between concerned fathers, each one spurred on by visions of his own children. None of them looked at me. They were preparing themselves. They had to be ready with someone to blame if the unthinkable happened and I was the negligent protector. The night was over; the unthinkable was looking more and more likely. They had seen me shout at him after mass last week. He was messing with that stupid sword, and I shouted at him. I wish I hadn’t done that. He started crying and I dragged him by the hand, muttering swears along the way, back to the car and away from the condemnation of the congregation. A loving brother wouldn’t shout at a small child. A loving brother would keep a closer eye. Selfish, uncaring little prick has cost a child his life. That’s what they were thinking. A dozen impotent men standing like wallflowers on terrain already covered, waiting for someone to tell them to go home. Then somebody found a shoe.

A black shoe, overlooked in the blackness of the night. Marcus’ black shoe.

They found him in the woods. Of all the places, why did it have to be the woods? He never liked them, always held my hand so tightly when we passed through on the way home. It was too dark, with gnarled, twisting trees reaching out to grab him. Not like the seaside; open and sunny with pleasant sounds in the distance and little lapping waves to run in and out of. Why couldn’t it have ended there? He was half buried, hastily it seems, but you could still see a tiny rag-doll arm reaching

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they just didn’t think to care, but either way the topic of my mother’s side of the family was never broached. Anyway, back to the diary. I learned three things of importance to the matter at hand from that diary: 1.

My mother had a younger brother named Marcus whom she was entrusted with looking after as a teenager.

2.

At the age of six Marcus’ naked body, barely recognisable, was found in the woods near her home in Denver.

3.

After the funeral my mother left America and has not spoken to her family since.

Probably best that this was not brought up at Christmas dinner then.

Suddenly it all made sense. The crying, the moans, the over-protective nature, were all caused by a simple run-of-the-mill traumatic childhood event and the fifteen years of guilt which followed. Case closed. This might sound a small bit cold and unfeeling, but remember that I was thirteen and since I was clearly never going to discuss the subject with anyone, the initial shock could only last for so long. Eventually I stopped feeling pangs of sadness upon catching my mother’s bloodshot eyes across the breakfast table. I stopped hearing the moans and the sobs and just reverted back to the way I’d always been, consigning her tormented back story to a far corner of my mind, ever present but easily ignored. That was, until Marcus was born.

I often wondered why she didn’t name me ‘Marcus’. I was the first born and free from any birth defects which might cause her to outlive another of her young charges. Even if she had another boy, who was to say that he wouldn’t have a heart condition or a retardation or red hair? Why would you pin your hopes of redemption on a potentially faulty child when there is a suitable candidate in perfect working order right in front of you? Maybe the wounds were still too fresh at that stage. She had mellowed somewhat in the months leading up to the pregnancy though. I even remember riding my bike without the helmet one spring evening and she didn’t say a word. Of course, that would have to be the same evening that I fell off the thing and brained myself on the kerb, thereby eliminating my chances of ever again being granted this privilege; but it was a sign that she was progressing, however slowly. Not, of course, that I copped this back then; the woman could have been on fire half the time and I would have barely noticed. I was in my first year of secondary school aka the most important year of my, and by extension everyone else’s, life. If I’d looked up every once in a while I would have noticed a brightness to her disposition that had not been seen in years. The more the pregnancy wore on, the happier my mother became. The baby, to her, was the solution to every problem that had come before it and the more it grew, the closer she was to a new lease on life.

Screaming. More screaming. Sobs and wailing. Even more screaming. Hyperventilating. Faint. Wake up. Continuation of screaming followed by prolonged period of sobbing and wailing. While my mother busied herself with being in a state of perpetual terror, the Gardai grilled me for specific information on the disappearance. Unsurprisingly, my experience of the event wasn’t quite what they

9

The Attic Brother I was eighteen when my little brother disappeared. I don’t mean disappeared in the sense that you think, that everyone seemed to think. I mean that he literally disappeared in front of my eyes. One second he was running around in the sand dunes chasing seagulls with a battered old plastic sword, and then he just faded into nothingness. How do you get your head around something like that? If I hadn’t been so sure of what I’d seen I’d have thought I was losing my mind, but I still searched the length and breath of that beach till the sun went down. Then I began to panic. There was no time to process the notion of somebody vanishing into thin air so I began to give serious consideration to the possibility that he had reappeared back at the house. No logic behind it, just the mind grasping at straws, delaying the inevitable. Why not? If he could disappear it stood to reason that he could reappear as well, and what other place was there but the house? It was the only place, aside from the beach, that was familiar to him. Yes, he might be back at the house. He was definitely back at the house.

He wasn’t back at the house. I searched frantically. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. The Gardai arrived just as my parents’ car pulled into the driveway and that’s when the screaming started.

Now my mother was of an extremely anxious disposition at the best of times. She worried about me getting attacked on a night out or succumbing to peer pressures of various descriptions or failing exams or running with scissors or slipping in the shower or any other rational or irrational fear that was going round her small circle of friends at the time. Mostly though, she worried about Marcus. She worried about Marcus to such an extent that she rarely experienced an uninterrupted night of sleep, although it took me a while to realise this. Low moans would emanate from my parents bedroom at all hours of the night for as long as I could remember. At first I dismissed it as the by-product of a disturbingly active sex life, something which, it being my parents, I was determined to give as little thought to this as possible. However, one night in the middle of one of these apparent sex-symphonies I realised that my father had been away at my uncle’s house for the last few days. Something was amiss. Using all the detective prowess a thirteen year-old can muster, I crept up to the door to peer through the crack at whichever lecherous old bastard was usurping my father’s place in the marital bed. But there was no one. Just my sleeping mother, tears streaming down her face, quietly moaning the name ‘Marcus’ over and over and over again. Not quite what I had expected.

Now this was before Marcus had even been born so the name meant very little to me. I didn’t ask her about it because I thought she might start crying again and I’d have to either comfort her or, more likely, edge awkwardly out of the room; but I did endeavour to find out its origins. So, after about two weeks of mid-day privacy invasions while my parents were at work I discovered her diary.

Jackpot. The mystery was finally coming to an end! My jubilation was short lived however as I rifled through the pages. Now, my mother was born and raised in the States and she never really spoke about her family, which was fine because my father’s side was riddled with all manner of eccentric uncles and cousins who never missed an opportunity to invade my home (being an only child at this stage I didn’t yet possess much by way of selflessness) so there was never a shortage at family gatherings; just a bit of an uneven balance. Maybe they all knew something I didn’t or maybe, like me,

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The Attic

To the Shadows Fixed, like doom on a graveyard poem, Set, where souls throng, In that thriving metropolis of shadows, I hauled my grandmother along.

Her umbrella’s arthritic wobbling, Bobbing as we went, Kept us both locked in that closed contentment, Did anybody know her pain was caught between the folds?

I certainly did not.

How could I have thought that umbrella, that rain, that walk, reminded her that Forty years ago he held her hand on the way to mass on Sundays.

I thought her unflinching, resigned.

But the scarfed skeleton that bent to rip up and hurl that first faint weed aside, When we at last arrived, was so absolutely quiet.

Her mind burrowed down scraping its cheek on the moss, Knotted with the threads of fading twilight, On bedrock, on minerals, on molten lava, On her silence, on herself.

And oh her silence hollered!

“Rise up and let me love you, Let the wind comb its fingers through our fulfilment once again.

Let the rain wash our Wellingtons clean, toppling each other on the patio, Let me sew a silver pendant on your inside cuff And you’ll always wear my heart upon your sleeve my love.”

I have a poem on graveyards.

I know no more about the dead.

Except perhaps they burgle something of the living as they leave.

St. Peter clocks the dowry at the gate.

Joanne O’Leary

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Tsunami I see a little blue ribbon Coming quickly toward me.

Gliding swiftly over the ocean blue, Like a snake winding across the Sahara.

It bobs the boat back and forth, ’Til all returns to normal, As it continues its journey across the sea Shiny, turquoise, sapphire— And finally disappearing over the horizon.

When it has reached its journey’s end, The sapphire ribbon rises striding faster, Until it hugs the unsuspecting shore Crushing everything in its wake.

Anne Marie Walker

6

The Attic Evie is seventeen. She already knows the deafblind alphabet, and has good communication skills. But our communication is limited. At the beginning of each session for the first two weeks, I greeted her, signing my name on her palm – laying my index finger on her palm for L, touching the tip of her index finger for E, the tip of her ring finger for O. I knew she could sign her name, but she would not. She remained still, and stiff. Then, I placed an object in her hand, an orange, a key, a pebble, and asked her for her reaction, laying out my hand. She might sign a single word: small, hard, cold. Then, she folded her hands on her lap. She did not move. Our session, she had decided, was finished.

This continued every day, and I grew more and more desperate. Yesterday, I handed her a small vase. She felt the textured edges, the curve of the handle, dipped her fingers in the cool water inside with a sort of curiosity. She gestured for my hand; she wanted to tell me something. I became excited, feeling like I had made a breakthrough. Frowning, she signed against my palm; Where are the flowers? I – I don’t have any, I signed back. She set the vase down cautiously. I had disappointed her, and our session was over.

Evie takes my hands in hers and presses her cheek to my right palm. Her face is feverishly warm. She touches my fingertips against her cheeks. She cups my palms round her face. I am getting flushed, and I feel panic begin to swell in the back of my throat. I do not know what to do – if her carer, or another member of staff were to walk in now what would I say? She offers me a smile. I know I cannot intervene. She runs my hands over her mouth, through her hair to the nape of her neck. Then, slowly, steadily, she reaches down to her neckline, leaving my hands swaddled in her hair, feels for the buttons, and begins to open them, one by one. She undoes her cardigan, slowly, from the neck down. She removes it. It falls in a heap on the floor at her feet.

This morning, Evie’s carer left her at my office door. I was despairing at my lack of progress, my inability to draw communication from her. Resignedly I offered her her usual seat and she sat, quiet and withdrawn, expressionless. I watched her. I looked at her diminishing form, her closed features, not quite sure what to do next. I was all out of ideas.

Evie takes my hand, strokes it against her neck. Her naked torso is pale and wiry, the white light of my office picking out the soft contours of her stomach and breasts – I am trying to avert my eyes but what difference does it make? Slowly, she moves closer to me. The scent of her skin intensifies, my heart quickens to a stammer, I can hear her breath rising and falling gently. She presses my palm to her breast, and holds it there tight. Against it, I feel the feverish skin, and gradually, beneath that, the rabbit-like heartbeat hammering steadily in her chest. The two quick taps on the palm, a sign, a voice murmuring ‘yes’ against the skin of my hand over and over again, like a slow waltz. A man and woman dance slowly together in an empty bar, pressed together so tightly they can barely breathe, and in that moment, all they know is one another’s histories, bodies, and hearts.

This morning, when Evie sat waiting, I did have an object to press into her hand. Instead, slowly, I slipped my own hand cautiously into hers, and waited. She smiled, and signed a word slowly against my perspiring palm.

Warm, she said.

Kerri Ward

5

The Attic Waltz Evie places the flat of her hand against my flushed cheek, then finding my mouth, presses her finger to my lips and smiles. This means that I am not to protest at what she is about to do, and what she is about to do is not something I will particularly approve of. But I have been working with Evie long enough to know not to argue.

Her fingers feel for my nose. She squeezes it gently, playfully, and gives a hoarse exhalation like a laugh, in spite of herself. The palm of her hand grazes my throat, then my collarbone. She fumbles for my ears and touches them with childlike curiosity, pinching the earlobe gently, almost amazed at the consistency, the fleshy softness. Excited, she hooks her fingertips inside the corners of my mouth and pulls my lips into a tight grimace, croaking in delight. She takes her fingers from my mouth, seeming almost surprised at the thin coating of saliva streaked across them. She dries them on my jumper, then strokes the collar, the cuffs, the seams at the shoulders, her hands marvelling at the texture, the close knit of the fibres.

I have been working with Evie for three weeks now and progress is slow. She is my first patient, or client – whatever you might want to call her. They chose Evie for me, they said, because she would be easy to work with; pliable, malleable, like a thin sheet of metal. Easy to manipulate, but cold. Nonetheless cold.

So, the first day, I started gently. Her carer guided her into my office, which was bright, and decorated in soothing colours. Gently, I pressed a small, red apple into her hand, hoping a familiar object would put her at ease. I had pulled it hurriedly from the refrigerator that morning, and so its flesh was chilled and clammy against her warm palm. The sudden cold touch shocked her. She dropped it and, frightened, struck out recklessly at me. Her nails caught my face, just below my right eye. She left my office after just less than four minutes. That was not a successful day.

Evie presses the palms of her hands to my body, one to my stomach, the other to my chest. She measures the breaths I take. I think I see, maybe, a frown form on her soft, blunt features. Her hair is a diffused blond halo about her shoulders, the tips curl about her neck and towards her chest in perfect symmetry. I can hear her breath fluttering against her mouth, like a frightened moth.

On the second day, she responded more positively, though the scratches beneath my eye were still quite painful. When she entered the room, while she was still anxiously clutching the arm of her carer, I directed her timidly to a warm, welcoming chair. She hesitated. Her carer signed something on her palm and she sat down, but remained alert, and hostile.

If not experienced, I was well-researched and well trained. I had spent years in college training for this, spent hours in drafty libraries pouring over volume after volume of medical journal, fallen asleep at my computer in the early hours of the morning countless times. I was unsure exactly what to expect from Evie – she might be violent, emotional, aggressive, cold, a brilliant mind with no way of self-expression.

Whatever she threw at me, I was sure I could handle it.

Evie is standing so close to me now, I can smell her faint smell, of baby powder and pink, rose-scented soap. She has found my hands. She is examining them tenderly, and with great care, as though they might be small, wounded animals, as though her touch could burn me.

4

The Attic Dig I realized one night, after an argument about… nothing, My eyes searing with tears and throat clogged with phlegm— That you are a miner.

Sometimes you undermine, sometimes you support And other times, you just dig.

Do you remember back when we first met?

We would sit in innocent wonderment, Either of us draped over the other like a rag Soaked with the sweat of hard work-- and still dig deeper.

You started off slow, a pick here, a lifted stone there.

Makeshift supports tossed up as needed To avoid minor collapses-- yours or mine.

Stone barriers slowly eroded, veins beginning to join.

Two years later, your skills have been honed.

Your pick-axe a bit sharper, your array of tools multiplied.

You still dig, here and there in search of some Unearthed deposit, but mostly content with your haul.

The familiarity of the tunnels and shafts comforts you.

Although exciting to get lost in at first, knowing Where each path intersects and moves on to Gives you another kind of excitement—this is your work.

The mine is empty now except for you, wandering Around the halls like a lost ghost. And yet we both remain here, Knowing the other is there. You supporting me At every curve and I providing shelter.

We know the vulnerability of our situation.

These old corridors need constant attention— Wood grafted with stone, labor grafted with pleasure Love grafted with jealously.

Mine, grafted with miner.

Brian Arnold

3

The Attic how dare they! How dare! The pack of scum!

He stood in the street, unconscious, unable to leave, unable to return, how long he did not know, til a couple emerged with quick farewells from that house of infamy and strolled to pass him by.

—Hear, thass yer man, thass my Warden… slurred the man, an Irishman, a fool.

—Terry, come on, ignore him, instructed a female voice: English, hussy.

His head cleared. One of his charges, a drunken Irishman named Terry, one easily found on consultation of registers. He would be found and he would speak or he would suffer. He would exculpate. Yes! But that lout, that foxy local, he wanted him. He wanted him badly, like a hot cocoa or a winter wank. So he skulked around the side of that house, beadily squinting up at the brightest window, behind which lay the bathroom and the supine form of Mikey Little, who just now jerked to his knees and arched his spine, flailed onto his feet with the aid of toiletbowl, lurched to the window, threw up the sash, retched like a cat, and delivered himself of two pints of a beautiful Chilean wine, a choice and fruity plonk well laced with carrot from its brief decanting into his little belly, high in a glorious streaming rainbow against the purpling evening and down into the watchful eye of the peeping warden below, before lapsing again into dark delicious dreamlessness.

Adrian Buggins

2

The Attic How The Ass’ Uppance Came Like a lean and lonely donkey, the Reverend Dafydd canters in unwonted detour, hedgerows prowled, from his nightly round of boundaries before bed to investigate sounds of shocking disturbance, the grinding thump of beats repetitive and wanton, his piebald shanks like pistons stretching and heaving him steadily on beneath coarse insulatory garments, slowly up the hill to the head of College Road, where one house alone insists on burning electricity as if none of it had to be paid for! A light in every window! His ears flap once, twice, at the sound of a clock striking. Twelve.

And a half, as he steps around some crusting vomit, at which his lips purse like a satiated sphincter.

He was needed. With a click and a flick, he raises his fist to drop it twice in sharp and authoritative knock, such as command attention and obedience. He rocks and sways from tiptoes to highheels and back again, magnanimous in virtue, recoiling only slightly as the door fell inward to present two sweaty and unshaven louts, a fox and a bear, with a bevy of beastly derelicts draped around the hallway at various altitudes of chuckling dishevelment. Well, Halloween was next month. As they would very shortly find out!

—I’m afraid I’ve come about the noise.

—Don’t be! supplied one lout agreeably, a local, festooned like a fox with voluminous brushtail. The cleric’s saltandpepper eyebrow elevated.

—Don’t be afraid! this fox dribbled further.

—Yeah! No worries! chimed in the other, a Londoner, a jovial giant in forests of fur with the air of one providing valuable assistance. The cheery gape of his teddy lay abandoned in a puddle of beer. Dafydd’s forehead churned to raise the eyebrow further.

—No, you are required to keep down all noise. It’s very late, and this is a residential area.

There have been complaints from neighbours, he invented.

—We don’t live here, bandied a jellyfish from the floor, nodding absently.

—You are nonetheless responsible for noise level, countered the cleric with great dignity. He bestowed a warning glare before swivelling sharply on his heels and striding off down College Road with pace renewed. Behind him the door slammed, to be bungled open again without delay for a voice, the Welsh voice of that festive fox to sing out. —Eh, Dafydd! Dafydd, you paedo!

His blood bubbling boiled under surging spitting frenzy of wrath coursing through him and violet and hot ire screaming with fury threw his raging skull as the seared knuckles whitened to the bone and his tired legs curved like an ape’s! Dimly, through pounding eardrums, he apprehended the gales of frivolous laughter, the giggles, the mockery spewing from the windows of that filthy den of degenerates. How! How dare! How dare they, any of them! The scum! The filthy wretched scum,

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The Attic

construction,” we would just revert to the less verbose, more humble, and far more important: “I just really like it.”

With that in mind, you probably won’t like every piece in this magazine. In fact, there may be some works in this magazine that you positively detest. Thinking about it, there’s a very good chance you’ll actually love every piece of writing in The Attic, but just hate this editorial.

Anyway, each and every author whose work appears in The Attic has fought hard to have their work in print. For most writers, putting together a story or a poem isn’t easy work. It’s a struggle, and every word put down is a small victory. Writing is a lonely process, and as anyone who has ever written anything knows – be it an essay, a report, or even something literary – it is difficult to keep going, to keep writing, to keep adding word after word until you have a piece which feels finished, ready to be read by a member of your family, a friend, or a complete stranger who’s happened to pick up a copy of your work. But for all the difficulties involved in writing an essay, in editing a poem, in finishing a story, the biggest challenge, we all know, is starting the damn thing. It’s almost a cliché to speak of the looming white of a blank document, the empty page of a word processor, but it’s a cliché for a reason: it’s hard to get started. As the American author Donald Barthelme once said: “Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin…”

With those words, I will say goodbye, and allow you to get started with the reading.

So. Begin...

Thomas Morris

The Attic A few words...

I never used to like student writing. I’d flick through the pages of Icarus and The Attic and find all of it very annoying. “Who are these students who think their words are worthy of my time?” I’d ask myself. “Don’t they realise there’s enough great literature for me to be reading, without having to read new stuff, written by students, on the off-chance that it might be OK?” At the heart of this dislike, was, I think, a jealousy. I wasn’t necessarily jealous of the standard of writing being produced, but jealous of the fact it was being produced, and being published! Why wasn’t I, someone who spoke so much about books and literature, writing anything myself ?

I am glad to say that I eventually overcame this irrational dislike. Yet, very often, I meet fellow students who haven’t overcome this feeling. They make disparaging remarks about the literature being written by students. Words like “pretentious” and “drivel” are bandied about, as if just uttering these very words are enough to negate the value or quality of the work. Yet, I won’t deny that I myself sometimes use these words, when for example, I’m discussing Joyce’s later work. But the fact is…I haven’t read Joyce’s later work. I’ve had a little look, and it seems difficult, and I don’t “get” it.

But I feel that through calling his work “pretentious” or “drivel”, I somehow don’t need to read it, that it would be a waste of my time to read it. I think this feeling is a common one, and it is definitely part of the reason why some of us say certain things about some authors.

This, however, isn’t to say that all student writing is fantastic and brilliant, and non-pretentious and not drivel. Because that’s just not true. In the same way that it isn’t true to say that all the classics you have read are fantastic and brilliant, non-pretentious and drivel-less. But what I can assure you is this: all the writing that appears in this year’s edition of The Attic is of the highest standard, and all the pieces are ones that have, in some way, appealed to us, the editors.

Those of you whose work didn’t make it into the magazine might read a particular story or a poem in here and not understand how it is that we thought it was better than your piece of writing. Some of you may even be friends of those whose work didn’t get into The Attic, and you can’t understand why we chose poem x over your friend’s epic poem about swine flu. But the truth is this: we received over 200 pieces of writing this year, and have chosen the work of only 15 authors. Were a different team of editors reading the work, I’m sure that many different stories and poems would be appearing in this magazine. But that is the way things are with literature. There’s no easy way to compare and contrast the merits of two particular pieces of writing, so often, the decision comes down to a feeling, or the simple: “I liked that one more than the other.”

Our editorial meetings consisted of us trying to explain to one another why we felt each piece merited a place in the magazine, and often, after much discussion, and the utilization of all the specialist terms we’ve learned from four years of an English literature degree - “Oh, this story really does defamiliarize one’s conception of the Self,” or “this poem successfully destabilizes all our preconceived notions of gender, highlighting the means in which identity is both a social and individidual