The Attic - Vol XVI Issue II - April 2013

VOL XVI | ISSUE II | APRIL 2013

When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

You are now holding the second issue of The Attic published this year. It is itself testament to the society's growth that this has even been possible, and my thanks go out to everyone who contributed, submitted, pledged finances or their time so that this could happen.

Submissions to this issue were of the highest standard I have ever seen, and going through them was an immense pleasure.

Each piece was read with care and considered through a variety of lenses, and I regret that not all the pieces that made the cut could be included, purely because of spatial constraints. Some additional pieces have been included in the online edition to underline this fact. Again, where we received exceptional longer pieces we have published the beginning in print and the complete texts in the online edition (which you can find at http://www.trinityliterarysociety.com/the-attic/).

I specifically wish to thank the School of English, the CSC, the Literary Society committee, The Secret Book and Record Shop and Trinity Publications for their contributions to the running and printing of the magazine -- without them there would not have been the material possibility for a second print edition this year.

I would also like to make special mention of Karen Champ and Lola Boorman, who have helped me enormously in their free time, and without whose PR and publishing knowledge I would now be crying before an open Photoshop window and stapling tables trying to get the The Attic together.

Again, this issue had no specific theme. The drawing by Keats on the cover was chosen as a further nod to the Attic grace mentioned in Pound (quoted in the editorial of Issue I); and the closing lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" appear to form a brilliant, if anachronistic, retort.

Claudio Sansone

All rights reserved. Š The Attic, Trinity Literary Society 2012-2013 literary@csc.tcd.ie -2-

Andrew Stephens Sam Coll Stephen Polesel Oli Itkin Ronan Murphy Andrew Stephens Liam Wrigley Katie Black David Lynch Kerstina Mortensen Niall McCabe Carl Kinsella Colm Sewell

-3-

Pale was the colour of his face as peace was scarcely approaching. Vincent Knowles, deep in meditation, was sitting in the lotus position with his eyes closed and breathing evenly. It was already noon and he had barely moved since the first glow of morning. Everything in his mind seemed golden and weightless. A familiar flash was descending from overhead and becoming brighter beyond reason.

I search for the word for all of the universe.

What is the word for all of the universe?

I am what I am am what I am what I am i am Am Achieving a certain level of consciousness had been what Vincent had dedicated more than twelve of his years. His breathing suddenly shifted and trembling had taken to him in the wake of an ancient thunder.

—Da, said Vincent carefully. Tears were dropping like diamonds inside him.

Lucidly, still in a state of meditation, he felt compelled to move away from the light expanding.

—Da, he repeated, his pallor growing paler, turning to retrace his steps as he knew he must.

And as he set out to tread, he envisioned that all behind him fell a heavy rain of flowers that would fully cover every square inch of the circular garden.

—Da, farewell,Vincent said finally, silently sobbing to himself and rubbing the crown of his head.

He opened his eyes with cheeks all awash and looked around to find a cold and a broken room. It was the spare room which had been turned into a silent room. It was here where he spent three hours of every day in the centre of an aching altar. His wife wanted to use the room for guests as she didn’t fully support him in truth. This ‘ungodly hobby’ as she called was often the subject of chatter among her work colleagues on their hurried dirty dishwater chain-smoking breaks.

Vincent Knowles rose to his feet, thumbed away his tears and cleared his throat in preparation for what was worthless war, another day.

- Andrew Stephens

-4-

To be as Charlie the tramp in a scene Robert Payne remembered having been seen in 1915's La Clochard – but of which an avid viewing over and over revealed only an absence, one perhaps filled by Mr. Payne's eager imaginings – he being a creative historian and morever something of a poet to boot. But Charlot stops by a diner's window. To watch a customer sink a steak. Slowly the sucker chews and swallows. And starving Charlie gawps and gapes. And mimes the slicing and the dicing with unseen fork and knife. Even an invisible napkin produced from pocket to wipe away the ghostly traces of his conjured repast. Dabbing lips with grace and panache. A final recollection of a forgotten dandy – a toothpick plucked from the air to grind betwixt the molars where no clod of cake or merest farl of blandest bread has been seen to stick in so long a famished while. The ogled customer grows grouchy.

A beefy waiter is sent without to warn him away. And off he goes with a toddler's stumble, twitching and shuffling, to find new paths down which to bumble. The greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in the movies – never seen.

Tides of satellite streaks scooped by finger mould and morph the pastry. Weaving tapestries on its plainest dough. Illumined by weaving threads of slits of light of sun of early morning gingerly spilling in slices through dices of the trellis of the shutters. Clapperboards for dawn. Unnumbered take among billions. Lottery of the spheres. Cosmic rouelette. Dice flung somewhere in Byzantium. The best is so much silence. Lowered over eyes and lids comes the palm at the end of the mind when the blind begin to see what the seeing being cannot glimpse. Lasangne and falafel. Fateful falafel my staff and stalwart staple, spiced by sauce and strengthened by salad. Dressing oozes from the cupping bread to drip upon a napkin dissolving in the damper patches the liquid leaves. An ill-considered swallow, tonsils burn in reproach. Whose turn will it be to deal? Go fish or figure. Toe the line. Blow the fine. Show what's mine. Row supine. Low Alpine. Grow the vine. A lass! A lack! Of what? Lass and lack and the loss thereof? Love. What a life lived out may miss by the slightest. Jogging to the grave while missing the bus. Dipping into the gravy train when the bucket has been slurped and left all empty and dry. Picking cold flesh from the bones of past disappointments. What now? Stars who shine may see how the hangdog feels. The doleful hound who lurks in the dark of a pound wherein he sulks. Bulky. Package of pork. To squirt dirt in the eye of an urchin. Hear their squeals.

Hair of the dog. Or lair of the hog that bit ye. Or snare of the log that fit me. Last day. No problem, pal. Kevin Spacey expounding wisdom of doing Shakespeare drunk. In depths of beers where we too can become bards or seers. Soot and sated. The overhanging cloud in head abates. The only remedy. The pure cure with bewildering allure. I sprawl twixt panels. And sink while motes of freshest dust will float. Or pander to the next chubby Pandarus awaiting his Troilus to bewitch an eyesore.

Isolde does the splits. With what mingled emotions one faces the fateful prospect of the curtain's final drop? If we had curtains for the dropping. The final moony tableau vivant? In this morning's flowery bundle, there was set for every one within those walls. Rising aroma. The rip and roar go on galore. The glory of sundowner. Sorrows drowned an age bygone. Fleet of wing and shrewd of foot. Where to place the steps. Scissoring motions of hands one makes to simulate the speech that has been dubbed so long a time before. Beyond imaginings. In brewing stool one has yet to emit. In public house of motions made. Shat in deepest shade.

Earthy Jersey's child is full of face. God's quivering toils will soothe the plaice. Make sure to pack a can of Mace and a 45.Ye never know when a mammoth will make a most inopportune entrance to startle vermin away from the washing line whose glimmering cords they are wont to nibble wantonly. Bloomers billowing in the wind. The trunks and dungarees that caper and glide with every gust. Thus one enters the circle of trust. The place where the dust falls short and the ants in their colonies are crazed with lust. Screwing. Squirming. Lascivious little midgets copulating over the nasty hole. Stain on stays will testfiy to any suspect subterranean debauch that comes into its own after the most radiant sunset. When tigers prowl and monkeys howl. Scampering high up tree's trunk as they -5-

jabber in a lather the better to evade the skirmish and tryst of capture. Not for them to be toyed with by the massive cats, lazy and languid in the calm before and post-attack of the ruddy macaque. The smarter sort who bathe their spuds in the sulphrous water before suppertime's advent. Sagacious apes!

Standards among simians! Their grooming is a thing of wonder. Picking through their laden hairs to source the niggling bitches of bugs. Troublesome titbits to serve for snack. Light bite before the main feature. Oscar-winning short and a name to bellow before the gong goes clanging. The clamour of an echo in the thronged air. Like tears for the dying. Poking a pier with a spear. Of the sort to set a tapir to peeing. Its dipthong donkey dong a plaything.

Sponging the ears. Clog of wax will thicken. Settle like spunk in the drain of the showers.

Wherein we wasted quieter hours in fonder emulation of some hero on a nutshell's screen. Buttered nonsense to charm the belles. For their verve is phenomenally beyond the dusty hormonal that needs tottings in every period's journal. To keep tabs on our blobs and droplets of sprat. Fat Jack the trump for cars who eats no lean to polish the exhaust. How a colonel can puff like Godzilla does when Burr fumes. Pouting hair of his had an accident with an ancient hairdryer in blowing machine of smack and grab so long ago before the bun was baked. Night by sleepless night tossing off and dropping seldom to sweeter sleep. Nightmare of orgy with Acapulco waitress. Palindrome still to do too for Gavin Herbert. Here's a neat and sozzled sketch of a roughly coming creation of dodder and waste inherent in tongue to taste and roll the vowel:

Fly's eyes see multitudes multiplied. Amicable amplitude. Refracted sights like view from a celestial point of seeing all. A single drop of water in a tiny pool slowed down to reveal dozens of infinities of delight. The flooding tide of marmalade to drown the ants as they dig their barricade. Impotent efforts felled like a leaning tower of pizza boxes bought below Babel. Whose foundations are unstable. Hence the rocking and the tilting that glides towards a final knocking down of a doomed town. Condemned since word was when. The silent knight rides a noisy stallion. Snorting and pained by prick of spurs and pokes in flanks and glossy burnished sides that sweat in soaking gallons. Squeezing a giant stocking after a foot got sunk deep in bogwater of a mushy patch of marsh. Boiling the drops collected to moisten leaves of ripest tea. Or the drop of honey in a wide deep cup to carress the harried tonsils and charm chords of voice back to the thunderous bass place they occupied before.

Throttling the register when an aria exceeds the span. Cracking like an eggshell femur when attempting a pirouette to surmount the highest mounted notes. Bowl of succulent steaming pasta to inspire the lard who wants coaxing in bulk and appeasing too. Favours to friends attain priority. Heavyweight perspires in dome of sauna. Playing cards with the constable who's stripped to the waist. The bobby's baton hung up in the cupboard and the uniform gracing the homestead bedspread.

Laid out for ducky wee dumpling to iron and tend and sow up patches the scalliwags chose to tear to oppose detention. Ironing board dips in the middle. The legs creak as steam ascends. The brow of the spouse is damp. Her cheeks are red as she puffs and grinds. Back and forth and back while an element bubbles and stews. A line of washing in a stony garden will be hung while the weather withholds its worst. First strings cursed. Buttons and studs get burst. Basin of suds overflows. Chinks in tiles soak up the flood of dregs. Smoky water laden with grime of boots and soils from belts. Grubby as fetid fluff one found after burrowing an index in a puckered navel. A den of drek and downy stuff.

For to fill a children's toy. Bunny brimming full of canny flossing matter. Brat rips the seams. Thus ruins dreams. No substance beyond the goofy buck teeth warped in a frightening smile. No wit behind the gruffly sloping whiskers. Their tips flecked by mushy flecks of the cereal you thought it sweet to feed the lifeless lump of styrofoam and wool and miscellaneous errata. Culled from a conveyor belt where goods meet their premature decay when the system undergoes delay. White noise cancels out all.

Wheels freeze and their cogs spiral to a screeching halt. As tyres deflate. Clocks cease. The wind-up -6-

soldier is wound down. Gears are crushed. Batteries melt. Data error. Snow onscreen. Code all outdated.

Rain again. Would that a city slept. While the gods teemed and wept.

Bees buzz. Fleas flourish. Weariness. Crick in neck from stooping. Damp and dirty ground where churl and his lady lie farther off in human modesty, lulled to sleep after Lysander riddled so very prettily. Prop book on bag. As an easel. Painting pens. Page after page of babbling garbage. But so 'tis we comb through shoals of flatfish to find flying salmon by the seaside. A simple sigh. Last time peeled off Puck's face. And ne'er again shall he embrace. Until World's End. And the loosening hold of Thor on the tide of storm. Old men read the papers. The Scotch tabloid today I sampled whiles waiting for the veggie brekkie. Prince Harry's in trouble again. Cavorting with some concubine and stripping like Jack or Zach Galifakanis down and out in bleary Vegas where Tyson has trudged. Online pics create a sensation. Smashing gossip. Fool in a crockery shop. With a bull's ring to boot. Naked ladies on the third page flash their bubs and scintillatingly curve or arch their backs. To titillate the harried and the jaded. Starved of the brolly and the ivory. What? No more Midsummer. The fact will sink in by slow degrees. We'll spout rosy blather to paper the cracks in the china. Or listen in on other people.

Overheard: He looks like something from Dickens, real plummy and florid. How did Joe Gould propose writing down everything he heard? Easier to copy and paste a receipt or a review or a restaurant menu for posterity. As if the posterior residents care or give a flying. Puck's all cold! Women nattering at another table speak of Gordon Brown. And some lads they know who've made films. One, called Jake, involved with a nice girl, has a childlike sense of humour, into blues, bit of a renaissance man, made a short film replete with puppetry, reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit. For a day-job, he draws storyboards for people.Yup. Some other gay fellow she knows works in Coronation Street.

Industry people, eh? Titled good and great. This boring lady has a childlike voice. Speaking now of single mother who had a gay best friend who donated sperm for her IVF child. Alternative lifestyles.

The gay fellow keeps the child for half the week. Biological father who wanted a more active role in the rearing. Mashed spuds he served, dyed red, white and blue. She laughs. First touch of humour in the narrative. Lots of friends from Drama School who once signed on. Now the cock of the walk. Abigail Blackmoor is her mate who penned a film, Blind Date, that won a tonne of awards. The scribbling pen of the aural voyeur – oxymoronic turn of phrase these days – cannot keep up. She marvels at how well every former pot-head has subsequently done. Quantifiable measurements. She worries that at forty-two she's too old. Her companion is either taciturn or the soul of unspeaking tact taking vow of speechlessness or has some trouble with the language. She's very definitely settled in her role of listener. Maybe she's being paid. Muted reunion. She interjects now, low and mumbling. Thought the accent was from elsewhere. But no – local. They speak of a child who is none of the warmest. Keen not to be seen to seem stupid.Very grown-up, haughty with an absurd and easily affronted dignity. No more credit. Applause in a void.

Latest snaps – and the most detailed too – of Mars have been released. Billions of years of history going back. Mankind's next fateful leap, like dodging puddles by sauntering from cobble to cobble. So. Life on Mars. Sustainable? Or once was? This piques interest. Overheard in Oxford Bar's back room. An ear stirs when they turn up the telly's volume. If only to appease the regulars. All off and siphoning their ritual. Talking heads will not appear and sneer. Aliens nearby. Martian water.

Speculative vision. Such photos could feed. Our nearby neighbour. And how dare the moon have a Yankee flag affixed to her? Marred craters. Colour of Moylan's shirt was so like a screensaver. The dwindling tally of dates in a grandad's diary. Glass thins. Alone again not anymore, nay though nearly.

England and Wales have vast areas of caves, but the volcanic nature of Scotland means that it has relatively few. 'Charlie's hyping there!' cracks the barman while the regular issues his deathly rattle.

Exhalations are heavy from the newly arrived lout who languishes in the corner you occupied yesterday.

We are fond of texting – pretending to – in otherwise awkward situations. Oh, the age we're at.

Drunken Andy staggers up exotic Zarima's wonky stairs. As my glory was to have such. Lonely solitary with MP3 in place and ears all blocked, makes bold to move himself to brighter seat near the gay -7-

window by which we stew and burn our steam – as if assuming steam could be burnt. Literary mag one picked up for free. Full of folly and the jobbing blow's debacle. Uh? Weirdo at the next table has ponytail. Mayhap a raving Rankin nut who even now will attend to Rebus on audiobook. Capably negative. Caution of the catch. I'm saving myself for you. At run's end still harking back and hoping for a sweeter hereafter with da missus.

So hath been, love.

- Sam Coll

You remind me that I hate your hipster hairnets and platform shoes, that Ginsburg quote, the twisted joke and being fried on Thursday mornings from jams and slams and rubbish notes, a bottle down and two thumbs up to Covent Garden, Prague and Brat, the sickly coughs and glory pose, the emphysema curtain call and Leary’s ghost-group on the run.

Your townhouse art-house Warhol phase, your claret, Cognac, caviar, potato soup and plover egg, your token Kafka on display, parents’ prayers and Father Sheedy, the cab ride to your Soho doctor the night you took things way too far and woke up shaking, full of drips and flying high, the waiting lounge and scrabble boards, your neon nightmares, strobe-light dreams, sweaty forehead slipping closer out-of-bounds with selfish smokers, townhouse art-house: not today.

- Stephen Polesel

-8-

There is a sphere, and it is full of seas and we live in it. The water has been there always and the sphere is its home. There is a particular sea which resides to the north and to the east of where we are presently, and it is alive like the others and it moves and changes and it breathes with the moon. Some days it is blue and it lies with the sun in contented semi-slumber, and other days, when the sun is concealed and the wind howls under a mountainous avalanche of cloud, the sea dances with the storm, lapping and leaping and crashing against its many shores. At night, if the light finds the courage to venture down from the stars to its sleek surface, the immense body of wet is known to sing with the souls of innumerable creatures which glitter within its depths. But if the cloud comes at night and the storm returns then the glitter becomes an explosion, and the sea flings its existence onto the canvas of the globe, its home, with a trillion different textures, strokes and patterns, although the only colour on its palette is darkness. This sea is full of mysteries and of subtleties, and it is alive and we cannot see it.

There were once two people and they lived with the sea. The girl had bright yellow hair and she carried a blue cloth wrapped around her ankle, and she came to the sea before she was old enough to speak.

The boy’s hair was dark and wild and he wore a green cloth wrapped around his ankle, and he did not come to the sea because he had been there always. And the sea welcomed the coming of the girl as he did, and both did so silently, for the boy was not yet old enough to speak.

And time kept on its course and it spun the sphere, and the dark-haired boy, the fair-haired girl and the sea continued to grow. And when they were able to speak they discovered that it was rarely necessary, and the boy and the girl lived with the sea, feeling the song of its depths in their core as they swam. After a while (for neither could remember the precise occasion) they found themselves each wearing the other’s cloth around their ankle, and so it was that the Boy with the Blue and the Girl with the Green found themselves reinvented, each possessing half of the other, because on each cloth they had painted an image of themselves.

In the night they would sleep and dance and paint with the sea’s changes, and the Boy with the Blue felt his own song grow from his depths, and the Girl with the Green would open her lungs and her body would fill with his song as she let out her own.

A night came when the mountain of cloud was heavy with ink and the wind did not howl but it screamed, and the sea and its glitters let out a wail that washed over the Girl with the Green and the Boy with the Blue, leaving them shivering and afraid, for never before had they known the sea to be in such dismay. And they were glad for the morning and the sun and the calm, and as they walked along the shoreline, they forgot.

They came across a ship. On the ship was a boy. He had fair hair and he wore the sail of the ship around his waist. He was the lightning that struck in the storm but, as we know, the light of the night goes unseen in the day. And the Boy with the Sail walked alongside the Boy with the Blue and the Girl with the Green, and he explained to them that he came from a fast-flowing river far away, and he yearned to return.

For a while, time spun the three together and the Boy with the Sail was full of sound and he was full of laughter, and he made the Girl with the Green laugh and the Boy with the Blue thought she had never been so beautiful.

And time spun the three of them and sometimes the Boy with the Sail from the Fast-Flowing River would paint with the Girl with the Green, and he painted with brighter colour and he made her laugh.

Some nights they would stay on the ship and the Boy with the Blue was left on the shore with the sea, and the sea was cold and dark, and dark and cold was he. But he untied the blue cloth from his ankle -9-

and held it close, and he saw her hand painted there and he placed his own on top, and she was at least half there, and his smile half complete.

And time spun the three, and the sail of the ship was raised and on the sail was one painting, and the painting contained the Boy with the Sail and the Girl with the Green, and this was the first time in the history of their existence that two spirits had flown in one picture, and it was bright and full of laughter. So the sea was not surprised to feel the ship begin to glide out over its surface once more, and it could not struggle because the sun was shining, and now there was the Boy with the Sail and the Ship and the Girl with the Green and the yellow hair, and the Boy with the Blue was alone on the shore. And the Girl with the Green was blinded by the light of the Boy with the Sail and all she saw was her arrival at the sea when she could not speak and the Boy with the Blue had been there always, and she had not. She was stricken with the sense of not belonging, and she left with the Boy with the Sail.

The Boy with the Blue felt himself alone. And he felt that he had nothing but the sea and half of the girl with the yellow hair, painted on blue cloth around his ankle. But he knew that he did not have the sea. For the sea is alive and it belongs to no one, and it leaps and laps and changes its dance and it was him but not his. And so all he had was the cloth, and half of the girl with the yellow hair. And he hoped that she would remain the Girl with the Green, for she possessed half of him and she knew it.

She did not know the half she owned was his heart. But he would remain the Boy with Her Blue from the Sea, and he would care for the blue cloth and protect it, so that she would always feel whole. But he felt himself begin to fade. For on the open waters of the sea, the Boy with the Sail had shown the girl how his Sail was now painted not only with himself but with her too, and so he had everything, and if she was with him then she would have everything. The Boy with the Sail and the Ship from the Fast-Flowing River had shown her that she could take off the green cloth from her ankle and be happy, and she forgot its importance to the Boy with her Blue but she had not yet forgotten him, so she tied the green cloth to the mast. And time kept on spinning, and the ship drew ever nearer to the mouth of the fast-flowing river, and the sea knew this.

The sea lapped at the feet of the Boy with the Blue and urged him to swim in its water once more, to swim to the girl with the yellow hair and save his own fate. But he would not, for he swam only with the Girl with His Green, and she was not there.

And time continued its course, and the Boy with the Sail caught sight of the mouth of the fast-flowing river and let out a peal of joyous laughter, but the boy was of lightning and his joy caused the sky to crash and the clouds to cave in, and the Boy with the Blue heard this and the sea felt the Boy’s anger and it leapt and danced with the howling of the wind. But the Boy with the Blue was afraid for the girl with the bright yellow hair on the ship in the storm, and he cried out to the sea and begged it to carry them safely, even, even if it was away to the fast-flowing river. But the Boy with the Sail heard only the sound of the voice of the Boy with the Blue on the wind without hearing its meaning, and he thought that the sea belonged to the Boy in the Blue, and in his anger he tore the green cloth from the mast. And the sea leapt up onto the deck of the ship and it lapped at the feet of the Boy with the Sail, begging him to keep the green cloth safe. But the Boy with the Sail was of thunder and words, thunder and words, thunder and words alone. He did not hear the plea, but he saw the salted water at his feet and he leapt back in fear and disgust. And the wind howled and the waves tossed themselves at his feet, and he felt the salt lash at his eyes as the sea clung to him for love of the Boy with the Blue who stood on the shore, every muscle in his body convulsing in anguish, and the Boy with the Sail did not understand but he was afraid, and he cast the green cloth into the sea and the Boy with the Blue felt himself drowning.

- 10 -

And the Boy in the Blue felt himself drowning and the tears fled from his cheeks to the sea, and the tears flowed from the girl with the yellow hair who was no longer the Girl with the Green, and she tried to retrieve the cloth from the waves but they were gone. The ship had entered the mouth of the fast-flowing river, and there was no way to return. And the Boy with her Blue was drowning and she knew it. And it was too late for him to swim and he knew it, but this was what he must do to find and save himself, and he ripped the blue cloth from his ankle and he took hold of the painted hand of the girl with the yellow hair, and he was with her once more. He plunged himself into the sea.

The sea is alive and it dances and changes, dances and changes and breathes with the moon. Its depths are filled with glittering souls, and when the night is still and the light ventures down from the stars to the surface, the body of wet heaves out its song. In the sea, there is a boy with dark curly hair and he once had a green cloth but it was lost. Now he holds a blue cloth. There is a fast-flowing river that leads from our town to the sea at its opening, and the fast-flowing river empties all that fall into it onto the bed of the sea. The water of the river is pure, and a girl with yellow hair is floating her way to its mouth. She is holding a sail, torn down the middle, and she is searching for the boy with her blue cloth. Time is spinning our sphere.

- Oli Itkin

The octopussy Angel had a yen To tickle and scratch the belly of dark matter Where the draculated Batmen From Amazon to Seine Dangle upside down and squeak and flutter O icky sticky fate for stucked in Marmite (While ever the wilder lotusfalls cascade) Art might save us, children might, the car might, Miss Piggy find her Kermit Or thaumaturgic basalt in the peppered shade Manacled, umbilicled in the wondrous dudgeon, Above below before behind and by, See free the notdove dove in the puddled pigeon, Unimagine, unimagine, Now here the nowhere, eye to I to aye - Ronan Murphy

- 11 -

-Lift up your hearts.

Like stones that stray After the strike and Split, our days open Like a mechanical fist.

I called my heart out Of its home ready to Let thump and give Thanks or whimper And let weep. Let The easy load be all The blocks of Giza!

We lost a sliver of Our pride and found A glimmer in the Void. So we see the Apple in Adam and Wonder at the good In his voice. Let Him bring the song In and sing for the City saronged in a One for the busker, In Prozac art, in the Punch of the pint, in Skins and needles Under ultra-violet light: A diamond mined Bodhisattva swims With the sole searchers.

In the bite of our nails At the fable in our Faces. In the division Of our winnings and The Sweet Naive. In The sigh of our Cells at the strength Of ourselves in Abode of Fancy.

In Poldy's last chance He better not screw This one up! From A tubby teenager Kickin' a crow, To minds wrapped In trying to know.

- 12 -

Speak the song so, So sing all of us.

Peace be in you And so all in you.

- Andrew Stephens

He didn't love the blonde girls on the billboards, Their hair didn't move in the wind.

He felt kindly for ladies with downcast eyes, For looking at the world too much was a sin.

Mister Houlihan went home and closed his door, His footsteps sang on his dusty floor.

He had always loved fine machines, And they way they transformed in the sun.

All their gleaming had promised him That there was undreamt work to be done.

Mister Houlihan went home and closed his door, His footsteps sang on his dusty floor.

The trees didn't wave goodnight, As the maudlin darkness fell.

The streetlights were no comfort, And Mister Houlihan didn't feel well.

Mister Houlihan went home and closed his door, His footsteps sang on his dusty floor.

- Liam Wrigley

Far out in the waves I see her, black hair like tar, and green eyes shimmering.

Sitting on a mound of grey rocka Siren And men on ships sail round and round her and watch her, and maybe throw her some pirate gold, as they wait to hear her call.

But her voice is swallowed up by the beeping horns on the m50.

- Katie Black - 13 -

Three glasses were on the table with cigarettes, an ashtray, matches, several coins; and beer in the glasses threaded with gas; and the ashtray clean, the hands being tensed, pocketed, or agitating their separate fellows.

“The radio suggests snow,” said the waiter, whose white shirt showed yellow and grey as he reached to place the olives, “but out of this sky I have to wonder” – because the sky, Javier noticed as though for the first time that morning, was clear, and freely emptying its light.

“Out of this sky, expect anything,” Adrián said.

The light was full of colour and ice.

“What time’s darkness coming in tonight?” Javier asked.

“Better to ask when night’s coming in today,” said the waiter, moving off to watch the Plaza from under the colonnade.

“Early,” Adrián said, “and earlier than before.”

(Twenty-four fingers were scoring cold palms, tap-tapping, shaping pebbles from lint – twenty-three, that is, Adrián having left one of his in San Sebastián in ’36 as well as a toe in Bilbao and, he claimed, his spleen, rotting somewhere along the Corunna Road.

“But my heart I’ll leave in here in Madrid, torn out personally if so required, to place uncrushable beneath the hoof of King Philip’s steed.”)

Then Carlos went shakily for his glass and spilled foam over Adrián’s crotch.

“Ah,” said Carlos.

“Bastard! And who suggested we order beer on a November morning anyway? At least brandy might have warmed things up a bit down there.” He called for a rag.

But the waiter was busy: a gust of wind had lifted a parasol from outside the next bar and carried it across the square, dragging its metal base with such a noise that the waiter seemed to cry out as though the attack had come early and the shells were already in space. Then he grabbed the parasol and managed to subdue it, holding its struggles while the man from the other bar came running, both laughing now like hunters over a wild white beast brought down.

“Well done!” Adrián said. “And now a rag, O mighty one, if you please!”

It was time, Javier found, to light a cigarette. It grew moist between his lips as he fumbled at matches and as soon as he had it lit was barely usable, but nonetheless his hand came out of his pocket, into the cold air, and gripped the cigarette with horn-nailed fingers, and the smoke coiled around them as the wind died.

The waiter ducked into the bar and Adrián followed him, swearing.

They sat together. Javier looked through smoke at the bronze mounted King and Carlos, who was a year or two younger but looked about sixteen, looked at Javier, maintaining the silence until he asked in a small voice for a cigarette.

Javier gestured at the packet.

“Thanks,” Carlos said. “I could do with one. I feel bad about that other fellow’s trousers.”

“Adrián. And I wouldn’t worry. Adrián’s trousers have enjoyed worse spillages than beer.”

“I’m just afraid I’ll have him in trouble if Casales sees he’s been spoiling his uniform.”

“Casales is too afraid of Adrián to say much about it.”

Adrián is important, Javier sometimes told himself. In Adrián we trust. With Adrián we’ll come through, this Adrián whose flesh has joined itself to the nation’s by the priestly action of Falangist steel.

“I noticed he’s missing the ring finger from his left hand.”

“He lost it in San Sebastián, at the start of everything,” Javier said. “And a toe, somehow, in the defence of Bilbao. And if you get to know him he’ll start telling you that a piece of shrapnel contrived to precisely remove his spleen during the flight south.”

“Is it not bad for a soldier to be missing his spleen, especially just before a battle?”

- 14 -

“Not for Adrián.”

Who had sat back down. His crotch was still damp and the odour of beer quickly soured was upon him. Without looking at Carlos he said, “So, little one, you’re expecting a battle?”

Carlos dropped his cigarette and began searching beneath his chair. “I – well, yes, surely? Isn’t it, well – and by the way sorry about the –” “Have you ever been in a battle?”

“No.” “Have you ever seen a dead man?”

“Yes, at my great-grandfather’s – well, no.”

“Have you ever fired a gun?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, who at?”

“At a stuffed mannequin on the range.”

Adrián unfurled his leg across the table-top and laughed. “Give me a cigarette, Javier.”

“But surely,” Carlos went on, “surely there’ll be fighting soon, big fighting –” Adrián sipped his beer. “Certainly.Very big fighting. The biggest yet. The end of all of us. And the sooner everyone else realises that these silly Internationals are nothing but pimply intellectuals out for some grand adventure in a country whose language they can barely speak, the sooner we can let our hopes go and die like men. Come on, Javier, you prick, let me have one.”

Javier tossed him a cigarette. Carlos sat looking at the burnt-out end of his, chewing his thumbnail.

“So we haven’t a chance?” he said.

Adrián said nothing. Javier began to imagine the younger man’s body disintegrated in the light of a fiery sky, his hair burning, his veins unwinding from his organs, his bones detaching one from the other, and so on, and so on, but found that the beer was making him tired, and that such visions were boring to him now, who’d seen that man last year after the bombing of Teruel with the dust from the broken street in his bloodless wounds, and in his eyes, and on the dried-out tongue stiffened like wood in his mouth, and he’d been bored by all of that, and by everything too that came after it, and it was better now to sit with beer and cigarettes and hear waiters question the possibility of snow.

Adrián gestured with his good hand: a brief wave, then three fingers pointed down, circling the table, another round please.

(Nevertheless their guns worked, they had bullets to put in them, the Manzanares was a fine river, its bridges would hold, and a dead man in Spain, says Lorca, is more alive than a dead man anywhere.)

- David Lynch

- 15 -

I Berlin, several months previous. The season was almost summer.

II I lived above a camera shop on Bleibtreustrasse, sleeping in a tiny room attached to a larger white atelier. Within this space a kitchen also grew. The floorboards had just been lime-washed. I contributed to exhibitions at Der Turm. Time progressed and I photographed extensively, furiously, my route to Der Turm, walking slowly a street to Savignyplatz-Bahnhof, the first week starting at a reasonable pace, featuring in the frame limbs of many trees and discernible elements of nature.

I reached a restrained approximation of 50 exposures.

With a gasping weekly increase, ultimately leading to 950 photographs a day, the realisation that something in my mind’s working did not quite fit anymore, that something had been loosened or jumped out of place with fright, had arrived at my feet.

I picked it up for further examination; at first I did not recognise its form, turning it over, curious scrutiny. It was not until some time had passed in its company that the reason for its familiarity began to unveil itself to me, and as it did so, I knew then that once something has existed, it never ceases to, it is only the proof which vanishes, and this is what I saw when it disrobed before my eyes, that the past continues to disrobe itself in a never-ending loop and one must peer particularly close to see it do so in the shadows and the in air we take in our lungs, moments of elapsed time which continue to play out on bronchioles to the beating of our breathing, in a cavity with good acoustics.

It looked vaguely like a ticket for the car ferry, Deutschland, from Gedser to Grossenbrode Kai on July 31, 1954.

III I stepped off a bus and crossed a bridge with two cyclists and an elderly woman carrying a Dachshund as one would an ill-tempered child. It was mid-morning as I walked with intent toward the Kulturforum, maybe 10am. There was little foot traffic, I am perplexed as to why. Passing die Neue Nationalgalerie to my left - linear - and then stopping for a moment to engage with the Matthäukirche, densely redbricked as a Danish church, I enjoyed a view framed by deciduous trees, though I am hesitant to name a particular species – a view of a clearing, in which four chairs were arranged, bolted to the ground, and upon one chair sat a woman. Light fell delightfully in that clearing, and it appeared before me as a stage might, illuminated with uniform sunbeams, Scene II of Act 3 perhaps and I, waiting in the darkened wings to draw the curtains, lacked a script and would have to perceive, from the gestures of the silent woman, who made no muscle-move in that time, the moment to sweep the scene away.

[Photo: 71 were taken in that time. Leaves. Tree-shadow. Chairs. Brickwork.]

- 16 -

IV The Gemäldegalerie is white, such a surgical white I took the idea that it was not through a gallery I walked, I paid not an entrance fee, but admittance and full-board for a few nights at a sanatorium.

Shivering and coughing and feigning tuberculosis, I was in recovery, having regained sufficient strength in the preceding months to be able to walk unaided to each painting, though still under the pleasantly watchful eye of a supervisor, while others clad in soft white robes were pushed in wheelchairs and sundry walking devices by perfectly charming helpers. They were subjected to gauche observations these helpers appended to each painting, and patients feigned laughter and amusement as I do tuberculosis, withering because a philistine was their sole source of mobility.

Moving slowly I hung like a painting before each one and stayed for a considerable length at Rembrandt’s self portrait of 1634, the inquisitor relentlessly staring from the moment of his oil-based birth, the same eyes as a Russian I know, the same curving lips centuries old.

Many new compositions of old masters were made during the visit to the Gemäldegalerie as photography is not prohibited.

The thrust of Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia, 1602.

A Mantegna Christ child mummified in sleep, 1470.

Red–haired dangerous Jesus.

I padded softly from chamber to the hall to rotunda to chamber again.

Brueghel’s Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559, from which I captured just 12 Proverbial scenes before I was pushed away by a bald man shouting disapproval of sixteenth-century Dutch obscenity, a petulant bloated face sweating like a window of condensation and I immediately thought it imperative he be removed from the Gemäldegalerie under the arm, balanced on the hip of the woman with the Dachshund from the bus.

A convalescent pulled the warm white robe tighter across her breasts to keep out the draught of his ignorance.

I continued to photograph the space in which I found myself.

[Photo: of Gemäldegalerie, including enfilade shots of those sitting on benches through the door frames, etc and views of outside, street etc.]

And the lines framing scenes of the street outside, the perpetual construction of new lines linear structures lines straight uncurved no angles within the line but yes when it turns a corner, sharp corner not a bend all converging on the horizon line that does not ever exist as we move closer to it but always runs a little ahead, the seeming point of / \ convergence but never quite occurring, they run || parallel and never meet what if eventually they merge I cannot stop my index finger from pressing that elixir-shutter release I am so frenzied the supervisor seized my convulsing right arm to lead me to Art Deco varnished wooden seating in the corner and sought to calm.

[Photo: of ear, part of face, the parquet floor, seating, window frame, blurred to indicate movement and confusion] Helpers with their consumptives peered over shoulders to see the delirium, thankful the patients they - 17 -

pushed could do little more than splutter a blooded cough or faint.

I start to feel a relapse.

- Kerstina Mortensen

1 Disappear with me under these covers and I’ll show you a magic trick, with two jelly babies, a bottle of poppers and a half eaten bar of Twix.

2 Relax! Afterwards, we’ll lie back and laugh together about how raw and slippery my visceral moves were: with a jar a peanut butter, a head of broccoli and a pork chop.

3 My tongue, rough from previous ecstasy is very tough and cracked, so roll over, lie on your belly and I’ll give your back a scratch.

4 My fluctuating floppy is flaccid like a dysfunctional flipper trying to fit into a flange.

It’s frightening, so no use flattering, I’ll still fidget, face flaming, and flummoxed about the five inch flamingo coloured flapper flattened between your fingers!

- Niall McCabe

- 18 -

Somewhere above the boompoint a citric clarity falls over everything around you.You're going to have to take my word for that unless you're willing to see for yourself. There's too much that you'll, we'll never know first hand, so much so that we'll never know that we never knew it. Maybe that's what heaven will be. A time-lapse video of all the experiences that we missed out on, all kinds of colour and sorrow and love in one volcanic bloom.

One particular thing that most people don't know is that in the middle of a crane, between the bars that meet at right-angles to form keep-out cuboids, one on top of another, up into the clouds - is a ladder. A handy little, narrow ladder, sturdy as anything, and if there's nobody around to stop you, you can climb right to the top. High enough that you need not fear living the rest of your life locked in paralysis. A slip is a slip to certain death. High. Sharper air and thinner blood. A height that dampens sound from the city below rising like CFC chemicals. Everything withers to a whisper before it hits the atmosphere. The odd horn or siren, maybe a drunken scream across the street - it all fades to a tuneless hum beneath the night sky once you travel far enough upward.

The way the bars of a ladder fit to an enclosed palm, and the way an impulse can mature and harden into the most raw devotion. How a whim evolves into a need somewhere between the twentieth and sixtieth rung. There are roots of desire and adventure inside your soul that are waiting for water, captivating and indescribable as the colour blue. It takes immersion in a moment that you cannot forget, breaking your diet composed solely of sitting down and sipping tea. Taking a scissors to whatever keeps you tethered to the earth. Belief that you can look down upon a cirrus cloud using your own muscle and bone.You can't, but the people who try learn a lot more than the people who don't.

In Rathmines, County Dublin, stands a red-brick clock tower with an oxidized copper top. Steel hands that point to letters that spell out numbers to tell the time to people who, de facto carry an average of three clocks on them at all times. Standing at twice the height of a two story McDonalds, and the cinema, it's the only thing to catch the eye. Cranes and construction work seem to bleed into the background of the world as we see it, works in progress we politely ignore like - leaving builders and contractors to their work like we would frustrated artists before a blank canvas.

Looking back, I'm not sure I knew it was there until I shrugged off my backpack and left it to slump against the outrigger and pressed my nubuck shoe to the rusty bottom rung.

No gloves on a winter night, I felt like a kid who gets his tongue stuck to an ice pop. Like a dumb, wet puppy - shivering at first. My muscles froze and shook and I worried they'd snap or crack from the pressure. They didn't. Rather they thawed and loosened and as I conquered my climb a queasy security melted over me. I measured the potential damage I'd suffer as I journeyed on. Broken ankles - I play double or nothing with ten more rungs, broken legs - stick or twist? Stick. I'd been nervously exhaling, asthmatic breaths in followed by puffing my cheeks out to empty my lungs and suffocate my fear. Now my teeth were gritted, jaws locked - because a man should rise before he falls. Because there is nothing like vertigo and adrenaline to turn a human into enriched uranium, and unless you're willing to try it out you'll just have to trust me.

Looking down at the clock tower I could see minute hand creak towards midnight. People floated

- 19 -

across the footpaths and cars rolled down the roads like specks of dust blown off an old book. None of them are looking at the crane and even if they did they probably wouldn't see me. They couldn't see me climb and they wouldn't hear me fall, not that anyone would or could catch me anyway. My heart begun to pump butterflies the longer I looked down. My guts were falling and fluttering like confetti. Climbing was the only way out of this mess, so I hauled myself up towards the top looking forward to lying down that little bit closer to the clouds.

From 180 feet, you see the essence of a city dissected before you. Arterial streets ebb and flow with blood cells carrying oxygen from organ to appendage, from limb to limb to limb. This devastating height exposes the world for the beating heart that it is, valves and chambers that squeeze and pump in tandem with the people who live inside. Relief undid my own ball-of-yarn heart, tugged the one loose string and let me breathe easy once I lay flat on my stomach and watch the night flow in and out of time from the safety of the grate. An excited heat gushed through me, it would see me through until the sunlight of the early morning would split my sleep. *

*

*

The peach pink dawn dripped off the sky like morphine, and I was too numbed to feel the steel-toed boot kick my exhausted ribs to wake me up.

'How the fuck did you get up here?' an incredulous Dublin accent asked, sleep obscuring his face from view.

I had to laugh, looking back upon how easy it had actually been. I've done it, mate, you've done it.

It's not all that much harder than spilling out onto the pavement once you've tumbled out of bed.

I didn't say anything to him, in the end, it's not as though I could come out the conversation looking like anything but a nut-job, so I let it be. Below the city buzzed harder now, like a rattled hive, exhaust fumes and exhaustion and stronger chemicals than the soft breaths of the night before.

Upon touching base I only half-noticed that my bag was gone. I gave the world a stiff, sore shrug and pocketed my hands trembling from the ache of achievement. Our dreams are like our enemies, there are none so dangerous as the ones we don’t know we have. A vainglorious smirk twitched my lip as I turned my shoes homeward, my heart still frozen in a victorious pose.

If Heaven is a time-lapse video of all the experiences we miss during our time on earth, then mortality is the moments we set apart to experience by themselves - the memories we choose to carve from an infinite clay and keep forever. A sum of the things we can't forget, moments too important to blend with one another.

And it is not what we do with our lives that has ever been the question, only in what order we do everything that we can.

- Carl Kinsella

- 20 -

Those little pills. Those little magical pills. From the first one she put in his mouth he became more alert and responsive. After a week no test of primate motor skills or reaction time was even suitable.

He began to speak. Just the odd word at first. Her name. She cried. And then sentences formed. She didn't have an animal. She didn't even have a baby. She had someone who could speak and listen. She took him home before the ethics hearings. Claimed the drugs had killed him. So it didn't matter when she lost her position. She never entertained guests, so she had enough money.

In the mornings she woke to his childish voice. It called out: "Melll!"

She'd get up, dress and go down the stairs to his cage. He'd either be lying wrapped in his blankets, or up by the door, even rattling a little on the bars when he really wanted her attention.

She gazed on his shiny fur, his broad smile. The goofy look he gave her. He was already close to full size, but he was still her little Richard. For a chimp he would've been an adult, but for an animal like him, maturity was much more than physical growth. He was her finest work, she mused. And she was going to see him through to completion.

"Melll?" he said again.

"Yes, Richard?"

"I humgwy."

"I know. So am I. Breakfast!"

She undid the latch on his cage door. He could reach through the bars and do it himself by week one, but he had enough manners to wait until Mel was awake. He climbed out of the cage and walked to the kitchen holding her hand. She checked his diaper and then let him sit at the table. He'd eat nuts and bananas and she'd have toast or breakfast cereal or pancakes with bacon and syrup.

"I taste?" he'd say. and even though this food wasn't good for chimps, she'd always relent and say yes.

"What that?" he said one day, pointing over the kitchen sink.

"That's a window, Richard."

"No. What that?"

"A tree."

"I know tree. No. What that?"

"My garden."

"No!" he pointed again, frustrated that he wasn't being understood. He pointed and spread his arms far apart and pointed once more.

"That's the world, Richard."

She'd read to him at bedtime. Even taught him the alphabet. He learned quicker than. a child would. She moved his dosage up to twice a day. He was reading in no time, though he still often asked her to read to him. He preferred that, but she insisted that he read unaided and they would discuss the material afterwards.

"Try this one, Richard. It's very good." she said as she handed him one from the shelf. He had been standing there for twenty minutes unsure of what to read next. He was getting through Roald Dahl books in a single afternoon and was beginning to find them quite childish. He was more than an ape, after all.

"For whom the bell ... tolls?" he read the cover out loud.

"It's about the Spanish civil war.You remember when we read about that, don't you?"

- 21 -

He nodded.

"Is it hard?"

"Not for you.You're very smart."

"I know." he said.

She sat back on the couch and read the New Caledonia Medical Journal. They had no idea of the kind of thing she'd accomplished and she had no intention of letting them know, thank you very much, because Richard was like no other animal. She knew that if a paper got published on him, she'd been inundated with people coming to see her. She'd have renown, but she didn't need that. She had everything she could have wanted.

He sat next to her and read for hours and it was the quietest she'd ever seen him since he'd learned how to talk. The silence lasted so long it jolted her when he started hopping up and down, shrieking and pointing at the page with a wicked smile on his lips.

"Richard!"

"Robert! He's sexing Maria! He's doing sex to her! He is!"

He was howling again and pointing at the book and laughing.

"No, Richard. They're having sex together. A man doesn't do sex to a woman. It's something they share."

"Okay." he said. "It's very good. I like this book."

He kept reading novels and loved them all, except anything by Fitzgerald, whose books he would tear to shreds until the shreds were too small to keep tearing.

"No balls. No guts." he said of the man who wrote The Great Gatsby.

He liked to read stories of war, stories of drifters and stories of men and women. The ballsier the better was what he would say. As well as novels, he'd grab her gossip magazines and scan them for whatever dirty stories he could find.

"I'd really rather you read real literature."

"But these are funny."

He'd sit and laugh and read.

He was childish and prone to foul language on occasion, but he always offered to help around the house. One day when she was turning on the oven he came in and asked if he could cook dinner.

"No, no. It's fine, thanks." she said.

He frowned to himself.

"Is it because I'm a monkey?" he said.

He was an ape, not a monkey. He knew that, but he thought ape made him sound primitive.

"No. It's just my job to make dinner.Your job is to eat it."

When dinner was over, he sat down on the sofa to read. She came in with the sweeping brush and he jumped up and tried to take it from her.

"Can I help? I'll help."

"No thanks."

"Is it because I'm a monkey?"

He looked sad and hopeless, his arms hanging loosely by his sides and touching the ground. She hugged him.

"No, Richard. It's not that.You're not here to clean. I want you to be my friend and talk to me. That's all I want."

He thanked her by cuddling up next to her that night as she drank wine in front of the television.

"Why do you drink that every night?" he asked her after a long, cosy silence.

- 22 -

"I never go out and I like that taste. It makes me happy."

"Is it nice?"

"It's cheap wine."

"Can I taste it?"

Initially she refused, but he won the argument. Even though he was under twenty one in human years, he was in fact an adult in his own species and really, he insisted, she had no right to tell him he couldn't drink alcohol.

"Fine," she said. "Go get a glass."

He loved the wine from his first sip. When he got through the first glass, she gave him a second. When a naked woman appeared on the TV screen, he started screaming.

"Yeah, baby!" he said. "Yeah! I love you! I love you!"

"All right, you're drunk. Time for bed."

"But I want to stay up with you."

"I'm going to sleep too. Come on."

She went up to her bed and tried to sleep, but could hear him downstairs, howling quietly and muttering to himself.

It only took him two glasses of wine to get drunk that first night, but in his defence, he was only a little chimp. Still, he soon he could handle a bottle a day. Before no time at all he liked to drink two bottles. She didn't mind. Getting a tolerance is part of growing up. She moved up to two bottles too and they spent their days drinking and talking about her problems. Only, she had no problems, because finally had a friend to talk to. So they talked about science, and her travels in Africa for the PhD, her primate studies there. All of this bored him. Most of all, they talked about all the great writers, except Fitzgerald.

They got a little drunk every night. He asked if he could try her cigarettes a few times, but she always said no and stuck to it firmly. The wine was one thing, but smoking animals was a moral line that she could not cross.

Around this time she wanted to stop grinding pills into his food. She decided it was enough. He was already as smart as any man she had met.

"I don't want to just be clever." he said. "I want to be a genius!"

"You already are! You're the smartest member of your species!"

But it wasn't enough for him.

"Let me have more! Even one pill a day. One measly pill. What if I lose my brains and revert back? I don't want to be one of them."

"You won't. Similar compounds have been tried before. Cognitive ability stayed the same."

"But that was with macaque monkeys! Fuck macaques! They're ugly fucks with little dicks! And they never got as far as I have. Nobody has. I'm unique. We need to keep going! Please?"

He smiled at her with hope. She refused, but then as always she relented and said yes. And so he kept taking the medicine.

He became smarter and smarter with each passing day. He read more and more difficult books. Books that had been sitting unfinished on her shelf for years. And he became more human, and more comfortable in home life, lying around on the couch all day and reading as she cleaned the house. And he was always drunk, but she didn't mind because she was always drinking a little too.

One night of especially hard drinking, she stumbled out into the hallway and came by his cage. The smell coming out of it disgusted her. She called at him in the sitting room behind her.

- 23 -

"Richard!? Did you make a mess, dear?"

He leaned against the wall to steady himself.

"Whatsat?"

"You know how to use the bathroom. What is this?"

"I'm a monkey. I shit in a cage. IT'S WHAT WE FUCKING DO!" And because she was a woman who wasn't used to being shouted at, had been lonely for most of her life since her mother died and had destroyed her own career just to have a friend she could love, she started crying.

"Aww, Mel! Cheer up!" he said. "I'm sorry. I'll clean it up in the morning. Don't worry. And I'll make us both a hangover breakfast. I love you."

He took her hand. She just cried louder.

"I'm so alone. I have no job and I'm ugly. I'm just an ugly middle aged woman." she said.

"Honey, you're only forty and you look great. Any man would be lucky."

She smiled.

"No he wouldn't." she laughed at him.

"Sure he would. Lucky bastard. The sexy legs on you never got old."

She stretched out her legs. She was wearing a night dress. She only wore jeans and baggy shirts outside, but she had a night dress for when she was alone.

"You think so?" she said.

"Yeah. I love your legs .Lift it up, let me see some thigh.You're a little supermodel."

She lifted her dress a little. She had some pockmarks of cellulite, but admittedly no much.

"There! That's a gorgeous lady." he said.

"You make me laugh." she said. "Thank you. I feel good."

"Me too."

He reached out and stroked her thigh with his hairy hands. She recoiled.

"What are you doing? Bad!" "Lift it higher. I want to see pussy and ass."

"Stop! You're drunk.You need to go to bed."

"So are you. How's about we go to bed together?"

"No." He made a tragic expression and a single tear dripped from his eye.

"Is it because I'm a monkey?"

"YES!" she shouted. "...and also, that is no way to speak to a lady."

He scowled and his breathing was heavier. Then he really started weeping like the baby he had been when she used to bottle feed him in the university labs.

“You mean never?” he finally said.

“Look, Richard…”

"But, but, I thought I was going to fuck you one night. Just one night some time. At least once."

"NO! No, Richard. Look, that's crazy. A human woman can't sleep with an animal-" "DON'T CALL ME THAT!" He jumped on her back. Clawed at her. He ripped her clothes. She fell to the floor and he began pulling her panties down. She tried to push him off and he hit her in the stomach.

"No, Richard. Noooo!"

"It's not Richard. My name is Dick. Shut up!"

He had his in hand, long and off pink grey. Remarkable for a chimpanzee at four inches erect. He took great pride in it during all those fruitless nights of masturbation. Even though he was alone, he knew in his heart he could one day put it to good use. And it had all been practice for this moment he was about to live.

- 24 -

"NOOOOO!" He got between her legs, forced them open, mounted and rammed it in. He hit it hard and fast and thrusted deep like he was spearing an animal. And then he came inside her. And got off.

She lay there naked except for her bra, crying. His jizzum dribbled out of her opening a little. He felt ashamed of her now. She didn't look like the girls in movies and magazines, the muses of Hollywood or the nymphs of New York. He went and took her cigarettes and she was still lying there, crying when he got back.

"Look. It's been passionate, but ..." he sighed. This was truly hard for him. "I have to leave. I don't know why.You've been good to me. I guess I'm just crazy."

He walked out the door and into the street and there it was. He was in the world he had spent so long looking out on from the kitchen. Her sobs still came through the walls. He lit a cigarette.

It's a fine art working a lighter with no opposable thumbs.

He tried to smoke it, but it made him want to vomit. He threw it away.

"Euchhh. Don't know why she uses these." but he held on to the pack. He needed to go down town and find the bars that never closed all night.

Maybe he could use those cigarettes later. He headed down along the road in the same direction as the traffic. Surely they knew the way.

He saw a pretty young thing coming up the road. She was on the other side. He lit another cigarette, stood up on his hind legs and started swinging his arms as he walked. He checked her out as she got closer. She was a skinny olive skinned brunette in a short silver dress with a piece of red tinsel draped over her bare shoulders.You could see hints of ass cheek up her skirt. Walking in her high-heels like a newborn giraffe, she had to be drunk already.

He yelled across the road at her.

"Hey! Legs! baby! BABY! I LIKE THAT!�

And then he howled at the sky like some kind of a man.

- Colm Sewell

- 25 -