I raise the shutters… the morning is that of individual sounds… in a sea… in an empty glass… my intention was… my intention is… I believe… it’s Friday… February… l’exil de soi… construction workers on the property across the street… deliberately… the things I have to do today… African elephants live in the savannah and forage for food 17 hours a day… I sit down beside myself at eye level… leave it to chance to build a bridge… perhaps a paper straw… T.S. Eliot writes paratactically… the motif on the mug almost completely faded… except for the outline of the cat’s eyes… don’t tell me that people’s actions… make sense… when searching for literature about literature… proof of a degree is required… lukewarm coffee… in the depths of a calyx… a long night… l can fix them… headaches… the sky above the city… remains… only that… the taste of butter in comparison to no butter… matter… for whom… 

Kati Mohr

Twenties

Alcohol poured on double grief. Delirium Tremens. Three faces (not Pound’s petals) on a clothes horse, at night, menacing, nodding, we know, we know! A well-wrought poem quelled atavistic fears, silenced the chattering voices. A gothic novel beside the fire, the taste of foam from large bottles of stout, bracing, belief in something more, maybe a love affair. Not a great aspect from the front room – a suicide burial ground at the crossroads. Ballybough (reclaimed from the sea) Boy Does Well! Through the arch of Trinity College. Academic silence. Editor of Icarus, long established literary magazine, affording some importance, in demand among poets in pubs. Companions, oblique-minded; one found dead, stone cold at a leaking gas fire in College rooms. Another, rolling cigarettes with claw-like nicotine-stained fingers. Habitué of the psychiatric wards. Sheltered accommodation at last. Was love not at all possible for them? More like honourable obsessions. Intimacy opening a fault line, turbulent waters rising within. Again, a persisting poem, tugging at the sleeve, righting a listing mind.

Thirties

From where did she come when my breathing was shallow? Not the girl next door. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. Vows abandoned. A drunk’s dried-out dinner in the oven. No, not of this world. A plume of lilac blossoms for the bare formica table. A glistening orange when I was sick. A picnic on a park bench in spring. I was reaching, breathlessly. She placed three kisses on my cheek, took a broken vase and repaired it with gold, to hold flowers. Lilies the colours of ice. A dark crimson rose, fire still burning there. She planned to gather irises in the local park, but I never saw her again. Persephone abducted by Hades? Body of young woman found in Fairview Park.

Forties

Curious shire horses buffeted me in the short-cut field. In the car between the hedgerows, her skirt snagged on my haversack and lifted. Was the intense attraction we felt, evidence of a death imprint? Both survivors, witnesses of death too young. Could love erase the numbing mark? Indelible? Introduce our chilled selves to blue skies? Eat strawberries from her garden? A light kiss that last night on the writers’ retreat. Love had been seeping in all week. Taste of toothpaste. A longer kiss leaving in the morning. An empty train station. Trains spawning distance. A wish that they would collide. So broken, a collision, an attempt at intimacy. Letters, keepsakes crossing the Irish Sea. Walking a tightrope, slacking. The subterfuge was killing her. First to the post in the morning. ‘Trollop!’. ‘Home wrecker!’ The death imprint was deep within us. Feel nothing so that death can be redundant, not repeated? In dreams, hands holding the pain of our survival. Truer, sadder lives to live, even at a distance..

Fifties

Through the ornate metal archway of the old park, to a wooden bench in the shade, a bower, away from joggers, walkers, racing dogs and children playing. The furtive nature of our meetings. Holding hands only at night, kissing down a side street. Was there a boyfriend, a husband? I didn’t question the secrecy too closely. Smitten. Old couple following the sun from bench to bench. ‘He’s ninety, you know!’ Suddenly, her tongue inside my mouth, doing somersaults, knocking off my trilby hat. In bed, facing each other, kissing, cherishing. In some kind of love. Her other love began to appear, furtively, behind a tree, in a cafe. Persistent. Riding shotgun at her flat, enabling her bulimia? Frail, shoulder blades sharp. I asked, ‘how is she?’ His reply, I like your hat.’

Gerry McDonnell

Ice on the tooth brush, freezing bed sheets, everything as fuel, old shoes, lino. Fear of school, corporal punishment, six-of-the-best on each hand. Hands reddened, burning. Fear of the confessional – Bless me Father for I have sinned. A dance too soon with death. Windowless slavery of five-year apprenticeship, a printer’s devil, lead-stained fingers, forty-year pension. Escape from prescribed monotony. Pubs replacing churches. Revolutionaries. Marxists, Nihilists, like-minds, a book in the pocket, Turgenev, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, lost souls, smell of weed, incense, posh girls, artists flinging colours, Bach heightening. Gigs and reels. A dance with life, my face against her fall of hair, bodies closing in on curves.

Gerry McDonell

I bought some organic bananas and took them home on the bus. No one knew the fate of those bananas, not even the bananas. I have a rabbit in my heart who’s dying wish is to eat a banana. It’s the least I can do. I’m going to give him all the bananas he can eat and when he dies I’ll bury him with all the peels. The goldfish in my bladder feels neglected and has been demanding beer. I got kicked off the bus for trying to make his dreams come true.

Bob Lucky

When I woke up this morning with a strange woman in my bed, I told her she wasn’t there and had to leave. She quickly poked holes in my logic, but I was adamant. “Let me make some coffee,” she said, “and tell you a story.” She’s still here. She’s worse than an old Japanese film when it comes to ending a story. When she’s not looking, I throw a knife or a pair of scissors out the window, and I’m keeping an eye on how she files her nails.

Bob Lucky

Red shoes. Gold shoes. Spikes. Mile high clogs. A different pair on my feet every time we have sex. Without them he goes limp, this foot fetished boyfriend of mine. He scours shoe stores, the Salvation Army, unlocked museum cases. Why couldn’t he have become fixated on corsets or wigs?  He’s my big secret. I don’t discuss him with my best friend, hide my oddly shod feet from the Presbyterians around the corner.  We go at it for hours. I’m in a daze. But what to do about the growing bunions, the swollen toes? One day I’ll be forced to give him up, spend my savings on a top podiatrist.

Pris Campbell