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NORTH WEST WORDS ISSUE 3 SPRING 2015

Renata Visser

POETRY FICTION ART MEMOIR INTERVIEW

North West Words Spring 2015

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CONTENTS 4 Editorial

Poetry 6 Irrevocable Moyra Donaldson

7 When he came home Clare McDonnell

9 The Sycamore Karen O’Connor

10 The Blue Room Garrett Igoe

12 The Bees in the Privet Mary O’Brien

13 On Reading Sylvia Plath’s ‘Letters Home’ Mary O’Brien

14 Three Bedrooms in Chronological Order Grainne Tobin

15 Unsayable Susan Flynn

17 Now Edward O’Dwyer

18 The trajectory of hope Mairead Donnellan

19 Plantsman Imelda Maguire

Fiction

21 Silence and Storm Sarah Khan

27 M.M.R. Eddie McClay

31 All the Isms Dolores Walsh

36 Half Hoping Teresa Sweeney

Non-Fiction

40 Profile: Renata Visser

42 Profile: The Ruby Ragdolls

44 A Rockaway Breakfast Eileen Condon

Poetry

46 My daughter gives me a sapling Greagoir O’Duill

47 Tir na nOg Greagoir O’Duill

48 Scathan Dubhan O’Longain

49 Ode to a Knight and Gale Tess Adams


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50 I will make poetry Kieran Furey

52 As I get out in mid-November light James Finnegan

53 Drumcliffe Graveyard Triona McMorrow

54 Burst Helen Harrison

56 Sounds Ann Egan

57 I Met My Lover With Another Noel King

58 Two Almond Granitas Kate Dempsey

60 The Aesthetics of Light Shelley Tracey

Submissions welcome Please send up to three poems, or up to 2000 words of fiction, or up to 800 words of memoir to [email protected] by May 1 2015 for the Summer (June) issue. Include an up to date bio and a photo. If you are an artist or photographer, or reviewer who would like to submit work please contact us at [email protected] North West Words will publish three issues a year Autumn-Winter, Spring and Summer Editorial team Maureen Curran Eamonn Bonner Denise Blake Copyright remains with the authors for all work in North West Words

mailto:[email protected]



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Editorial

Welcome to Issue 3. When we began to put North West Words magazine together for the first time

last May the editorial of the third issue seemed a long way off. It’s delightful to see this magazine

come into being again. We’ve got 23 poems, 4 short stories, a memoir piece, an interview with local

band The Ruby Ragdolls and all of it set off beautifully by Renata Visser’s artwork.

The award ceremony for the Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize was our most

recent event and many of the winning and shortlisted poems are featured in this issue. We have

author Susan Lanigan in conversation next week and plans underway as always to bring the best of

writing to Letterkenny.

The schools poetry competition opens again in March, returning to its original place on North West

Words Spring calendar, and we are already making early preparations for the third North West

Words Writing Weekend. Keep an eye on our website and Facebook page for the latest updates.

Submissions are coming in again for the next issue, please read the guidelines below and send us

your best work. We invite local writers to come along to Café Blend the last Thursday of the month

to open mic. Reading your work aloud is surely one of the most rewarding aspects of writing and we

look forward to welcoming you to Letterkenny.

I hope you enjoy this issue, we welcome your comments via Facebook or the editor email below.

Until the next time, happy writing and reading,

Maureen

Please send up to three poems, or up to 2000 words of fiction, up to 500 words of flash fiction or up to 800 words of memoir to [email protected] by May 1 2015 for the Summer issue. Include an up to date bio and a photo. If you are an artist or photographer, or reviewer who would like to submit work please contact us at [email protected]

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Donegal Creameries North West Words

Poetry Prize Winner 2014

Winner Moyra Donaldson pictured with

North West Words’ Eamonn Bonner


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Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize Winner 2014 Irrevocable Things We lead him to the chosen spot. A bright day, without clouds, autumn sun still holding its heat. He trusts us; we’ve never given him reason not to trust us. The sky blue drug goes in, we see him feel it hit and then we watch helpless the violence of his falling and terrible tumbling over himself, his desperate lurching refusal to stay down though unable to stay up; it goes on forever, until he’s prone at last and Claire puts her hand over his eye and he gives in to the shuddering darkness. A bullet loudly, thankfully, finishes it. It has dragged the heart from me; I want to cry wait old horse, wait, come back, we’ll do it better, it was a kindness that we meant. All the regret for every hurt I’ve ever caused, sadness for everything I’ve ever lost, is pouring through this rent, that wound, his drawn back lips, his emptied eyes. Moyra Donaldson

Moyra Donaldson is the author of six collections of poetry, Snakeskin Stilettos, Beneath the

Ice, The Horse’s Nest and Miracle Fruit, from Lagan Press, Belfast. Her Selected Poems was

published in 2012 by Liberties Press, Dublin and a new collection, The Goose Tree, was

published in June 2014, also from Liberties Press. Her most recent project was a

collaboration with photographic artist, Victoria J Dean on a project, Dis-ease, which

culminated in an exhibition and a publication launched in July 2014. Her poetry has won a

number of awards, including the Allingham Award, the National Women’s Poetry

Competition and the Cuirt New Writing Award. Both her poetry and her short stories were

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Joint Second Place in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014

When he came home

did you notice

his sexy sports car

his neat expensive suit,

his highly polished shoes?

Did you notice

how his eyes did not meet hers

when her greeting was spoken,

how he bent to pick up a sweet paper

from the floor, before he answered?

Did you notice how forceful

his voice was when he did reply,

how he twisted the paper in his fist,

and flung it into the bin,

and how, at last, he met her eye,

his strong hand briefly on her shoulder?

Did you notice how the child jumped

when he entered the room,

how quiet and still he remained

in his corner on the floor, his toy car trapped

between the table leg and the shiny shoe,

the sweet in his mouth un-chewed?

Did you notice how the dog cowered

when he came near, made herself small,

submissive, almost invisible at his feet?

Did you notice how eager he was

to show us to the door,

when we suggested it was time to leave-

the master of the house?

Clare McDonnell

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Clare Mc Donnell was born in England of Irish parents but has long

been resident in Co. Donegal. Her first collection of poetry, Feeling

for Infinity, was published by Summer Palace Press in 2006. Clare has

had poems published in Poetry Ireland Review, the SHOp, and several

anthologies.

Renata Visser

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Joint Third Place in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014

The Sycamore

A member of the maple family, with its stunning veined leaves, reminds me of your hands, the way they died before you, lying on the blue woven hospital blanket, waiting for my touch, my ministering of Vaseline Intensive Care, carefully lathered into the parched skin. So much easier than all the useless words I’d learned to that age, so much kinder than the lies I couldn’t tell and when I saw your eyes flutter to sleep I would release your feet from the hospital corners, touch your burning soles — see you register my presence — then coat my palms and rhythmically, heel to toe, bring your feet back to life, letting them know they were still loved, still part of the body that no longer supplied what they needed. And they always blossomed, growing straight, unfurling like a leaf, those long gracile toes, moving up along each to the nail bed. And I could see the tension in your hunched shoulders melting into the pillows, your face relaxing, your bed-hair sitting calmer, moving rhythmically up your calves going, going, because there was nothing to say, because you had a few moments of relief, because you would have done it for me, sitting by my bed, holding on to any part of me willing to stay. Karen O’Connor

Karen O’Connor is winner of Listowel Writers’ Week Single Poem Prize and the Nora Fahy Literary Awards for short story. Karen’s second poetry collection, Between The Lines, was published by Doghouse Books in 2011. www.karenoconnor.co.uk/

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http://www.karenoconnor.co.uk/


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Joint Third Place in the Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014

Blue Room A rectangular space, twenty feet by ten, pale blue walls, navy marmoleum floor, corner sink, soap dispenser, electric couch, every child’s plaything. On the beech desk, a computer screen, keyboard, coiled stethoscope. Through straight beige blinds, in bronze, “The Tree of Life”. Today, like every other I greet them at the door, “How are you getting on?” I listen, take a history, then listen more.. auscultate chests, palpate abdomens, inspect florid rashes, detect a foetal heart, diagnose and treat, quietly, in confidence. For blue walls don’t speak, parchments hanging in thin gold frames won’t tell what the mother said about her son. Nor will the young woman on the Lavery calendar breath a word about the grown man crying, when he discloses what happened to him as a child. At six pm I close the door, softly, on The Tree of Life. Garrett Igoe

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Garrett Igoe lives and works in Virginia Co. Cavan. Last year he joined

"Litlab" the Cavan Meath writers group and is delighted to be spending

more time writing. His poems, anecdotes and articles have been

published in the Irish Medical Times, The Writer (Journal of Medical

Writers UK ), Medicine Weekly, the Irish Medical News and the British

Medical Journal. He is a practising GP in Virginia.

Renata Visser

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Shortlisted in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014 The Bees in the Privet

The privet hedge that once grew tall above the ditch that ran from the Chapel to the top of Dasher’s Hill was great shelter for the passers-by – for Mrs Carberry on her way to mass at seven, for Sean Byrne’s horse and cart on the creamery run, for Bill Johnston and the Farmer, for Paddy in the bread van, for Mrs McCreary, clicking along in her neat high heels, for Mairead Parker in stout walking shoes, for Eileen Byrne with her shopping bag, for the Bolgers, the Sinnotts and the Brien girls, meandering their way from school, for workmen come to help with hay at Littermore. The bees in the privet that once grew tall above the ditch that ran from the Chapel to the top of Dasher’s Hill took sustenance from blossom undisturbed for lifetimes – from whitethorn in the Priest’s Field, from clover in the Hill Field and the Lower, from lady’s smock in the Moor and the Bog, from meadowsweet on Ballylurkin Lane, from broom in Codd’s Field and the Sandpit, from the vetch and loosestrife near the Frogloch, from Parker’s orchard and from Archie Griffin’s model garden, from the lilac tree that, like some lone survivor of a scorched earth policy, still grows beside Miss Redmond’s yard gate.

Mary O’Brien

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Shortlisted in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014

On Reading Plath’s Letters Home

With hindsight, strange how, just weeks before that cold and fated February day, you wrote of your new hairdo, of new clothes, how they restored your faltering morale. How lucky, you wrote, to have your babies and your work, to love your new flat. You’d live in it forever, decorating now in blues, royal and midnight, your bedroom yellow, gold and black, bee colours. You write of your arrirval there to find the power not yet connected, how in dashing out, the door was blown shut by the wind, locking your keys inside. A comedy of errors, as you say. But the obliging gas boys climbed up on the roof and in through a window to install the stove.

Mary O’Brien

Mary O’Brien lives near Wexford town. She has published four poetry collections and been a recipient of Local Authority Arts Grants and a Bursary. Her work is included in a 2013 anthology of Wexford poetry and her books are available from www.scalltamedia.com

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Three Bedrooms in Chronological Order Because it was their only private place Santa's haul was hidden under my parents’ bed beside the table lamp from my auntie's pub, black and white whiskey dogs propping up its shade, and the immovable wardrobe in solid oak they made together in their early days at a night class taught by my father’s friend, who chose a design my mother would hate forever. One wedding night begets another.

Because it was the cheapest kind, we bought a folding table for pasting wallpaper to use as a desk at our room's bay window - the only Regency terrace in a cherry-blossom town. An alarm clock on the marble mantelpiece over the blocked-off fireplace, a jug of daffodils, a piano we could not play, a red wool blanket on that early bed, too small for both of us together. One wedding night begets another. Because the early light stays in the garden, the walls are painted yellow for the sun, and a white rocking chair holds out its arms to Breton lace-curtains with gulls and lighthouses, a cherry tree gone feral, twined with honeysuckle, neighbours' windows, the dark gradient of forest, and our raft of a bed with us in it together, in reach of books, specs, earphones and each other. One wedding night begets another. Grainne Tobin

Grainne Tobin lives in Newcastle, Co Down and has two collections published by Summer Palace, BanJaxed and The Nervous Flyer's Companion. Grainne is a member of the Word of Mouth poetry collective and contributed translations to its recent Russian- English parallel text anthology of women poets from St Petersburg, When the Neva Rushes Backwards, from Lagan Press.

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Shortlisted in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014 Unsayable

Words may be mere vibrations in the air – The kernel can seem unconveyable But my sentient animal being is aware, Like the mother fox and her cubs stopping to stare Who prompt intuition unportrayable – Words may be mere vibrations in the air But a smile, a touch or some act may ease despair; My trust in kindness is unswayable. My sentient animal being is aware Of the smell of beauty and truth in certain air; If speech fails, music may be more reliable When words are mere vibrations in the air. Solace is present in green growth everywhere – Nature’s succour is undeniable As my sentient animal being is aware. Feeding lost animals could be my prayer: To put it simply, it is unsayable. Words may be mere vibrations in the air But my sentient animal being is aware. Susan Flynn

Susan Flynn is a member of the Rathmines Writers' Workshop. Her poetry is strongly influenced by nature. Her book The Animal Woman' was published by Swan Press in 2007. She is a keen reader and writer of haiku.

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Renata Visser

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Shortlisted in Donegal Creameries North West Words Poetry Prize 2014 Now

Back then you were such a believer in being everything wonderful; in being two rainbows side-by-side; in being an all-day full Irish breakfast. Now you are the bins still not taken out, yesterday’s dishes filling the sink, the neighbour’s dog that never shuts up, the puddle about to leap into the air. Now you are the bed always unmade, the form in the drawer, still not filled out, the wheels desperately needing air, the damp proceeding unopposed across the wall – unrecognisable from the fresh coffee brew of back then. A pocket with a hole in it, now, dust collecting on the tops of photo frames. Milk in the fridge gone bad, the tea already made. A clock that only tells the wrong time, but I’ll never forget back then, when you were the umbrella on every rain-lashed afternoon that the wind could never blow inside out. Yes, you were a good turn about to happen, a letter arriving that could only be good news. I know now that back then my life was a fat wallet in a world of pick-pockets, and, of course, now you’re only a phone in a room that’s never rung, not even once. You’re a train shrieking out of the station that no one’s boarded in forever.

Edward O’Dwyer

Edward O’Dwyer is from Limerick, was selected for the Poetry Ireland

Introductions Series in 2012. His debut collection The Rain on Cruise’s

Street was published by Salmon Poetry in 2014.

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Trajectory of hope She knows her chances of floating again are slim as they roll her gently to soap her back. Downstairs, he googles expected outcomes of a hundred yellow balloons released in the school yard. She would gladly drift this daffodil day, just enough borrowed breath to release her from the grip of children, no resistance once the railings are breached, each sigh urging her to rise above the church spire, backed up traffic, supermarkets, the big top on the ring road, to pass over unmade flower beds, oak saplings, randomly planted around her bungalow. A washday wind would carry her out of this, take her where he says they will all arrive - a gulf somewhere northwest, its name escapes her, a new longitude where baby pinks and powder blues, deflated Valentines, silver and gold milestones eventually come to rest. Mairéad Donnellan

Mairéad Donnellan lives is Bailieborough Co. Cavan. Her poetry

has appeared in Boyne Berries, The Moth, Windows Anthology,

Crannóg, Revival, The Galway Review, Skylight 47 and The Stony

Thursday Book. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the Doire Press

poetry chapbook competition and was winner of the Francis

Ledwidge poetry award. She was shortlisted for the Cúirt new

writing prize in 2014 and recently for the Donegal Creameries

North West Words poetry prize.

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Plantsman

I love this, Bob would say, stooping to the plant. scuttling along the path to the next one to catch his eye: This! I love this! he would say, letting his arm sweep about the paths of Tilden park, the city below, where earlier we'd sat in the diner, Bob, Theo and me, and when his bacon came, crisp with French toast, and sweet, he'd said I love this. From his room filled with colour-mad canvases, we'd gone to walk Berkeley streets, see where he'd been, oh, back in those days, those days. Now, he bends to cup that trumpet-shaped flower, pink, deep, crazy pink, and tells me: This! I love this. I think it’s Mexican. I planted it in thousands. It might begin with P... But yes, this! I love this. Imelda Maguire

Imelda Maguire was born in Kildare, raised in Limerick, and has lived her adult life in Sligo and Donegal. A member of Errigal Writers, she has been published in both their anthologies, and in a number of journals, including the SHoP, Black Mountain Review and Cuirt Annual. She has read at literary events throughout Ireland, and at Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2001. Her collection, Shout If You Want Me To Sing, was published by Summer Palace Press in 2004.

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Renata Visser

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Silence and Storm

A walk down the memory lane is never appreciated. I don’t know about others but that particular experience reduces me to misery always. For the demons that lurk in the abyss of my mind scare me. Memory is a small word but it has the power to wreak havoc on my mind and body.

With a jolt, I realize I am in middle of my promenade. The empty path lay ahead of me. I crunch the dead fallen leaves under my feet. A smirk begins to make its place on my thin lips. I halt and stamp on the leaves, grinding them forcefully, feeling a rush of satisfaction sweep through my body. If only it was possible to crush the figments of my recollections under my foot like that. After a minute, I resume my promenade.

“Maria?”

A distant voice stills me. I take a deep breath and close my mind. A mighty rush takes me to a distant memory.

Sarah, my baby sister of six years of age, clutches my hand tightly. I grin at her; she looks lovely gazing at the beautiful sea with big round eyes.

“I want to go there Maria.” She says, lust and fervor dripping from her voice. I squeeze her hand.

“And you will.”

She tears away her gaze from the television to look at me. I see a hint of moisture in her eyes; it tugs at the strings of my heart.

“Promise me?”

Two heartbeats.

“I promise.”

I open my eyes. The sun had risen and its rays begin to filter through the naked branches. I sniff, unable to take a step further. An invisible force binds my feet to the ground. I grit my teeth. I am getting late. I have to be at home in fifteen minutes. I have to collect fresh flowers for Ammejan and a shawl for Babajan. The weather has gone quite chilly in Quetta though it’s hardly October and I would hate to see Babajan shivering from cold. I scowl at the thought, upturning the collar of my coat absentmindedly. I rub my hands together for warmth.

“Faisal asked me for his fee money today. His teacher has given him a week to clear his dues.”

Ammejan informs me with worry creasing her forehead as her hands work effortlessly knitting the sweater. Her silvery hair peeks beneath the shawl she has over her head, the


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web of blue veins in her hand bulge every time she moves the needle. She looks at me through her grey eyes with wrinkles around them, her thin purple lips pursed as she waits for me to reply. I tie the scarf around my neck and give a thoughtful nod.

“I hope to have my bonus granted in few days Ammejan. Don’t worry; he will have his money soon In Sha Allah.”

I give her a smile, attempting to cheer her up. That didn’t work. She continues frowning.

“He better does!”

I lunge forward to grab a ball of wool and squeeze it in my hands. Ammejan hits me with the handmade fan of feathers impulsively.

“Give it back! You will dirty it”

I laugh aloud, throwing my head back. It infuriates her even more. I toss her the ball not risking my wellbeing any further. With a glare, she tucks it under her lap, away from my reach. I chuckle. I lean down to kiss her on the forehead and murmur goodbye. I see her fighting down her smile. I turn around to leave. The heavy burden of responsibilities comes crashing upon me as soon as I set my foot outside the safe haven of my abode.

It was Babajan’s wheezy coughs that had woken me up. I lay there scowling at the ceiling. His condition is worsening with every passing day. I listen to the hushed whispers of my mother as she soothes him with soft words. I smirk. But the smirk quickly fades away. I have noticed the constantly increasing strain on Baba’s chest. Maybe it’s because of cold. I try to shun away the nagging worry. I close my eyes listening to the buzzing mosquitoes creating sweet melody in the dead silence of the night.

But as days passed, curiosity and worry got the better of me and a quick visit to a well-known hospital in the city of Karachi confirms my fear. Babajan is suffering from the initial stages of lung cancer. I return with this news to my city. The slump of his shoulders as he breaks the news to the family doesn’t go unnoticed by me, though he has brushed it off like nothing but he suddenly looks older than his age. Ammejan remains silent and goes back to peeling onions. Faisal resumes doing his homework after several minutes and Sarah, oblivious to her gloomy surroundings, chats with her wooden horse. Babajan gives me a strained smile, his bushy eyebrows mushed together as his long white beard that gives him a holy aura, twitches. He leans his fragile body on the stick and plods towards his room. I look around, the phrase ‘life goes on’ suddenly begins to make sense to me.

Few days later, Ammejan stands with her hands on her hips, glaring at me through her round beady eyes. I bite down my smile.

“Shiraz called. He said he would like to have lunch with us today.”

That one sentence was enough to wipe away any trace of humor from my face. I feel a blush creeping its way to my cheeks, I look away.

“Now you young lady, should behave and help me with the preparations.”


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I give a small nod. Ammejan continues scanning my face for any signs of emotion but fails. I have mastered the skill to control my feelings. I turn around and my eyes fall on the mirror right across the room. To my amazement, I have a frown on my face. I give an enigmatic smile, working to keep my fluttering heart in its place.

I open my eyes, finding myself surrounded by yellowing trees highlighting the trail. Despite the icy atmosphere, a rush of warmth settles in the pit of stomach at the memory. A wan smile dances on my lip as I recall that evening with Shiraz. It had gone amazingly well with him asking for my hand in the end. He was everything I could have wished for. Life couldn’t have gotten any better for me.

“You are going to be the most beautiful bride Maria!”

Sarah had exclaimed at the top of her voice. I love Sarah like my own daughter but sometimes she could be very annoying. I glared at her as Shiraz gave an amused chuckle. I chanced a glance at him and saw him giving me a genuinely happy smile. Ammejan caressed my cheek with affection, but the smile on her lips never reached her eyes. Her stormy grey eyes looked dead to me. My heart skipped few beats. I knew what was troubling her. Shiraz was to travel abroad after marriage that meant my family had to survive on its own without my support.

I blink away the stray tear that has managed to escape from my eye. I amble to a stone slab by the trail and sit on it. Sunrays fall on my face and I enjoy taking in its warmth. I rub my hands once more. I pull the loose strands of my hair back and let my eyes wander away, remembering the details.

“I won’t marry Shiraz, Babajan. Please inform him as soon as you can.”

I announce my disapproval for Shiraz to my parents and walk away before they could have a chance to react. Later, Babajan comes to me in my room. I stand up and throw myself at him. He hugs me back. We don’t exchange words; we just stand their clinging to each other. Sometimes silence is more meaningful than words.

The medicines brought from Karachi start showing their effect and Babajan’s health begins improving at a remarkable pace. I become at ease. I take Sarah with me to Karachi to enjoy the sea there just like I had promised. Faisal tops in his class, earning a scholarship. He shows me his performance report, his face gleaming with joy. I pat his head and pinch his cheek, earning a scowl from him.

I stand up from the stone slab, brushing the dirt off my black coat. Mustering up all my courage, I took a step forward. I smile. I stride out of the woods to the city to buy the desired objects. The way to my home was shorter. I enter my house and a group of small children in verandah stand up to greet me. I acknowledge them with a nod and ask them to sit. I give them the task to read the third chapter in their Urdu textbooks thoroughly and excuse myself. Passing through the small living room, I spot Ammejan sitting cross legged on the sofa in her room. I place the flowers beside her. She doesn’t look away from the wall she is gazing at. I retreat and exit the room. I stroll towards our backyard to deliver the shawl to Babajan. The crisp wind of October bites my skin. I shudder. But the frostiness vanishes as


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soon as my eyes land on Babajan. I kneel and place a hand on the mound of dirt hiding him from my view. He lies six feet below. I take the shawl from the bag and drape it over his grave. Now I was content. I smile at him, knowing he would be returning me that from the heavens. I stand up and look at the smaller mounds indicating the graves of that of Sarah and Faisal. I had run out of money or I would have gotten something for them also.

I get inside the house to tend to my mother. There is not a slight change in her posture. She has been like that for two months now, ever since Babajan, Sarah and Faisal had passed away in a bomb blast by a terrorist organization. Babajan had accompanied Sarah and Faisal to school and the trio never made it back to home. I remember as I had set foot in house after a long arduous day at work. A big crowd of people thronged the threshold. I made their way past them and saw their bodies covered with white cloth stained with blood. My wide eyes found Ammejan who was surrounded by women consoling her. Her gaze met mine and all I saw was helplessness and agony in the depth of her eyes. This was the last message she had managed to convey to me.

“Cry my dear; let the grief lessen with your tears.”

My neighbor came hugging me, urging me to cry. But I stood petrified just like my mother. Tears determined to never spill. I murmured prayers under my breath.

My students in the verandah are getting impatient, I give them one more chapter to read and go to Ammejan. I wipe the drool away from her face. I comb her hair and braid them once more.

“I got him a shawl today, you should have seen it. It’s exactly the one he wished to buy last winter.” I say, looking at her expectantly.

“Did you see the flowers Ammejan? I will place them in a vase for you. You can smell them every time. It’s great, eh?” No response.

“Children are giving me trouble with the alphabets. I came up with a new trick to make them learn but it’s no use. I guess I am not as talented at teaching as you were.”

She remains still, gazing at the wall. Losing my patience, I stand up and leave her. I get to the room next to hers. Her knitting ware catches my attention. I go through her stuff, remembering the old times. Such emotional moments promise tears but I am obstinate. I will not let them escape me. The squeals of excitement issue from the verandah. Clueless, I jog there. Ammejan is leaning over a student, teaching her how to write. I clutch the door for the support, gazing at the impossible before me. Children clap when the girl successfully writes in third attempt. Ammejan straightens up to look at me.

“I can teach them alphabets. You can take over Mathematics.”

“Sure Ammejan!”

Her stare falls to the ball of wool in my numb hands. I follow her gaze. I didn’t realize till now that I have it in my hands. Her lips form a thin line in disapproval.


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“Give it back, you will dirty it.”

I toss her the ball. She catches it and grins at me. This is the last straw. A heavy cascade of tears flows from my eyes as I give her a bone crushing hug that she returns with as much zeal as she can muster. I cry like there is no tomorrow. I cry out all my frustrations and agitation. My heart lightens. I pull back to give her a misty eyed look. She holds my face in her warm rough hands. Her thin lips part,

‘My savior!’

My eyes brim with tears once more and my heart swells. I close my eyes and think,

‘There is still hope!’

Sarah Khan

Sarah Khan is a poet and writer from Department of Psychology, University of Karachi Pakistan. Her work has also appeared in Aaduna, Vshine Magazine and Teen ink. Her poem “Deliverance” won third position in the country wide poetry competition organized by Y.A.L.E. in Dec 2014. Currently she is writing cover story for Vshine on monthly basis and has also completed write up of two novels.

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Renata Visser

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M.M.R. From the jukebox jangled a noise to terrify all decent hearts: 'Snow is falling all around me, children playing everywhere...' 'O, Jesus make it stop', groaned Marty, but the earworm could not be repressed, no more than memories of Vietnam vets in the movies he grew up watching in Derry. For a moment he was back in The Strand Cinema with the boys, on a musty seat on a sticky floor, throwing popcorn at oul' ones hissing 'Shush, I paid to watch the fuckin' film, not to listen to youse!' They cherished and laughed at the clichés in the films they watched. In the first third, rednecks hassled a movie star (ex special army killer dude, of course), then came the flashbacks to 'Hell in 'Nam ' montage and finally, finale, there were EXPLOSIONS, lots of them, loudly, brightly. Apocalypse Now was different; that did blow them away. A bloated Brando mumbling, 'the horror, the horror', became a code for all that was shit. Back in the here and now, however, Shaking Stevens's 'Merry Christmas, Everyone' fought back, repelling all pasts of happy memory. It ate its way through to the present like the smell of dogshit on a shoe, disgusting, emetic, overwhelming. The drink was starting to kick in now, maybe he shouldn't have started on whiskey so early, he would likely get sick at some stage, he should have eaten. He sat beside and outside the company he kept in a present reality that he hated as much as himself. He aimed for nothing but oblivion, he craved obliteration. 'People dancing everywhere..., Room is swaying, records playing...' Shaky really could not be fucking shaken off. Marie said, 'It'll do you good to get out, have a few beers with the boys. You haven't been out in ages', but she couldn't see Gavin with his stupid goatee and his pony tail waving behind him in the Jameson mirror. Marty felt violent antipathy towards his young colleague's innocent confidence: felt like hitting something, someone, anyone. He imagined a post-headbutt Rorschach Test on a bloodstain seeping across Gavin's 'support the indigenous fair trade whatevers' t-shirt ; it might make more sense than interpreting inkblots for dimwit counsellors. Talking of headbutts, though, Wee Paul had been the maestro: focussed, vicious. Small though he was, Paul never missed, hit the bridge of the nose every time (he practised a lot), inflicting serial harm on bigger opponents through speed and surprise. But that was thirty years ago and Marty Loughrey had since become Professor Martin S. Loughrey and even back then his contact with violence was more observer than participant. All the same, this evening was not likely to end well; alcohol was dissolving the levées he had built to restrain floods of memory he was getting too tired to resist. It was over a year now, they kept telling him (four hundred and sixty-one days, actually), since Óisín had died. His dead son's name was a cruel reminder of human hubris; they had borrowed him (from Tír na nÓg) and he stepped the Earth a while before dissolving back to dreams. In the aftermath, his wife needed Marty to help her; she had lost her child, couldn't afford to lose her husband. Marty, however, could find no road forward; he washed against a wall and bounced forever backwards. It was seven o'clock now and Channel Four News was starting on a widescreen TV that filled the wall above a fireplace filled with plastic logs. A Cockney cawed at the barman:


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'Sky Sports, football. Put it fackin' on, mate.' Marty's glass was empty so he shouted, 'What you having, lads?', but they waved him away, glasses half-full. He would go up for himself, would get an extra one in by the time they were ready, sipping away like old women. None of these Englishmen could drink: 'I'll have a half-pint of your best bitter, please, and a cheese sandwich', and home to their dull little lives and up early on a Sunday morning to wash the car. As Marty rose, he wobbled slightly but then steeled himself for the journey to the bar, stepping precisely. 'I'm grand', he thought, and the sight of the technicolour display when he reached his destination reminded him of Big Brendan, who way back when had drunk his way across the optics in O'Carolan's, all twenty-three, from Drambuie to Smirnoff to Pernod before walking out the door as steady as he came in. Brendan's journey home that legendary evening was interrupted only by a stop-off for a fish supper. Brendan had eaten, Brendan had drunk and Brendan had been merry, although his sister who still lived at home told Marty that he hadn't been well recently, had nearly died from a bleeding ulcer. Into his adolescence a voice from the present intruded: 'Can I help you, Prof,? Would you like something?' When Marty managed to focus, he found a second year undergraduate, a mannerly young man not blessed with any great talent who nonetheless worked hard, a good kid. He was doing bar work to pay his way through college, as Marty himself had done. 'A pint of your watery English beer, Craig, and a double Jameson', Marty shouted. Craig was concerned about the Prof. He was acting a bit funny, the kindly Irishman who sought him out when he was struggling in first year, whose big reputation hadn't stopped him nurturing an average student. The Prof. had said: 'Craig, there are students here with more ability than you but you have honesty, you have integrity, you are a decent human being, you always try your best. These are no mean qualities. Value yourself, keep trying and I will help you all I can.' From the Prof., the smartest person in the department they said, such affirmation was gold. The smartarsed, confident ones who sneered at Craig for being a plodder lived in fear of the Prof.'s sharp tongue and sucked up to him. So, when he saw the teetering academic at the other side of the counter, Craig felt protective: 'Take it easy, Prof., bar's open another few hours. Maybe I could get you something to eat. I could fix you a toastie.' 'Have I missed something here? Am I talking to a barman or an agony aunt? Get my drink, Craig, and save the fucking sympathy', snapped Marty. 'It's the season of love and understanding... Merry Christmas, everyone', continued Shaky, relentlessly. **** About eleven o'clock that night, halfway through 'Newsnight' on BBC2, the buzzer sounded. Marie and Marty bought the apartment when they first learned she was pregnant. Until then, they hadn't cared, were happy just to be; plans were for architects. Marie pressed the intercom button: 'Mrs. Loughrey, we have Martin, the Prof., with us. He's mm, em, he's not feeling too well. Do you mind if we help him upstairs?'


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The spokesman was Gavin Jones, a voice Marie recognised as Martin's main protégé, a post-doc member of his research team. Gavin was a rising star now, she heard. She remembered Martin saying, years ago: 'I've a cub here, Welsh boy, nice lad, doesn't realise how clever he is. I'll give him the confidence he needs and he'll go places, he will.' Martin loved clever people, she knew, especially clever young people and he tended to gather them round him. She knew the trio of bearers who carted her husband up the narrow stairs were never going to badmouth him. She knew his youthful acolytes would defend him always, giving back what they received. He was utterly shit-faced, had probably embarrassed this nice young man and his companions but she knew why they cared about him, knew that she had also loved him. So, when Gavin apologised for the state of him, blamed himself for not looking after him, blamed 'a bad pint, maybe, or maybe a bad burger on the way home', she played along with the pretence. When they had deposited their load on the living room sofa it seemed only polite to ask: 'Would you like some tea, guys? I could fix you some sandwiches? Or maybe you would like a drink?' 'No, no, it's okay. Mrs. Loughrey', Gavin answered, 'We wouldn't dream of troubling you. We'll go on our way but thanks very much for offering.' Martin's world class research team, or at least the male part of it, filed awkwardly out the door as the sound of snoring and the smell of vomit arose from his resting place. Marie poured herself another glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge and as she walked down the hall she stopped to look in that ugly mirror one of Martin's Irish aunts had given them. She was forty six now, too old for childbearing - Óisín had been a late surprise after ten years' fruitless trying. From the corners of her wide brown eyes a pair of rising suns formed flags of worry lines. Her auburn hair stayed thick and shiny, though, just one or two grey ones. She didn't look bad, she thought, not bad for her age. She weighed the same as the day Martin fell over the threshold and landed beneath her, cushioning her from hurt. He'd been funny then, her peculiar Paddy: not bad looking, either. They met when she was working with a Contemporary Dance troupe performing a piece called 'Socialist Movement', whose mercifully short run drew audiences outnumbered by its cast. Martin came every day and stayed behind on closing night, fighting his shyness, clutching his petrol station flowers, terrified he might never see her again. And she could talk to him, like she never could to her London friends because he knew her pride at being the daughter of a miner who stayed out throughout the strike. The way he called her 'marry', not 'ma-ree', was different too, endearing, and when he proposed she could hardly say no: 'Marry, will you marry me?' just sounded so funny. But here he was now on their ugly brown sofa, snorting, dribbling, mumbling: 'Shaking Stevens... Merry Christmas... the horror, the horror.' ***


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Óisín died on September 14th, exactly two weeks after his fourth birthday party. He took ill four days before he died: a cough at first, then fever, eyelids flaming. Two days later, white spots, like grains of salt, covered the inside of cheeks that burned outside; his parents dabbed their boy with cold cloths. In two more days red spots appeared on his face and progressed along his torso. The doctor said that complications were rare, maintain the fluids and anti-inflammatories, treatment was mainly supportive, don't worry too much. But at ten o'clock that evening Marie tried to waken him and failed. She screamed for Martin to come. In the ambulance Óisín began to twitch and shudder and they were met at swinging doors by a team of medics in scrubs: 'Wait here, don't worry', said a nurse, but that was the last time they saw him alive. A young doctor came out to inform them, distressed at maybe her first time uttering the awful words, that they had done all they could but the brain oedema was too severe, they had been unable to save Óisín. Measles Encephalitis was stated as cause of death on the Certificate. Marie had worried about the MMR vaccine, what with all the stories in the papers. They had waited so long for a child she was terrified that something might harm her boy. Martin scoffed her for listening to 'woo-merchants' and sneered at “knit their own tofu Arts Graduates who couldn't even spell 'science'” and she grew angry. He threatened to take Óisín and get him vaccinated 'whether you fucking like it or not'. She replied that if he acted on his own, he may get used to being on his own, because that was not her idea of a marriage. She wasn't prepared to take the chance if there was any risk at all - she had to be sure. Things calmed between them eventually, though he muttered at her now and then. After a year or two he rarely mentioned it and Óisín was thriving, beautiful, clever as his Dad. Only once since Óisín died had she dared to ask him if he blamed her: 'God, no', he replied. Eddie McClay has lived in Donegal for almost twenty years but still lives in hope that Derry

will one day win another All-Ireland. He has previously been published in 'Fortnight'

magazine and was short-listed for the 2012 Donegal Creameries North West Words poetry

competition and the 2014 Michael McLaverty short story competition.

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All The Isms

The test is positive. Nessa stares at the blue line, gobsmacked. She does it again, like the peed-on stick can behave randomly as a tossed coin, blue

you’re positive pink you’re out of the woods. Blue blue blue, it paints itself, and now, peed-out, even she is positive.

A whoosh spreads from everywhere and nowhere into the pit of her, an icy flood of terror and despair. What, what has or hasn’t she done, to deserve this? What’s Larry going to say? What’s the whole country going to say?

Another thought wallops in, bald, unrelenting: you’re finished, utterly, truly, don’t kid yourself about this.

She stares down at the stick, the blue horizon dissecting it. There should be a boat out there on the rim, she and Larry at the wheel, mastering their destiny. Instead there’s just her, already overboard, she’ll lose her job as his right hand, too. While the country laughs at where his right hand has been. And his left. Since he’s just made Imelda pregnant too.

Jesus it’s positively farcical, why isn’t she laughing her sides sick? Instead, she retches emptily over the bathroom sink, though from what she’s

unsure: fear, surely? – or the enormity of what she’s up against when Larry finds out, when he casts her out even farther than that wide-rimmed horizon, giving her nothing to row back with, not even a stick.

It’ll be a case, she mutters to the mirror, of Larry throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Laughter splutters from her lips at the pun but the sound hollows, bouncing off the glass, slapping painfully back in her face. Jesus, the cut of her: a thirty year old pasty-faced gibbering rabbit with an “I’m pregnant” mantra throbbing in its eyes.

It’ll scupper his chances of ousting Mayo-Willie at the upcoming election, he’ll never become Taoiseach himself now. Panic spreads in a live volt and she throws up the full shebang, the mirror shouldering the brunt: yellow peppers, tomato sauce flecked with broken pasta shells, the foulness of half-digested garlic lacing bile, holding true to some aesthetic form for a moment, before sliding sink-wards.

And then there’s the fact he’s been avoiding visiting her lately. Why? She retches again, dredging up a memory of her dying father clutching buttercups

she’d brought him from the garden like a lifeline, while she sat by his bed transfixed by a sunbeam touching his pillow, knowing this was the closest he’d ever again come to warmth or the light.

“And why do you never come to see me now?” The question haunts her still. She goes into her bedroom, takes his ancient tartan slippers from the wardrobe, the

shape of his bunion in the left one, familiar as her heart. She sits on her bed, slides her feet into them and closes her eyes. His features float by, disjointed; mouth, nose, square bristly jaw, with no possibility of bringing them together again to form his face.

Why? She always thought she’d walk fast away from betrayal, that she could never be one

of those women who sticks by her man with that crushed-teeth smile flashing for the


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cameras while her innards are roasting on a spit. Well look at her now; the pull in her towards Larry big as a magnetic field surrounded by steel boulders. She’s in there somewhere, locked down tight to the grip of his north, she loves this man with all her being, her heart hammers to his pulse.

And the irony is he’s betrayed her by sleeping with his wife. Imelda, he says, fell pregnant through a drunken blunder after the South African embassy bash. Doesn’t she believe him that he and Imelda have separate bedrooms, that they hadn’t done it since Síofra was born sixteen years back, for God-sake does she have any idea how upset he is at this terrible development himself?

What she does know is he engineered the trade mission to China with Imelda just to get away from her till she got used to the idea.

Which at least gives her a chance to walk into his other life, trawl through it, see if she can discern what lies he might have told her, see if being there catapults her out of the field. Because something has to, she can’t go on like this, living on the inside of his skin, instead of her own.

******************

The day is warm. She gets the Dart out, the sea pacing her train, its glitter forged by

the summer sun as she glimpses a seal near the rocks at Bulloch Harbour, head above water, its face achingly human.

When she reaches Larry’s house, Peadar’s on duty and she thanks her stars. She can rely on his discretion, returned as he is from New York last year, desperate after forty years a precinct cop, for home.

“Mind the shite, love,” he says, Kerry burr tinged with a hint of Brooklyn as he comes from his Punch and Judy sentry box, munching an apple. He keys in the code. The gate slides back on oiled castors.

“Every passing dog thinks this’s the lavatory gate.” He says, as usual. Stepping over a massive turd in her red stilettos, Nessa tries to force her usual smile.

“Hey-yup, love?” He puts a hand on her bare arm as she makes to pass. “You all right?” The apple thumps into the colourful shrubs cascading onto the drive.

She realizes she’s been staring ahead at the house, solid stone walls keeping their secrets, shutting her out.

“Sorry Peadar, I’m just a little hot and-.” “You don’t have to explain to me, Nessa.” He squeezes her arm gently. He knows

about her and Larry having the affair, she even told him about Imelda being pregnant. “But you need to take care of yourself, you look wrecked.” His eyes are kind, almost

her undoing. All she can manage is a nod as the bushes explode, the birds warring over the apple.

“I’m off-duty soon, could run you back into the city, we could grab a bite?” “That’d be…great.” She pats her briefcase, eyes lowered to veil the impending lie.

“He wants me to pick up a couple of files.” Peadar nods, reaching into the sentry box, unhooking the keys. “The maid’s in there,

so no alarm on.”


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Just her luck she’s picked one of Maria’s days. She nods her thanks, mincing across gravel, heels stabbing stones. She’s a good mind to change the alarm code, put in her own statistics, he can remember them better than he can her birthday in their four years together.

Maria’s sitting in the hall when she enters, a small, middle-aged tub of a woman, fidgeting with the clasp on her plastic handbag. She shoots up, tucking dark hair behind her ears, stepping forward nervously.

“Miss Nessa! I wait for Miss Imelda after I work but she no come!” She gazes at Nessa as at a saviour, warm topaz eyes set in dark skin. “She send you,

yes? You can to please, my wages?” Under the plea is desperation. Nessa stares at her aghast. ‘You mean they’ve gone off without-?”

“Gone?” Maria says. “They won’t be back till next Thursday I’m afraid-.” “I…” Maria gets tubbier, hands twisting till her skin squeaks. “My mother wait with

the babies. She old, she have no, we have no…” Food, Nessa thinks, but instead Maria says savings. She stares into the topaz eyes, then looks away, ashamed. This woman who irons his

shirts, cleans his toilets. Begging she who is his whore. She swallows hard, afraid she’ll vomit again. “How much,” she manages, “what do they owe you?”

They’re both embarrassed now as she fumbles in her bag, knowing what she gives will have to be cash, knowing she doesn’t have enough.

“Is only 12 hours this week,” Maria says, eyes anxious, bob-nodding, as if she needs to convince Nessa, as if she’ll be questioned on this.

Nessa’s heart drops. She doesn’t have enough. But Maria names the figure, rushing it, needing to cut off whatever excuse Nessa’s opening her mouth to make.

“Euro?” Nessa stares, flustered, as if the currency could be anything but. Maria nods, biting her lip. “Is lot, I know, I very sorry, but-.” The minimum wage. Nessa fills with fury, waving Maria’s words aside, pulling out

notes, turning her wallet upside-down on the console table. Coins spill out onto polished mahogany as if they too are hopping mad, spinning, rolling to the edge, down onto the marble tiles below. Maria stoops to pick them up.

“Don’t!” Nessa screeches and she freezes mid-stoop. “Don’t!” She scrabbles about picking them up, staring at them as she straightens. Maria, trembling, still looks stooped. Nessa squeezes her arm. “You should be paid much more!” She bundles the money into Maria’s hands,

brushing against her callouses, the skin bleached in comparison to her face, as if work has worn the pigment out of her.

“I’m sorry, I’m still leaving you short a good bit-.” “Is no matter.” Maria smiles, meaning it. Yes, Nessa wants to screech again, it matters, of course it matters! Maria steps closer, hesitant, her voice a whisper. “When Mister Larry come he give

me bonus on the kwee-tee.” “Bonus?” Nessa echoes stupidly. “Is extra he give me for…” Maria bites her lip, dark face suffusing.


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“F-for…?” Nessa says hoarsely, for one mad moment wondering if Maria too is pregnant.

“Once in the months he give me…a lot.” Maria nods, whispering again. “He say Miss Imelda not give me enough.” She beams. “Is good man, Mister Larry, very good!” She begins edging round Nessa, making for the door. “But I must to home, I very late, thanks-you Miss Nessa, much!”

And she’s gone, leaving Nessa flummoxed. A good man, yes. She knows no other in politics who walks the talk like Larry, promising when he gets into power he’ll banish all the “isms,” except, of course, feminism.

“But what about misogyny?” - she’d teased one night over dinner in her flat. “Doesn’t end in ‘ism’.”

Raising his glass, he’d stopped for a moment, brows furrowing, nonplussed. “Hm…racism sexism sectarianism, nationalism fascism paternalism mis… …misogynism,” he’d said then, slapping the table, “we’ll re-name it!” She half-smiles now, remembering, then stares around at his oil paintings, chandeliers, the marble bust of some laurel-crowned god Imelda bought him when he was first elected. The desire goes out of her to trash it, trash his whole gaff, stamp on his box-set collection of the Seven Ages of Ireland, his Mozart CDs.

And where will it get her knowing if he’s been lying about how separate his and Imelda’s lives have been, whether this was truly a one-off fuck?

In the silence, the grandfather clock tolls, emphasizing the credentials of his existence. And what is she doing here? Where has she left her own life? The clock dongs again like an afterthought, its Roman numerals telling her the only truth: she can’t switch love off any more than time, she has to be dead for this and even death when it comes, will be just as eternal.

The thought cuts cleanly through the door in her mind she’s managed to keep locked against it and desolation washes in.

“You near done, love?” Peadar’s voice burrows into her from down the hall. Maria must’ve left the door open.

“I’m pregnant,” she says, turning, eyes blurring, desperate to find his face. But in the thickness of her tears she can’t make him out.

“God, love…” He comes close, touches her. “Ah God, love….”

*******************

He takes the coast road back towards town, talking about his weekend, the nice man he met from Mohill.

She cries again, the sea pacing them, trembling, immense. “Always wanted to be somebody’s mammy,” he says then, patting her knee. “But a

grandma, now, will do me fine. What d’you say, love?” A laugh bursts from her, jittery, unhinged. “Fuck all the isms.” In the distance, Poolbeg Lighthouse eases past, like it’s treading water.

Dolores Walshe

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Dolores Walshe was awarded a second Arts Council Bursary in Literature in 2014.She has been short-listed or prizewinner in the RTE P.J.O’Connor Play Award, the Merriman, and Fish International Short Story Awards, Writers’ Week Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, the James Joyce Jerusalem Bloomsday Award, the Francis Mac Manus Award, the Bank of Ireland/Listowel Writers’ Week Play Award, Irish Stage and Screen Award, O.Z.Whitehead/SIP/ PEN Play Award, AROHO’s Orlando Prize for Fiction. She has had stage productions in Andrew’s Lane Theatre, Dublin Theatre Festival, and Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester. She has a novel and short story collection published Wolfhound Press and plays published by Carysfort Press, University College Dublin, and Syracuse University, New York 2014.

Renata Visser

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Half Hoping

Last time I visited my mother was eight days ago. Eight whole days. It was late morning, eleven, when I signed the visitors’ book. Fire regulations.

My mother was sitting in the Day Room. Twenty three thinning and bald heads all lined up around the walls. The same man, just as every other time I was there, sat in an enormous grey chair by the door. His skinny legs stretched out under a wiry blue blanket. He was clutching a tissue in his left hand as drool fell down his chin and pooled on his chest. His head was dropped back slightly, and a giant gaping hole fixed the spaced where a closed mouth should have been.

God forgive me, but he made my stomach heave. He was probably not much older than myself.

My mother had been wheeled into the same corner they always wheeled her into, beside the same people who continuously say the same things.

She was asleep last time I went, eight days ago. She looked like a tiny, broken doll, a very very old one, smothered under cotton blankets. Trapped in a chair, can’t even go to the toliet by herself anymore.

I put my hand on her arm. Her thin skeletal arm. I remember there being muscle there once, but it has long since wasted away.

‘Mammy?’ My voice was gentle but half dead heads still turned at the cutting of silence. They

terrify me. They can say anything, do anything. Half of them are demented and the other half have nothing to lose.

The care assistant smiled over sympathetically at me from the corner of the room. I supposed she had seen it all by now. Watched us come and go as we want, see them rant and rave and leave in boxes.

My mother stirs her head and I gently shake her arm through the fleece jumper they have put on her. Her crusty eyelids unglue themselves. Dried spit cakes the corners of her torn and cracked mouth. Again, my stomach heaves.

Her eyes surprise me, they always do. They open wide to bright, beautiful pools of blue. Still as vibrant and intoxicating as ever. But behind their beauty, the waters have stilled. She slaps her toothless mouth open and shut. A dry fat tongue clambers out.

‘Hi Mammy. How are you?’ I smile the biggest smile I can, all teeth and stretched lips. Focusing on her eyes

trying hard not to see the foulness of her mouth. ‘You look great. How are you?’ Already I was doing the wrong thing. Seconds in, and doing it all wrong. Again. ‘Are you well? She nodded. It was a definite nod. I put my hand on top of hers and she moved her

fingers to tighten around mine. Her strength surprised me. And disappointed me too. How much longer must she suffer?

When I was a child we had a dog. Myself and my sister, three years younger than me, would torment him with hair brushes and hair slides and hugs. He tolerated it all with a forced smile of his own, and wagged his tail when we finished.


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We grew up with him. Loved him as much as we loved each other. When he was sixteen and I was eighteen, and his body started to fail. His big strong bones just seemed to crumble and shake. We saw every second of his suffering animated in his eyes. The scared, fearful way he started to look at us. When his legs went from under him, he howled and looked at the ground in shame as he soiled himself where he lay.

I rang the vet to come out. Paid cash for having my own dog killed. Even now, as I think of my mother, I know it was a mercy. We were waiting every morning for him to be found dead.

My mother, back then, used to pray that he would go peacefully in his sleep. But he didn’t. She hated to see any animal suffer, but she couldn’t bring herself to have him killed either.

That day, eight days ago, I sat beside her with my hand placed in hers, feeling like I was sitting with a stranger. All I recognised were those brilliant eyes, the ones I had seen all my life.

‘Are they minding you OK?’ My mother nodded and tried to sit up better. She was like a bag of potatoes. No

structure, no definition anymore. ‘Let me fix these, Mammy.’ Yanking my hand free of hers, I was surprised, as always, at the strength still in her. I

moved nearer the back of her large brown chair, pulled her this way and that, moving cushions and pillows under and around her. One day she will sink deeper and deeper until only that gapping, slack jawed mouth is left looking up at me.

‘There. Isn’t that better?’ I sat in front of her again. She nodded, reached for my hand. Something in me is

repulsed by the warm, too soft, too pale skin of her. I don’t remember her ever looking like that. Like an old waxen woman.

There was a giant red clock on the wall. I watched the minutes slowly go by. Torturously slow.

‘Will I paint your nails for you? Wouldn’t that be nice?’ My mother made a grimace that I had come to understand was a smile. I walked

slowly to the care assistant, who had already moved to get the assortment of colours they kept. There was nothing said in here that wasn’t heard.

I painted blood red on every finger. Slowly, carefully, I watched the snow white of her hands jump out in stark contrast. I waited, let the coat dry, then painted another. There was no rushing in here. Time ticks eternal.

I struggled to find words to say to her, fighting the silence that weighed in that room. Talked nonsense in a high pitched, happy voice. A voice that was not mine.

If my mother was herself, she would have told me to stop. When at last the clock had ticked an hour away, I felt the burden of her lift. ‘I have to go now. OK?’ She didn’t nod this time. She twitched and struggled to get out of that chair and

leave with me. An awful moan escaped her gapping mouth. The blue eyes, still the her I knew, pleaded desperately. And I am forever reminded of that old dog.

‘I will be back again soon.’


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I patted her hand and knew that I hadn’t said when. As I pushed the swinging door open in front of me, I could still hear her wailings. Begging me to come back. Or to take her with me.

Eight days. That was eight days ago. Every time the phone rings since my heart makes a jump. I imagine it being them. Telling me that she has passed. Already I can see how my face will fall to that same slack jaw. How my breath will catch and my words will fail me.

‘How is Mammy?’ My sister Rose. ‘Ah, you know. The same.’ ‘Were you in yet today?’ My sister has the best excuse of all. She lives in a different country. ‘Going now, just about to go.’ I even thought I might. ‘It’s only a few minutes in the car for you, right?’ ‘A few minutes.’ ‘You’re so lucky. Poor Mammy. I rang there last night.’ ‘Right.’ ‘They put her on the phone. I said Hi Mammy, it’s Rose. How are you? All I got back

was something like the whimpering of a half dead dog.’ ‘I know.’ ‘The nurse came back on to me then. Said Oh she is so happy now that she got to talk

to you. Aren’t you Mary? Aren’t you so happy now? Some bollocks like that.’ ‘I have to go.’ ‘Tell Mammy I’ll try to get over to see her soon. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Tell her

that.’ ‘I will.’ We both know that we have the same hope for her. That our mother will be well

gone before more weeks will pass. I hang up the phone and put on the kettle. How easy it is for Rose. So far away. She doesn’t have to see our mother as she is now. A stink of urine off her, no matter how often she is wiped and washed and changed. Rose doesn’t have deal with the guilt of being the one who put her in there. Or remember the way she cried and fought to be brought back out.

‘If I could be home I would help you.’ Rose was always easy with words. What stops her from coming home? She lives in

London. Only an hour away. But she always tells me she is so busy. The kettle boils, but I still stand with the cordless phone in my hand. I hear the

bleeping of Rose’s absence. Worry makes my head throb as I get into the car. I worry that she will have visibly

deteriorated. I worry that she will not. Something starts to taste foul in my mouth. I have been biting my lip again. In the

rear view mirror I see dark red gather in the corners. I lick my lips, rub my mouth, and think of Mammy who can no longer do either.

I press in the code for the nursing home front door and squirt hand gel on my hands. In my bag I have my own pen, I won’t touch the one they all touch.


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There is a glass panel on the door to the Day Room. Eight days since I looked in last. I half hope that Mammy’s chair will have some other old woman living in it. Then feel guilt that I am disappointed to see her old head flopped forward, mouth open and tongue hanging out.

The man with the tissue and the puddle of drool is gone. Dead, I presume. Instead an obese man sits, looking around him, tapping the walking stick he holds in his hands. God help the staff who have to help move him.

Deep breaths, I brace myself. I push the door in. Faces turn to look at me, and I smile and nod and say hello. I make my way to my mother, who makes that grimace I know to be a smile. Teresa Sweeney

Teresa Sweeney is from County Galway. She was short listed in this year’s Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, 2014. Teresa was also a featured emerging writer reading at Over the Edge in November 2014. She has been published in Roadside Fiction, Number Eleven Magazine, Wordlegs, Boyne Berries and runner up in WOW! Awards 2011. She is studying an MA in Writing in NUIG this year. Teresa’s stories can be read here www.teresasweeney.com

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Artist profile: Renata Visser

Renata Visser was born in 1963 in Sneek, The Netherlands and is resident in Donegal since 1998. A daughter, mother, wife, friend, colleague and independent artist Renata has a HND Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Ulster, Limavady. She has a wide range of art interests: drawing, painting, sculpting, photography, bone carving and jewellery making. Renata’s painting work is a mixture of pointillation, abstract 'gestural' painting work where the importance lies on spontaneity and where colour gets splashed and dribbled and modelled onto the canvas, board or paper. There is an association with the colourful tropical palette of painter idols like Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne and Eduoard Vuillard. Renata draws inspiration from personal thought, highly emotional, accumulated and given shape and form during Dream-Time and Walk- about & Swim-about. The results are also influenced by a bi-polar existence - she calls herself very fortunate to be able to express herself through so many media in good and not so great times and finds it even more rewarding that others are able and often willing to experience a piece of those emotions through her art. Contact Renata by email at [email protected] Back to Contents



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Renata Visser

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Artist Profile: Shauna McDaid of The Ruby Ragdolls 1 Writers talk about finding their voice to refer to discovering their style. You had to find

two voices: your singing voice and your writing voice. Firstly, tell me about when you

realised you could sing, that you had a voice people would pay attention to.

S: For me it’s quite hard to pin point when exactly I realised that I had a voice that people

would listen too. I’ve loved to sing for as long as I can remember, but I suppose the first time

I seriously considered it to be something I could do professionally was when I joined The

LOFT (a youth club in Letterkenny) and met many other young people with a passion for

music. My writing voice came soon after that, inspired by all the creative people I was

surrounding myself with. I was encouraged by many wonderful people and I developed my

writing voice from there. It is a voice that is constantly changing and evolving, influenced by

my own life experiences, and the experiences of those around me.

2 Which singers and songwriters were you listening to at that time?

S: From a young age I was always strongly influenced by folk and traditional music. My dad

and I would often grab the latest Ireland’s Own and scour the lyrics pages for songs he

knew. He would spend the night introducing me to all these wonderful melodies and lyrics,

the ones that he himself had grown up with.

When I first started to seriously write my own material I was immersing myself in the

wonderful music of Cat Power, Richard Thompson, Laura Marling and Mick Flannery, among

many more. Laura Marling in particular really inspired me. Her work is so wonderfully

poetic; an intricate tapestry of metaphors and stark imagery.

3 Did song-writing come hand in hand with performing, or was that something that

developed at a different pace?

S: For me song-writing came quite a bit later than performing, although the two are

undeniably linked. There was always a bit of a fear for me with regards to song-writing,

because it is so personal, whereas performing is kind of like taking on a bit of another

person’s (the original artists) persona. A form of acting I suppose. When you start to

introduce people, often complete strangers to your own work, it can be very daunting. You

are essentially laying yourself down bare and allowing them to scrutinise this newly exposed

part of your soul. It’s a scary, but beautiful experience

4 How hard has it been to get the opportunity to perform your own material? What is the

live scene like now? What developments have you noticed in the couple of years you have

been performing?

S: If you look around, between Letterkenny and Derry, you will discover quite a number of

open mic nights advertised. While these may appear to be the perfect opportunity to

perform your own material, you are often faced with a disinterested, and typically loud

crowd, who are not there so much to listen respectfully to the artists. It’s very disheartening


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to perform something so personal and raw, while a crowd of inebriated pub-goers scream,

shout, and fire sexual innuendos.

That being said, there are a handful of opportunities that present themselves every now and

then. The open mic that is part of the North West Words night in Café Blend always provides

a respectful, attentive crowd, who are genuinely interested in hearing your work. Clubeo, in

Leo’s Tavern also holds a monthly night for original performances with an amazing crowd to

boot.

The Swell Festival for me, was one of the best experiences I have had to date with regards

to performing my own material. The atmosphere was amazing, and the emphasis was

entirely on promoting original material, not strumming out covers to appease the masses. It

really was great, and the idyllic setting of Arranmore fuelled the creative atmosphere. I

genuinely loved it and cannot wait to return again this year (fingers crossed!)

5 How do you learn as singers as songwriters, as performers? What is the biggest change

between the performers you are now and the performers you were two years ago.

S: You go through a lot of trial and error to really find your own sound and style. It’s easy to

try to play to the crowds, to give them what you think they expect of you, but it’s important

to find the kind of performer that you feel best represents the real you. For music to really

reach people, it has to be completely honest, filled with real passion, and not just a product

of a desire for the approval of other people. In the past two years I have really learned to

present myself as who I am, and not someone I think everyone will approve of and praise. I

try my best to do what feels right, and put all I can into my music. I try to be as honest in my

performances and song-writing as I can.

The Ruby Ragdolls are Shauna McDaid and Karen Kelly, you can contact the band at

[email protected] and listen to them here

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A Rockaway Breakfast Being a child of the dawn of American fast food, and of two people who were parents by the time they were twenty, my childhood memories of home cooked rustic dishes are few. Mealtimes were mostly erratic and unplanned, except on the odd occasion when my mother took out her Bible-sized copy of The Joy of Cooking that she got as a wedding present and attempted the most complicated dish it contained. This usually ended in her crying when the soufflé didn’t rise and my dad taking us all to Kentucky Fried Chicken. When I think of my favourite childhood food, I think of summer in New York. Sweltering humid days meant trips to Rockaway Beach, during which the backs of my bare thighs stuck to the leatherette seats in our Volkswagen Beetle. Sliding out of the car was like ripping a gigantic Band-Aid off each leg. Our days were spent playing in the sand and jumping the big waves. When we got home, my parents would throw my brother and me into our beds, too late for a shower. I remember waking early and feeling the grains of sand beneath me. I would kick off my sheets furiously, pretending I was escaping from a kidnapper who had bundled me into the back of his car. My imagination was fuelled by hours of unsupervised TV viewing on nights when our babysitter passed the time trying on my mother’s nail varnish in the bathroom. After escaping from the kidnapper’s lair and jumping out of bed, I padded towards the kitchen to prepare my favourite dish. As well as the taste, I loved the independence that Captain Crunch with Crunchberries afforded me. It was the perfect self- sufficient breakfast for a five year old. Exotic too, since to my young mind, crunchberries were these rare, bright pink, sugary fruits, nowhere to be found in farmers markets upstate. My self-reliance was increased by the sight of my parents in their bedroom, sound asleep, possibly hung-over from too many vodka tonics drank in the backyard at our neighbour’s barbeque the night before. I opened the kitchen cupboard, took out the box and planted a kiss on the Captain. His cheery seafaring face beamed back at me. I poured my cereal into a bowl big enough for a lumberjack, and hauled a gallon of milk from the fridge. The cold white liquid reached the rim, and the rare crunchberries bobbed in competition with the boring yellow corn squares. I took a big serving spoon from the drawer. This size was needed so that when I fished out a spoonful, the ratio of luscious berries to corrugated squares of maize was four to one. I brought my breakfast into the sitting room (another act of civil disobedience) and turned on the TV. I reversed onto the couch, balancing the bowl on my tanned legs, and filled my spoon with my treasured crunch. Those summer mornings, watching Tom and Jerry cartoons, sand between my toes, cold milk churning in my mouth and sweet magenta balls rolling on my tongue, I was Queen of the Crunchberries. Eileen Condon

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Eileen Condon is a native New Yorker, living in the Knockmealdown Mountains. Her stories have appeared in the following anthologies: Original Sins, The Knife's Edge, and The Edge of Passion. Another story, "Stronger Than Any Flower", was dramatized into a radio play for KCLR and performed in Bewley's Theatre on Grafton St. She was also long-listed for the Fish Short Story Competition a few years ago. One of her ambitions is to learn how to reverse a trailer into a yard without knocking any piers.

Renata Visser

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My daughter gives me a sapling My daughter gives me a sapling from her suburban garden. To give it space, I bring it north to the freedom of disputed land where it may grow, release it by smashing the pot in glazed sharp-edged shards, find its constricted potbound roots, a brain too tight contained. I plant it to become a mark in one of those hard-read lines, short phrase in the postcolonial poetry of boundaries, stressmark exclaiming above the height of hawthorn. It will root deep, add clarity, increase some shared goodwill which may give those lines meaning, create mutual language: or, in its lack, fade to babble so all meaning’s lost, disputes arise, shadows spread, bitterness wells and fails to drain. On government’s big map the same thin black line on white field is stream and hedge, field boundary, road and path, ditch and dike and path and nothing. Interrogating this landscape in its mute maps is impossible, shapes change so fast, reality lacks permanence. Peat, thinskinned on rock, slides downhill, turf banks collapse, rainswollen streams sculpt the landscape, drown fords, sweep coarse granite gravel banks downstream, scour the roots of trees, collapse them. Access bridges choke, flood and rot, potholes conspire to pool their axle-breaking, bog roads become impassable, the booley-line a concept cartographers do not know, townland a word not in their Shorter Oxford. The land was commonage and ownership is alien. This is Pilate’s country, his question what is truth? unanswerable; but one response can be to plant a daughter’s birch and, perhaps, watch it as it grows awhile, a tree, no boundary, no signifier nor proof of man’s possession, not mapped, but earthed and skied, its leaves moving with the wind.

Gréagóir Ó Dúill

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Tír na nÓg Chomh díreach le rialóir scoile, síneann íor na spéire thoir, gearrann grian na maidne líne ghlan ar fharraige ó Bhinn Éadair aduaidh, ag scoitheadh na ndúl, uisce, aer, beatha agus bás, ag tabhairt dúshláin. Tá bád bán aisig anonn is anall ar na mílte de chlár na farraige, agus roinnt luamh, crann agus seol ag claonadh le gaoth. Rófhada ó thalamh, níl teacht orthu, éalú iontu. Tá balla Beirlineach de dhomhain-chosaint ar an taobh seo den líne, lomthrá bhréan, cladach, balla cloch, sconsaí, sreanga agus ráillí iarainn, téada cumhachta, conduchtairí, imeall beo. Binn Éadair ina meall i lár mara, córda imleacáin aici le talamh, agus dhá shimné árda an Phúill Bhig, stríocaí neamhchoimisiúnaithe ina mbandaí orthu, dírithe ar an spéir mar a bheadh meaisínghunna an dúin deiridh. Loinnir na gréine ar an lochán bheag sa pháirc, tá gleo ag páistí, ag rithim shiúnta roth na dtraenach, obair ag gach céadfa ag braithstint na maidne breá seo fómhair, cág snasleathair taobh liom ag marú go néata, mise ar mhullach cnocáin sa pháirc taobh leis an chlinic a bhfuiltear ag plé íomhánna xghathaithe mo ghrá.

Gréagóir Ó Dúill

Gréagóir Ó Dúill, a prizewinner at Strokestown and the Oireachtas, divides his time between Dublin and Gort a’ Choirce, Co Donegal; his second collection in English, Outward and Return (Doghouse) and tenth in Irish, Balla an Chuain (Coiscéim) were published recently.

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Scáthán Cuirim mo lámh ar m’uillinn Déanann sé an rud ceanna Cheapfá gur mise é Deanaim iarracht gáire Bíogann a bhéal Sílim gur mise é Tagann na deoraí gan iarracht Tchím uisce bróin Is mise é. Duane Long

Rugadh agus tógadh Dubhán Ó Longáin (Duane Long) i mBealach

Féich. Is mac léinn é in Ollscoil Uladh, Coláiste Mhig Aoidh. Tá sé ag

déanamh staidéar ar ‘Teanga agus Litríocht na Gaeilge’ agus i

mbliain na céime faoi láthair. Bhunaigh sé ciorcal comhrá i

mBealach Féich agus bhain sé an comórtas GLIC 2014 nuair a

chruthaigh sé áis foghlama dírithe ar dhaoine fásta.

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Ode to a Knight and Gale and they sport a few wispy cobwebs, one fluttering with a fly creaking belching straining as I lie an’ watch the whole shifting gamut cloaked in my forest duvet I spy these old rafters, beams, batons, but they are Eiffel high to transept, draw gnarled bloodied fingers over splintered wood crawl into fissures, share old secrets. How did we get to be here why we two in moons gone by sashayed bold in the breeze. Oaks not choked yet, just as the bard yenned the sky sapped inspiration for imitation of the divine muses. But yon storm of ‘98 hit a gale, strangled light, upended roots. I heard the screaming bark cry belching homeless nightingales, that little robin and the misplaced lark migrants now. Me too still dawn offers a new vista, take it or leave it but there ‘tis solid torso, elongated, gnarled limbs still cloaked, a mantle of ivy green Flapped shuteye surrendering to the space where my womb had once Been

Tess Adams

Theresa Sheridan Adams is a native of Rathmuallan,

currently living in Surrey, UK where she works as a Youth

Counsellor. She recently completed an MA in Creative

Writing at Roehampton University and was ’nudged into”

writing poetry when she swapped the script writing

module for the poetry module (to fit with visiting hours at

Hammermsmith hospital where her sister lay dying).

Shortlisted for the Pighog Pamphlet Award 2014 and joint

second place in The Annual Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award

2014, Tess is currently writing a book of poetry Sculpting

aVoid.

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I will make poetry

I will make poetry here

And there and everywhere

I will write verses not to care

I will make poetry out of air

I will cling to the pen like a gun

Every line a flare sent up

Every single word a crumb

To feed myself and others on

Every page an inhabited square

Every poem a spin of the prayer wheel

The lines like nets cast wildly out

And then again pulled tautly in

Every day a page, a corner turned

A dogged bark at dog-eared moons

And yes, since you ask, and ask

Just once – you need not ask again –

I will make poetry out of pain

And I will always write alone

And I will never write a line

That isn’t for the whole wide world

And I will bleed out many poems

From this pen that whispers long

And long into the inky night

And I will post a poem or two

On every morning breeze

And every verse I pen will tease

A bird, insect, fish or human

Soul or flesh

I will live out the life that’s left

Between the narrow margins

Of the ruled, unruly infinite

And I expect sometimes to write

Myself into corners and make poetry there

And here and everywhere.

Kieran Furey

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Kieran Furey was born in Co Roscommon in 1953 and now lives in the house

where he grew up, after an absence of several decades in various parts of

Ireland and the world. He has self-published about 200 poems in book form

and almost as many in magazines and newspapers. Awards won include the

Féile Filíochta Poem of Europe Award, the Francis Ledwidge Award, the George

Moore Gold Medal for Poetry, and the William Allingham Short Story

Competition.

RenataVisser

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As I get out in mid-November light

As I get out in mid-November light, I bravely battle late-leaf autumn grief, I curse the dark, but wish all a good-night. I walk wet roads, under skies torn alight, A rusted hope shaken beyond belief, As I get out in mid-November light. Social crows caw with murderous delight, The shy moon looks on like a guilty thief, I curse the dark, but wish all a good-night. Birds whistle evensong, then take to flight, Their silhouettes gather in dark relief, As I get out in mid-November light. Soon, all birdsong stops, all birds out of sight, The wind plays and lifts a lone brown beech leaf, I curse the dark, but wish all a good-night. I think of sixteen million dead in fight, Beyond understanding, beyond all grief, As I get out in mid-November light, I curse the dark, but wish all a good-night. James Finnegan

Dr James Finnegan is a retired secondary school teacher – St Eunan’s College, Letterkenny – who is currently doing poetry courses with Kevin Higgins, Galway and Jim Bennett, Liverpool. In August 2012, James self-published a poetry book, The Expressive Mode, with CreateSpace, owned by Amazon. James will be publishing a collection of new poems in 2016.

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Drumcliffe Graveyard. I watch my father standing with his silent brothers the grave open, dark; generations of ancestors wait to take Patrick, his oldest brother. The rhythm of prayer begins as the coffin goes into the ground, they murmur responses, comforted by ritual. Ben Bulben stands strong behind them, the familiar landscape that watched over them as they all walked together to school . Triona McMorrow

Triona McMorrow lives in Dunlaoghaire, Co. Dublin. She was shortlisted for the International Francis Ledwidge Poetry competition in2009 and 2011. She was shortlisted for The Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust poetry competition in 2013. She has had poems published in The Ibbetson Street Press journal in Boston, Mass. In 2014 The Bealtaine group, of which she is a member published an anthology of poetry titled “Bealtaine”.

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Burst Primroses burst like the sun, the vibrant colours sheltered in ditches, I have no shelter from hurt I sway in the harsh North winds; All things that grow – pause as they bend to the will of the gales. Helen Harrison

Helen Harrison was born and raised on the Wirral, by Irish parents, and has lived most of her adult life in the Irish countryside. ‘An ability to see the larger picture of life and a gratitude to nature is the launching place of her poems. She has recently been long-listed for The Allingham Festival prize and has had poems published in a recent edition of A New Ulster.

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Renata Visser

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Sounds Only silence, cement scrapes the aloneness of all light. My fingers curl the mist that abounds in the empty air. You’re in this forgotten part where a branch leans to the quiet, every third one stretches to the windowpane, almost breaks the stillness of no sounds, whose aftermath settles between the trees readying itself for another tap on skittish glass. You’re the presence always in waiting in the world that wanders outside my windowpane.

Ann Egan

Ann Egan, a multi-award winning poet, has held many residencies in

counties, hospitals, schools, secure residencies and prisons. Her books

are: Landing the Sea (Bradshaw Books); The Wren Women (Black

Mountain Press); Brigit of Kildare (Kildare Library and Arts Services and

her latest is 2012’s Telling Time (Bradshaw Books). She has edited more

than twenty books including, ‘The Midlands Arts and Culture Review,’

2010. She lives in County Kildare.

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I Met My Lover With Another

at

Goodge

Street

Tube

Station.

She

was

kissing

him just

before

seeing

me.

Introductions and goodbyes.

Noel King

Noel King was born and lives in Tralee. His poems, haiku, short stories, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in thirty-seven countries. His poetry collections are published by Salmon Poetry: Prophesying the Past, (2010), The Stern Wave (2013) and Sons (forthcoming in 2015). He has edited more than fifty books of work by others. Anthology publications include The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry (AR.A.W.,India, 2014).

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Two Almond Granitas in Soller

In the middle sea of love, is an island beach-fringed, lush and stony within.

On the island of love, a wooden train clatters by pines and orange groves

rattles affably through mountains to the terminus in the town

where solid buildings lean in and whisper tales of love.

In the town of love is a striking church one side of a sun-drenched plaza

diagonaled by the port tram which dings through parting crowds

and shadows of Miro and Picasso sip cafés con leche at a pavement café.

In the midst of the plaza of love sits a singer, hat and leather waistcoat

guitar clutched like a golden lover strings stroked like a plaintive suitor

reaching, keening the high notes and singing a song of love.

Sweetening the singer of love are percussions of cups and coffeespoons

camera clicks and phone trills the gentle murmur of cafe talk.

In the shade of the corner rest two lovers with two almond granitas

condensation slipping, dripping down the glass like sweat on skin

pooling to the silvered table top where your hand holds mine. Kate Dempsey

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Kate Dempsey has been published in many journals in Ireland and the UK and had a poem nominated for the Forward Prize. She was twice commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Awards and won or was shortlisted in competitions such as the Hennessy New Irish Writing Awards, The Plough Poetry Competition and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She runs the Poetry Divas, a glittery collective of women poets who read at events and festivals all over Ireland, blurring the wobbly boundaries between page and stage. She is excited that her first full collection, The Space Between, will be published in Autumn 2015 by Doire Press.

Blog: http://emergingwriter.blogspot.ie/ and http://www.writing.ie/guest-bloggers/poetic-licence/ Twitter @PoetryDivas

Renata Visser

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The Aesthetics of Light First lesson You take a life of shadows You turn the sphere of darkness over and over in your hand, cradling a kaleidoscope of light. Second lesson Remember that the light comes like a mystery from the dark, like a tribe of snowdrops birthing from the blackness. Silence, your companion, cloaks your journey through the cold. Third lesson In Terezin, a group of prisoners is singing Verdi’s requiem. All across the evening friends are lighting candles for each other. Some crystals luminensce most fiercely in the dark. Fourth lesson A heart’s a thing most complex, yet most simple, perches on the safety of the branches until the time for soaring, like a eye, that once closed tightly, now widens to delight. Shelley Tracey

Shelley Tracey is a poet, community arts facilitator and educator from South Africa who has been living and working in Northern Ireland for 22 years. Her poems have been published in a range of collections and journals, including Abridged, Ulla’s Nib and Moment (Community Arts Partnership, Belfast). Shelley ‘s explorations of textpoetry have included publication of her own poems in card format, guest blogs on this form and a chapter on developing textpoems in the Canadian publication, The Art of Poetic Inquiry (2011). Shelley currently holds an Artist in the Community Award from the Arts Council Northern Ireland for an intercultural creative writing project addressing racism. Shelley’s blog, Creating Connections, explores creativity: journeyspace.wordpress.com

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