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Paris Syndrome: out now
current issue: #9
#8: spring/summer '19
Weâre delighted to unveil our new website over at BansheeLit.com.
Weâre especially excited about our new Read section, which showcases a selection of the fantastic work in the Banshee archive.
Our Shop has also been completely revamped, with a long-awaited Add to Cart function.
This Tumblr site will remain up for a short transition period, but will no longer be updated and will be eventually taken down. However, all fiction, poetry & essays posted on this site have been migrated over to the new one, so nothing will be lost.
Please update your bookmarks, & weâll see you over at the new site!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Once I was deep underwater
with just enough life left
to drag my eyes up to the wobbly surface
and find there a swanâs insistent feet
paddling above like a friendâs black shoes
running my way.
They sent out ripples I reached for,
lassos to haul me up
through the looking-glass lake
bleeding a little, but still breathing.
I curved into the swanâs
questioning neck,
heard a friend ask â Tell me
whatâs happened? as butterfly lungs
slowly unfolded with air.
From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015
About the Author
Mel Pryor has won the Essex Poetry Competition, the Ware Sonnet Prize and the 2015 Philip Larkin Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet Drawn on Water was published in 2014 and her first full collection, Small Nuclear Family, was published in October 2015 from Eyewear Publishing.
Pull a set of lungs
     from a butcherâs plastic bag.
All the diagrams that ever were cannot
     prepare for such gross-pink sponginess.Â
Insert a straw into the windpipe, blow.
     Remove your lips, lungs
     collapse.
Allow the heart to rest
     on your palm like a stone,
slippery, perfectly asymmetrical.
     Poke the septum, cut through.
Clutch of muscles butterfly under a winking
     knife; thick chamber and thin,
     pulses race.
Slit an eye bigger
     than yours; cornea crunchy
under blunt instruments. Circle
     the pupil, aqueous humour squirts.
Eye deflates â until, at last,Â
     you see the
     blind spot.
From issue #1: autumn/winter 2015
About the Author
Victoria Kennefickâs debut poetry pamphlet, White Whale (Southword Editions 2015), won the Munster Literature Centre Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2014 and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2015. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Stinging Fly and New Irish Writing, and she is a recipient of the Arts Council Next Generation Award. Follow her @VKennefick.
Louise Kennedy longlisted for Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award
Weâre thrilled that Louise Kennedy has been longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for âSparing the Heatherâ, her incredible story from Banshee issue #8. You can read an extract from âSparing the Heatherâ here.
Itâs also lovely to see Niamh Campbell (contributor to issue #5) among the longlistees, and to see so many Irish writers & journals represented. Congratulations to all!
Know what it is to feel pain. Learn to communicate it in a manner that is tangible. Lay the foundations for a physical mourning: pick the material that feels closest to the way her skin used to. Dig into it with force.
Create your negative mould. This is softer; the rubber feels soothing in your weathered hands. Clench it up and spit it out in reverse.
Fill the cavity with molten wax. Allow it to cool, to forget its anger, to forgive, before peeling away its backwards flesh.
Dip the wax replica in ceramic. Let the ancient texture pour over its new wounds. Do not let the wax know it is temporary, merely a vessel to hold material to come.
Place the wax in the kiln. Let it feel the heat until it is lost in your torment. When you take the ceramic out, the wax will be gone. Resist the urge to grieve: this is a lesson in loss. You must become accustomed to impermanency. You still have work to do.
Fill the empty ceramic with bronze. Its liquid will ooze into the forgotten corners. When the bronze becomes as cold to the touch as it is to the eye, break the ceramic shell. The metal will taunt you. It will compare its own dim shine to her hard eyes. Pretend not to listen.
Remove the bitter metal. Finish it according to her profile. Exaggerate the size of her torso; trick everyone into thinking her heart was really as big as you said it was.
Polish the bronze until you can see your artist soul, starving for recognition in the gleam. Do not look for too long.
Place in a public area. Broadcast your sculpted suffering. Embrace it fully. Be too brash with it. Demand that the world feels your pain.
Do not wait for her to feel your pain.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Adrian Cooper is a spoken word poet and professional teen residing in a state of permanent existential crisis â or Dublin, if thatâs a bit of a mouthful. Their interests include feminist discussion, petting dogs, outer space, and taking selfies.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch âą No registration required âą HD streaming
Until Mum brought it home, Iâd never realised how you only use the term âlifelikeâ to describe something if itâs dead.
I had called up unannounced to the terraced house where sheâd lived with Brendan for the past twelve years. The look on Brendanâs face when he answered the door, a dreadful anticipation, made me feel for a moment like a guard coming to break bad news. Not-quite-relief softened his eyes behind the thick glasses, but when he pulled me in to kiss my cheek his grip on my wrist was too tight. I followed him into the kitchen without mentioning that I had called to see Mum, not him. He told me she was out, and didnât ask me why I was there. When our tea was ready â I never asked for coffee here â he sat beside me instead of across the table like I had expected. His smile was a rigid decal bolted on too loosely as he asked me how Sharon was getting on in school, and how work was going for Graham and me. I gave him highlights; something about that wavering smile said he couldnât take any negativity.
Then we heard the front door open and close, much more softly than usual. No shouted greeting, which was odd. Mum never seemed to think that being in different rooms should be any barrier to having a conversation. The kitchen door eased open, and she came in. Something was cradled in one arm, and she was looking down at it â smiling down at it â so she didnât immediately realise I was there. It was wrapped in a pale blanket. A memory from the hospital where I worked that hadnât surfaced in years blazed through my defences with a peal of bright, shining horror. I just about stopped myself from reaching out to grab Brendanâs hand.
âBrendan,â she said, still staring down at the thing she cradled. âWould you look!â
He cleared his throat. âLove, Caitrionaâs here.â
Mum looked up at me then. For the briefest of moments, her features expanded in a burst of animal panic. Other people may have missed it, but my years as a therapist meant that it didnât get by me. It was only with my family that I felt like aspects of my job were an occupational hazard.
Mum glanced back down at what she was holding and her features quickly rearranged themselves into that drugged-out, blissful look.
âOh Caitriona, itâs so good you can be here too,â she said. Too bright, and my mind whispered reaction formation.
âFor what, Mum?â
She looked over at Brendan, who seemed to realise that this was his cue to stand up and go to her. She angled out the package in her arms, scrunching her shoulder up the way I used to when handing over Sharon as a baby.
Support the head.
I shivered.
Brendanâs jaw worked, as if he were using his tongue to try to dislodge a piece of food stuck in his teeth.
âWell?â said Mum. She looked back down at the package and half-whispered through that odd, awful smile. âWhat do you think?â
Brendanâs arm raised up to touch it, and he stopped himself, glaring for a moment at the limb like it had betrayed him. He pressed a finger against his glasses, even though they were firmly in place. âIt looks like something from a mortuary slab.â
There was no mistaking this new expression on Mumâs face. Rage. She clutched the bundle more tightly against her chest as if Brendan had tried to steal it. Her lower lip quivered. âBrendan, how can you say that?â And for the first time in my adult life, I watched my mother cry.
*
Forever Angels. The name of both the website and the products it sold. I navigated through the site, looking at the pictures and darkly comic testimonials, thinking Who the hell buys these things? before remembering that Mum had.
There were some âstandardâ Angels for sale, but it seemed like the unique selling point of the site was that you could design your own. The pricing page (Valuing Your Angel) had no set fees, just a form to fill in for a quote. Couldnât be cheap. I thought of Brendan sheepishly asking if Graham and I could help out with their gas bill three months ago, and wondered with a sting of anger where Mum had been hiding the money to throw at Forever Angels. I went back to the home page, and the image of the infant-sized thing staring from the screen with eyes of violet glass.
âWhoâs that baby, Mom?â
I jumped, a rush of embarrassment heating my cheeks. I hadnât heard Sharon come in from the kitchen. She plonked her pointed chin in the crook of my shoulder.
âItâs not a baby, sweetie,â I said. âItâs a doll.â
Sharonâs small hands twined absent-mindedly with my hair. âItâs creepy.â
âI think so too.â
Her hand stopped twirling my hair. âAre you gonna get one?â
When I said no, she jerked her chin from my shoulder; the urgency in my voice surprised us both.
*
Iâd kept an entire afternoon free in work for a twelve-year-old girl coming to start a full neuropsychological assessment. No show.
I rang the girlâs mother, knowing what to expect. Sheâd insist that things were fine at the moment, so why should the girl need an assessment at all? Until the next blip in the girlâs behaviour, when mum would drag her in to the hospital demanding that somebody do something, sheâs been in an accident.
Struck by a car six months ago. Midday, but the file offered no explanation as to why she hadnât been at school.
I logged the afternoon session as DNA: Did Not Attend. I mentally phrased the harsh letter I would send to the referring solicitor, stating I would not be offering the girl â although I really meant her mother â another appointment. Then I thought that Iâd sleep on it, be more charitable for the sake of the little girl whose mother wasnât her fault.
I told myself that my decision to leave work early and visit Mum was unrelated.
*
That look of near-panic again when she opened the door to find me there.
âOh love, do you never call ahead anymore?â
âIs this a bad time?â
I sounded casual, but she paused just long enough for me to know that she was thinking about it. âEh, no, not at all,â she said. âCome in.â
Into the living room. Scattered drifts of old supermarket magazine-rack fodder, their covers trilling a psychotic mix of diet tips, soap gossip and âMy son tried to rape meâ horror stories. Doilies hung askew on the arms of the sofa and chairs, and despite the amount of cleaning products that she kept buying from the Eazy Klean hucksters that called around every month, it didnât look like the room had been tidied in a while. A forty-inch flatscreen dominated one side of the small room. I knew what her monthly payments for it were, and wondered how it compared with what she had spent on that... I didnât even know what to call it. The word âthingâ seemed to dignify it too much.
âHow come youâre not in work?â
âA patient cancelled on me,â I said. âWhereâs Brendan?â
âOh, pub I think.â
It was three in the afternoon. I said nothing.
Mum ran through a carbon copy script of what Brendan had asked the other night â Sharon, Graham, work â but something was off. It took me a few more minutes before I realised it. Something I would have twigged in an instant with someone in therapy, but when itâs your own mother ...
âMum,â I said. âWhy are you speaking so quietly?â
Her eyes flicked towards the ceiling. âAm I?â
âYes, you are,â I said. Too loudly, trying to balance it out, and Mum winced, as if she was about to tell me to keep it down.
I took stock of her. She wasnât fat, but looked swollen, her face rounded out by extra flesh, yet the watery eyes behind her thick glasses looked sunken. Her black hair â so luxurious in Sharon, her only grandchild â was lank and greasy, with a pale gleam of scalp showing through. Open-toed sandals showed uneven, yellowing nails. Her thin blue t-shirt struggled to contain an expanding paunch that should really have worried me, this recent protuberance from her thin frame. I wanted to hug her. I wanted to walk out of the house.
Her mouth gaped open, closed. She looked at the ceiling again, at the TV, out the window, everywhere but me. I held my therapistâs pause, feeling dirty.
âSheâs upstairs in bed.â
*
It was.
Brendan had said that it looked like something from a mortuary slab. He had never seen such a thing, but I wondered if he knew just how accurate his description was. I looked down into the cot â Mum had bought a fucking cot! â at the figure that lay there under a familiar blanket I remembered covering me and my sister Aoife. In the dimness of the room, there was no light source to reflect off the glass eyes to give it the sparking lie of life.
Mum stood on the other side of the cot. With a smile so content it made her almost beautiful, she reached down and stroked its cheek. Even in the gloom, I could see the faint tracery of blue veins under its skin ... No! I caught myself. The veins werenât under its skin, they were blue lines drawn or etched on the ceramic or porcelain or plastic or whatever the hell it was made of.
âSheâs only gorgeous,â Mum whispered. âIâm going to call her Evelyn.â
No therapistâs pause this time; I just didnât know what to say. âBut... Mum. What about Aunt Evelyn?â Dead ten years.
âSheâs the image of her, do you not think?â Her finger moved from the cheek to the eddy of black hair that cascaded from beneath the bonnet on its head. I remembered Sharon idly twirling her fingers in my hair the other night, and suddenly what Mum was doing looked obscene.
âI donât see the resemblance.â
âSure you do. The eyes are just like hers.â
âMum, itâs a doll.â
The smallest of pauses before she said, âI know that Caitriona. But she still reminds me of my sister, and I think itâs okay to name her after her, donât you?â
âWhat are you even naming a doll for Mum? Whatâs going on?â
She straightened up, looked at me properly for the first time since I got here. âAre you asking how I am now, Caitriona? After all this time?â
âWhat?â
âYou never visit ...â
âI was up just the other day!â I heard myself sound like a grumpy teenager.
She continued. âYou know that me and Brendan have been struggling with money, and you havenât offered to help once, even with you and Graham both working ...â
âStruggling with money? Stop buying those shite cleaning products ...â
âLanguage!â
â... and get rid of the TV maybe. And how much did this thing cost?â
Her intake of breath at the word âthingâ was sharper than when I swore.
âThat has nothing to do with anything. And I hardly ever get to see Sharon.â A typical turn of direction from Mum. She couldnât stay on topic, always strayed to the next tangent like a cat following the most recently dangled piece of string. I had always thought that she just had a short attention span, but as I looked down at the thing in the cot my thoughts grew darker and began to whisper ...
... braintumourvasculardementiapsychosis ...
âYou see plenty of Sharon,â I said.
âNo I donât. You never bring her round, I never see her. She hasnât even met ...â
She broke off. Her eyes cast downward again.
Something swelled in my belly. âWere you about to say that my daughter hasnât met this doll?â
I reached down and grabbed its wrist. It was like hard but pliant rubber, disgustingly warm yet not warm enough, and again I thought of mortuary slabs, of handing a swaddled bundle around the same size to a mother whose face looked like it was coming apart under the skin. I meant to pick the thing up, let it dangle in the air, show it for the toy it was, but before I could, Mum reached across the cot and slapped me in the face.
*
âSo what the fuck is up with this doll?â Aoife said. Her nasal voice cut through the clatter and murmur of the small off-chain coffee shop.
I shrugged. âNo idea.â
âOh come on, youâre the psychologist. There has to be something weird about it, right?â
In the three days since Mum had slapped me the same question had snagged in my brain like wool on barbed wire. Iâd even considered bringing it to group supervision, pretend that Mum was a patient and see what some of my colleagues thought. It took me longer than I like to admit to catch myself going so horribly easily down a very unethical path.
âI was looking stuff up online,â Aoife said. âSaw something about a âtransitional objectâ, something that young kids hang on to as they get older. Is that what this is? Some kind of messed up delayed grief reaction to Dad?â
âIs âdelayed grief reactionâ another term you found with Google?â
A smile â or possibly the beginnings of a smirk â tugged at the corners of her mouth. âAs it happens. But seriously, the transitional object thing. What do you think of that?â
I made a sound that wasnât a laugh. âAs a psychological explanation?
âWhy not?â She didnât even have the gall to look embarrassed.
âItâs no more sophisticated than the problem page advice in those rags that Mum reads. Do you honestly think that those are the type of interpretations I make in my job?â
Aoife waved a French-tipped hand. âI really donât know, Caitriona. You hardly ever talk about what you do.â
âThatâs because whenever I start to, you get that same stupid fucking condescending look on your face.â
Another wave. âOh, I do not.â She sounded like Mum.
I set down my cup with a clatter that caused heads to turn. âYes, you do. And now you think thereâs a problem with Mum and because Iâm the psychologist, suddenly you think I can just fix it?â
I thought that Aoifeâs half-smile faltered, but she said, âWell?â
She had never asked about my job before. Only snide comments about paying for friendship, and talking-but-not-doing.
âHave you ever seen a dead baby, Aoife?â
At least that got rid of the smile. âJesus, Caitriona, keep your voice down. Thatâs horrible.â Then, her voice became softer than Iâd heard in years. âHave ... I mean, do you see that kind of stuff?â
I almost didnât reply, wondering how much would come out, knowing that it had been building since the moment Mum carried that thing into the kitchen like a newborn.
âA few years ago,â I said, âme and the other psychologists at the hospital wanted to do something to minimise the trauma that parents experienced when their kids came in with life-threatening injuries. Nothing revolutionary, we just set up a protocol for keeping the parents informed all along how their child was doing. No matter how bad things were, the more parents were kept in the loop, it lessened the trauma just enough to count.â
âTo count when?â
âWhen they get told their child has died.â I thought I saw a shimmer in Aoifeâs eyes. âSo whenever a critical child came in to A&E, I liaised with the parents throughout. That was it. Nothing too in-your-face, but enough so that if things were getting hopeless they knew about it. One evening, this baby, around three months old, gets brought in. This was probably about a month before I found out I was pregnant.â My voice cracked. Iâd never thought of that little coincidental detail before. I cleared my throat. âMeningitis. The parents hadnât seen the warning signs, and things were critical. Huge pressure on the babyâs brain. The surgeons did their best, removed a bone flap, put in a shunt. About two hours of surgery and monitoring, and all along me and this young nurse, Ciara, were shuttling information from the surgical team to the parents. As per the protocol Iâd put in place, I was the one that told them their baby was dead.â As per. Lapsing into more formalised speech, my voice felt stronger once again. âAfter the news, the parents were almost serenely quiet, which I took as a bad sign. They just wanted to see their baby. But thereâd been a nasty car crash with three people to be worked on, and it was a Bank Holiday Friday evening, so lots of staff were off, just agency cover. The team was too swamped to prepare the ... remains.â I shrugged, sat back. It felt important that I appear casual, in control. âSo I did it.â
Aoife cleared her throat. âDid what, exactly?â
âWith Ciaraâs help I cleaned up the baby, wrapped it in a blanket, and gave it to the mother before bringing it to the mortuary.â
It.
Aoifeâs hand fluttered up to her throat. âOh Christ, Caitriona.â Her voice shook, and I felt a perverse stab of pride that I could deal with something that she couldnât. My mind flashed on the details Iâd left out: The baby feeling lighter than I expected. Wrapping her in a blanket, her pudgy muscles showing a hint ofthe tone that they will never develop. Ciara, crying quietly and steadily all the time, placing a perfectly fitting woollen cap â where did she get that? â on the head to hide the hastily patched up evidence ofsmash-and-grab emergency surgical intervention. The babyâs limbs complying as I swaddle her, but stiffening already. Hearing a choking sob, just one, and realise that it has come from me. Picking the baby up, flinching at the oddness ofno movement, the lack ofinstinctive infantile clutching. Bringing her to her mother. Handing her over with that automatic shoulder dip even though the reason for it no longer mattered.
Support the head.
Aoife leaned forward and hissed, âWhy are you telling me that horrible story?â
It took me a while to process the echo of the words I spoke. âIs it horrible?â
*
We didnât come out and say that we were going to talk to Mum about it, but we knew thatâs what we were going there to do. It wasnât so much the slap that made me realise we had to do something; it was the fact that I didnât want Sharon to have anything to do with the thing that Mum had brought home. If things didnât change, it might come down to Sharon not seeing her grandmother. I told myself I didnât want that to happen.
Brendan answered the door. He still looked tired, but different from the nervous exhaustion Iâd seen before. There was something about the way he held himself, some new set of his shoulders maybe, that I tried to place. I couldnât get it.
âHello, girls,â he said. âYour mumâs upstairs.â Not using her name. Again, I wished I had a different job with my family, wished I wouldnât notice these things.
âWhy donât you go up to her?â Aoife said to me. âIâll help with the tea. There is tea, right Brendan?â
A relaxed smile. âThere is indeed. And stronger stuff if you like.â
They both laughed their way into the kitchen. I went upstairs.
A few feet away from the bedroom door, I heard my mother weeping.
Not the soft, sad crying of a few days ago. These were deep, choking sobs, made all the worse because it was obvious she was trying to stifle them. I heard gentle, wooden rattling that must be the bars of the cot; I pictured her clutching them. I had a flashback that was hallucinatory in its quality: I was eleven, in the grips of my first ever migraine, trying to dampen those same heaving sobs because each one ignited further fireworks of agony. Mum held me then, and stroked my hair as I buried my chin in the crook of her shoulder, just like Sharon had done with me a few nights ago.
The hall shimmered and doubled as my eyes suddenly overflowed. I wanted to go into my mother and sob with her and hold her and be held.
But I went back down the stairs.
On the way, I swiped at my eyes and glanced at my reflection in the hall mirror. You couldnât tell how I felt. Good for a psychologist doing therapy, but where else?
Tea with Aoife and Brendan should have been excruciating, but wasnât. Brendan was more talkative than heâd been in weeks. Aoifeâs laughter at his little stories and turns of phrase, while polite, was genuine. I settled back into the couch, sipped tea, and almost relaxed.
Mum came into the room.
It dangled from her hand by the ankle
âStupid thingâs broken,â she announced to no one, and tossed it on to the couch beside me. I donât think I flinched.
Mum poured herself tea.
Aoife glanced at me, as if for permission to speak, then said, âAre you, eh, alright Mam?â
Mum snorted. âTypical internet company. I wonât be buying from them again. They better give me my money back, I can tell you that.â
I looked at the thing on the couch next to me. It looked the same as it ever had. I reached out (why so slowly?) and picked it up. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the pliant flesh-like substance its midriff was made out of. I worked hard to dampen down memories of similarly proportioned unresponsive flesh. I saw that the hair had been combed back, and behind the ear, I saw the damage.
A spider web of concentric cracks, with a tiny hole at the centre.
As if it had been dropped on a sharp corner.
Or held by its ankles and swung into one.
I turned it again, looked at its face.
Mum sipped her tea and asked Aoife how she was.
Brendan was watching me, the psychologist. In the matte reflection of the flatscreen TV I saw myself as a dim outline, and the way I was holding the doll.
Cradling it.
I dropped it on the couch again. When I looked up, Brendan had engaged in Mum and Aoifeâs conversation. He reached out and took gentle hold of Mumâs hand, and I saw her squeeze back.
And then I understood the expression on Brendanâs face when he had answered the door. If someone had been watching me the day I handed a newly grieving mother her lifeless child they would have seen the same thing.
Brendan looked like someone who had just finished doing something unpleasant, but that needed to be done.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
David Gogan is a writer from Dublin. He is the author of the psychological thriller Critical Value under the name D.C. Gogan.
his mandarin-flavoured breath
branded hard to your optic nerve,
& he will quote back to you
your murk,
quote back to you
the salt
from your own secluded sea.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Kate Quigleyâs work has appeared in a number of Irish and UK journals including The Stinging Fly, The SHOp, The Moth and Orbis. She is one of the co-founders of Flying South, a mental health-themed open mic night/artistsâ collective.
I am searching for a cure. A cure for this. Gift. Iâd imagine that if I were braver, and knew drugs better, I wouldnât have resorted to sex.
(Iâm talking about class A drugs, of ungodly colours; perfect bridal white, or rainbow shades, like Skittles. Do they come like that? Iâd imagine they provide something of a distraction, at least. A laughing riotous far-away time-leaning- sideways sort of thing. Although being, in this area, virginal, I could be wrong. Let me know, would you?)
As it is, Iâm too afraid to find out for myself; because I want to live, fully, in my body. I think. Here, now. Everything that can happen to a person happens now, is happening to me, now. So sex has been my method of choice. It is the fist-scrunching climax of the now. Itâs what makes me a person, being.
But, I worry constantly about being addicted to anything I enjoy. Thatâs the way, with people like me. As you may know already. I tend to take things too far. But Iâm glad Iâm that way, now. In the now.
Glad the way car-crash victims and junkies are glad, with time. The ones whoâve only lost an arm, or the ability to walk, or the respect of loved ones. Battle scars are useful for perspective. Itâs always unfortunate people insisting upon how grateful they are for life. Those simpering overweight mothers with paraplegic kids, saying every day is a blessing! or abusive mad bastards in prison whoâve seen the light. Fucking up is great for all that, later.
Yes, I am glad. Now.
II. THE DRINK
I suppose I ought to have applied the same panic-stricken wariness I have towards drugs to alcohol, but nobody warned me. Or I didnât listen. Six of one. Hi my name is and Iâm a pre-alcoholic. Hi-ii!
Iâm fun now. Later Iâll be pathetic. Iâm enjoying lounging in the meantime of my life, suspended between the tripping, and the landing. Iâve learned a bit. Like the fact that nothing kills pride and opens you up to the skin-scraping sensations of shame and despair like being an utter fucking disgrace in your teens. Itâs character-building.
(Late sub-heading: That Waking Feeling, or, The Fear)
Regresst /r I âgrÉst/: a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over an occurrence or something that one has done when attempting to minimise mature consciousness. (See pralcoholic.)
Regret for sentences discharged unexpectedly from my syrupy mucous mouth. Idly flirting through Bulmers hiccups with a friendâs father, from the back of the car on a lift to the train, God, youâre such a wonderful driver Mr. Molloy! Arenât you so good to us? Catching his eye in the rear-view mirror as I fix my hair, chest pressed forward against the back of his head rest, bulging.
(Even then sex was the thing, really)Â
Rogue, bold words would be conceived rutting on my tongue and
sluggishly birthed out out out, without any say from me.
Regret for passing out in veiled corners of dark rooms at parties whose
hosts had groaned inwardly when they saw me walk through the door a few hours before, quiet and smiling with my hair all curled, tits up tummy in, raring to go, bottle in hand.
The centre couldnât hold. Leakages occurred. Tell-tale seepage at the seams. Then craaaack! Tears and wailing caoining tears unleashed. For all and any of the young men ever flung out of currachs off the coast of Mayo whom I couldâve birthed or loved, taÌim ag caoineadh! Flooding insides out out out onto humming electric-lit suburban footpaths, dull-achingly safe, patterned knickers down precariously plopped on cold pavement (tired, resigned, finished with all this now, for good this time!), somewhere on the brink of the soundly sleeping real.
What a fucking idiot.
Regret for stains on remains of clothes, abandoned over hedges mornings after, down icing-frosted laneways in the back-arse of nowhere. Shuffling crippled pilgrimages to bus stops on exposed roadsides, with womenâs mini marathon t-shirts or faux-leather jackets or animal-print pyjama bottoms, Penneys, borrowed from reluctant acquaintances with shuttered behind-your- back eyes.
Regret for the disgusted underside glances of those cuntish morning dog- walkers with to-do lists and errands and intentions.
Christ, that time your grandparents, off out for lunch and a stroll, why not sure, lifeâs good sure, saw you meandering back to the house with only one shoe and yesterdayâs make-up, sluttish now under Godâs good sun, and said nothing of it, which was only worse, of course. That discomforting smell of matted hair off your pillow, hair never to be clean again. Not the way it was, once, when washed by a motherâs expert fingers in the bath before bedtime.
(For times when there was a bedtime)
Oh Christ Almighty, and letâs not forget, regret for cherry-bloodied sheets from first piercing time that night with yerman, you know the one, just because he said he loved you back; bundled up in a school backpack and stuffed in restaurant bathroomâs sanitary bin, at brunch the day after, with the whole fucking family there. Your baby brotherâs birthday maybe? Yuh filty hoor. Little did they â ah but sure no bother, never happened, now. Only now.
These are some of the actions I could regret, were I the type. As it stands, I have a beautifully clear conception of my inconsequentiality, which allows me bounteous freedom, to not. Everything that can happen to a person happens in the present alone and is happening to me now, and now, those things are not happening. They are all gone, dead things, now. Going going ...
Gone /gÉn/: no longer present; departed; non-existent; gone.
III. THOSE DRUGS
Still, drugs, they seemed different, somehow. Pills and powders; potions cooked up in filthy labs by glistening caramel-skinned stocky people in South America, wearing your dadâs old football t-shirt, with scars across their eyes and growling short-haired dogs.
Weâd all been told, in hand-me-down sceÌals of terror and giddy whispers (at the back of bowling alleys and en route to bonfires, over naggins decanted in fat 50%-extra-free Pepsi bottles, from the raw, nicotine-diffusing lips of girls older and wiser than ourselves) that drugs, immediately upon ingestion, could result in a sudden, ignominious death. How humiliating. Hard drugs were for dropouts, failures. For girls with âbaggageâ or âemotional shitâ. Only those idiot boys with no apparent futures ever did proper drugs, and actually got away with it. Boys could do what they liked.
Ah, you know them; those long-haired ones whoâd spend parties discussing FIFA and Fender versus Gibson in the corner over Dutch Gold, before the pills kicked in. Then the shirtsâd come off, as they, in unblinking rapture, crowded together in humid condensation-coated rooms to bang sweaty heads to their friendsâ amazing next-big-thing bands â Almost Cliche, Skeptic Tank, IX Lives and After the Math â revealing childrenâs pale and pimpled jagged torsos.
We pitied them, we mother superiors, and scorned their openness to experience. Their freedom.
You see, young women have so much more to prove. They have to project themselves into the future. Their physicality â let alone their history â insists upon it. They bulge forward foreward fore-ward with fertile potentiality. And besides, young women always know theyâre being watched, so canât let themselves go. Not properly. So we watched those boys, listened, and hid our unease in the presence of that great unknown beneath an itchy woollen coverlet of unwavering disapproval and grimacing disgust.
Fuck, how I envied them.
IV. THIS SEX
Sex holds more thrilling risks anyway, for the female. No, I donât mean in matters of the fucking heart. I mean in matters of that disingenuous bitch, the womb. People are so terrified by the scene in that film Alien. Well, imagine watching that as a young woman. When itâs not a nightmare, but more than likely an inevitability. That thereâs our fate, handed down, from our loving mothers, if we choose to succumb. To suck. To come.
Iâd imagine, although feel free to correct me if Iâm wrong, that one great difference in those trepidatious masturbatory years between a boy and a girl, is that sex is virtually always available to a girl, if she wants it, and not to a boy. I suppose thatâs one of the reasons why girls are conditioned to believe, not only that they most certainly shouldnât desire sex, but should actively reject it, while boys have been coerced into seeking it out as though their lives depended on it, through whatever means. Although, thatâs a bit of a chicken/egg hypothesis.
Sex in ideal circumstances is dependent on a willing partner. Luckily, Iâm young and free, and can apply the appropriate laces and lacquers and silty salt-water lighting to disguise myself as a creature desirable to the male of the species. All that is required of me as a female, is to ensure I am not entirely repulsive. Luckily, my person is irrelevant. *
On that note, Iâm amazed at how ugly a whore can be, while still being able to make a living. It is the monetary exchange that is strange to me. There are so many willing, beseeching, ugly women in the world. Why not pick one up for free? Or masturbate? Why pay for an overweight, bulging creature, line-drawn and roughly coloured-in, excreting chicken meal deals and daytime television from her pores, whispering savoury nothings? I suppose itâs for the freedom of it, the guarantee. I guess buying an ugly prostituteâs services is the sexual equivalent of purchasing rental car insurance. Youâre covered for all incidentals, accidents and oddities.
Actually, now that I think about it, I can definitely see the attraction in that, for a man. Yes, I can, really. To be free to do anything, any whim or grave-buried notion, and have no fear of admonition. Of disgust. The control of ownership. The idea arouses me, here where I sit; that sudden awareness of myself, down there, the burst of heat, the convulsion.
I shift in my seat, and make a mental note to masturbate under the warm cover ofdarkness later. Yes. All for now.
Ugly gigolos wouldnât do so well. Surely they couldnât? From what Iâve heard, it seems women like to create fantasies, to avert their frantic thoughts from the wretched raw meat of their own brutality. From nails-on-blackboard fucking.** Perhaps then, in my tastes, I am more the cigar-wielding gentlemanâs club male than the winsome young female (on wind-beaten hilltop, yearning) than I care to admit. I have, after all, often summoned up, in my single childâs bed in the attic of my family home, a sticky, fat, russet and greying man, greased-up with paper notes in sweaty inside pockets and the trickling buttered blood of the rarest steak, taking me, taking my body, and fucking it. Chortling in rolling rolls of cloying laughter as I â me, in this body, now â fulfil his outermost desires.
Iâve always loved to be objectified. Always. From having to sing songs by heart for my grandmother at the kitchen table, to violin recitals, to dancing up against the taut trousers of a stranger under coquettishly diverted lights, fluttering and drowsy, in some swaying basement in the bowels of the city.
* It does not take much, for any woman, to fuck a man, externally.
** According to popular belief, women want men to make love to them, although I have never, in reality, found a smidgen of evidence to confirm this claim.
V. FORGIVE ME FATHER: AN AMATEURâS PSYCHOANALYTIC DIAGNOSIS
Last year I had sex with twenty-four men. Or was it twenty-seven? I canât remember. I chewed them up and swallowed them down, and a person simply doesnât remember all the meals theyâve had in a year. Sex gives me an incredible sense of calm. Of achievement. I feel my worth through it, consummated. This is presumably a terrible reason to derive pleasure from something. But, well. Fuck it. It feels good now. I love to give myself to a man, and to know that, through this coupling, whatever he has inside him, whatever there may be about him thatâs superior, Iâve stolen. Taken it between my legs up inside me, for safekeeping. His knowledge, his passion, his eyes, his laugh, his art, his hope. Mine. Iâve reduced him to this animal quivering urge, pressing itself against me. His vulnerable, piteous erection, seeking out its home, blindly, like a mole exposed above ground. You canât help but want to torture it, slowly; itâs so helpless.
The act itself is a pleasure, in a way, but also an infinite desert nothing. Men seem very keen on giving head nowadays, licking and sucking and offering. I suppose itâs their way of apologising. Supplications: here Iâm sorry take it here have this all for you. Iâm a selfish lover. Although I do allow them to do what they will with my body. Iâm there to be enjoyed, in return for their more precious submission. To demean themselves, reveal themselves like that, simply for!
In the act, Iâm not present. Iâm observing, waiting. It is a fiction. Playing on visceral tactile 3D screens, all around me. Simulated stimulation, live. Now. It is not dissimilar to the disinterested half-watching of dogs humping in the street from the misty window of a bus in traffic. I watch myself, in the act, and try to angle my body accordingly, for maximum impact. *
*Â According to a currently disused and little-known text of the O.E.D., sex is in fact two people compiling memories for future masturbation in the same room.
BOOK TWO
VI. CASE STUDY: THE ANOMALY
(Sub-heading: A Man Descended)
I met a man recently, and knew, from the capability of his mind, that I wanted to bring him down to fuck me. Down down down and with that crude ejaculation heâd be mine and so weâd be down here, in the pits, together, and Iâd have taken his power in my body.
Then Iâd be able to escape the fear of him, of his knowledge. His other, out there, beyond me.
This man was tall and solid and unfleshed. He had a lurching, crooked voice which pondered over words as though squeezing their skins for ripeness. He had black ratâs eyes which I found hard to meet without tipping forward.
He was, frankly, too much for me. I shouldâve seen it then.
This manâs squid ink seeped into my white aqueous mind and left a stain, indelible. He knew things I didnât, and made me nakedly aware. Of my naiÌveteÌ. My lacks, my gaps. I didnât like how translucent his searchlights made my skin. So I sought him out, using my greatest grandmotherâs imparted methods, shape-shifting my self towards him. Interlaced, we wove our way through reams of cross-hatched streets back to a bedroom hanging off the edge of the city.
He fucked me, and I took it. He fucked me again, and again, and I took it, and it hurt, which was all the better. All the more a real thing. He smoked finger-rolled, seam-licked cigarettes in the lulls between and told me he had a girlfriend, an open relationship. They were both accomplished artists, on the up and up. It was all very complicated, but oh so simple, if you only knew.
He was older than me, and lorded his years on earth prior to my conception over me, with relish. Heâd seen the world and come home to bathe in the glory of one returned from an odyssey. Heâd read authors whose names I couldnât pronounce, seen sights I couldnât dream up, and felt things my chest had not yet developed the capacity to withstand. Because of this, his sheets were threadbare on my skin, and I shivered. I adored and despised this man upon impact.
This was not how I had known my sex to be. He was winning. I took all I could, grasping, frenzied, yet gained nothing. He was liquid in my hands. He made me come, and then forced me to come again. Heâd pierced a hole in the side of me, and all my potency was leaking out across the sheets and drip drip dripping down between the floorboards.
This man drank well, and had no fear of drugs, and I resented him his apparent future; for all Iâd foregone, and endured, only to end up lagging, still. We discussed books and he taught me various things until I thought my ribs would crack under the weight of them. I hated him for my ignorance, and for knowing that all I could ever do, would be this.
To be stood by his guiding hands late at night in a dimly-lit living room before the mantelpiece while he fucked me from behind, groaning, alone, all the while keeping his best secrets to himself, locked tight away. There was a mirror before me, and so I closed my eyes, not wanting to look, or to be seen looking. This was not my now. I muttered ânoâ beneath my breath, lamenting the poor bargain I had struck, but he kept furiously his rhythm, all for himself, until the final shudder and collapse, and panting, rested his hot hollow cheek on my maternal, patient back. And I bit my lip and abhorred myself for wanting it all again.
AFTERWORDS
VII. AND SO
I left that night and caught the train home, to my fatherâs house. On the way I thought about sex. I know that to be true, because it always is.
You could smell it off me. The well-meaning brightness growling to a halt before me stung my redraw bitten face and, blinking, I pulled my coat tight around me, as I boarded. I sat directly across from a sucked-tight junkie, unabashedly lost in her own roving, labyrinthine narrative. I felt the urge to pat her deflated leg, but stopped myself just in time. I pitied myself for being lonelier than she was. I watched her eye-whites, star-gazing. Only just inaudible mumbled affirmations. Messages from on high. Say what we like, she must have great craic on it, all the same, I thought.
I crossed my legs and leaned my head on cold glass. I comforted myself with thoughts of future unsuspecting conquests awaiting me, so many to be had! Forward forward and out there somewhere now, across Sandymount Strand and the lights of Howth and the big dark sea, somewhere, breathing, now. Waiting, right now.
Ones thatâd prove more successful than that tricksome black hole of a
man, back there, who bore me no gifts, in return. Gone now.
I sighed, my lungsâ moisture blossoming white short-lived blooms on blackened yellow-streetlight speckled glass. Earth stars. If I were not such a coward, I could use drugs to be here, now, and then I reckon I wouldnât need this sex of mine so much. As it stands, my options are limited, and sex is my
current method of choice. *
*Â As all the while out of me his seed spilled forth, seeping lazily into my black lace underwear, causing a warm, moist unpleasant itch, in the meeting place of my body.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Lucy Sweeney Byrne is a writer of short stories, essays and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Grist, and the anthology Stinging Fly Stories (2018). Her debut collection of short stories, Paris Syndrome (Banshee Press, 2019), was shortlisted for the Kate OâBrien Award and the John McGahern Annual Book Prize. From Greystones, Co. Wicklow, she currently lives in London.
i.
A second past full of people
who flinched,
A silent grey blur floating
over their necks,
Rainclouds
of inattention.
ii.
A person goes missing
every two minutes,
flickering,
getting up
to leave and getting up
to leave and getting up
iii.
All of the dinosaurs
lying down softly to die
where they stood,
the forest floor turning
beautifully in to oil.
The sky lit for only
the briefest of
moments.
No panicking herds -
placid as cows, shifting
from bodies to mulch
to brilliant cities of
white bones.
And then, treasure
in the warm rocks,
waiting.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Rachael M. Nicholas is a poet from Birmingham. Her work has appeared in Magma, Gigantic Sequins and The Cadaverine. In 2012 she was a recipient of the Eric Gregory Award. Her first pamphlet, Somewhere Near in the Dark, is available from Eyewear Publishing.
Lucy Sweeney Byrne shortlisted for the John McGahern Annual Book Prize
Weâre thrilled to announce that Paris Syndrome, Lucy Sweeney Byrneâs stunning collection of short stories, has been shortlisted for the inaugural John McGahern Annual Book Prize. Organised by the University of Liverpoolâs Institute of Irish Studies, the prize honours the best debut novel or short story collection by an Irish writer or writer resident in Ireland. Lucy is shortlisted alongside Adrian Duncan, Nicole Flattery and Anne Griffin.
We loved the judgesâ citation for Paris Syndrome:
Lucy Sweeney Byrne manages to capture both the weariness and optimism of the eternal traveller in this impressive debut collection of short stories. These portraits of the unfamiliar, exotic and occasionally threatening communities briefly inhabited by the protagonists are, at heart, meditations on home, belonging and self.
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âPenguin Watching On Redbill Beachâ by Stephanie Conn
Out of place in this heat,
this sweltering air, hairdryer hot;
we wait for the temperature drop of twilight.
For years I have taught
six year olds to stick cut-out penguins
on A3 sheets of ice and snow.
Now we wait on the east coast,
in cut-off jeans, to catch a glimpse
of their tiny frames, one ruler tall.
There are others here â
Fuji Finepix slung around their necks
like magic pendants
catching the moonlight,
sending blasts of light crashing
onto the bare rocks.
We wait. Watch them leave,
cursing at the sea, let the breeze shake
free of their disappointed voices.
The penguins have found
another way. Two tap their way out
of the waves, try the sandy gap
between stone. They hop onto
a low lying rock and flat-foot it
to the trees. The rest follow â
a single line of shuffling feet,
like small children filing from a classroom,
clutching text books under their arms.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Stephanie Connâs first collection, The Woman on the Other Side, was published by Doire Press and was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for best first collection. Her pamphlet Copelandâs Daughter won the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and is published by Smith/Doorstep. Her latest collection, Island, was published in 2018.
As you may have seen on our social media channels, we have unfortunately had to postpone the release of issue #10. We were due to launch the issue this month, but because of the current crisis, the closure of bookshops, and potential delays in postal services worldwide, we would have trouble getting the issue to you, our readers.
We plan instead to publish a bumper edition in September, at a time when we can hopefully hold launch events, ensure that the issue is stocked by our bookshop partners, and the postal system will be under less strain. September 2020 will also be the five-year anniversary of Bansheeâs first issue, giving us extra reason to celebrate.
All subscriptions have been rolled forward. We have also been able to pay our issue #10 contributors in full, as originally scheduled. As always, weâre grateful for the support of the Arts Council of Ireland.Â
In lieu of a spring issue, we will be posting some original new work on our website in the coming weeks, which we hope youâll enjoy reading -- watch this space.Â
On a personal level, we hope youâre all keeping well in these surreal times. Weâre so grateful to you all for supporting Banshee. Issue #10 is full of fantastic new work worth waiting for, and we look forward to sharing it with you in September.
A few months before I turned seventeen, before Da passed away and I dropped out of the church choir, Iâd been given my first â my only â solo. Our choir director was a hook-nosed Welsh lady named Mrs Hugh. On our first day of practice, after warming us up with scales, sheâd given us the sheet music to âSuicide is Painlessâ. Sheâd said it was the theme song from M*A*S*H but I knew it from the Manic Street Preachers version. The topic of her sanity, whether or not she had it, was a favourite topic of mine and Mary- Kateâs. To the old wagonâs credit, we never had to sing âWind Beneath My Wingsâ or anything having to do with heroes or love or any of that guff. The closest sheâd come was âBeautiful Meathâ.
It was one of those misty-eyed ballads you expected to see in a commercial for Harp or Jameson or to hear piping out of the speakers outside the souvenir shops. Weâd been selected to sing it at a dinner ceremony honouring the Meath football team. Donât ask why our school choir was going to serenade a football team. Mustâve been a choir shortage. Mustâve found us in the golden pages under Serenades, football. All I could be sure of was that we, a group of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls, would get to stand and sing before the watchful eye of the entire Meath minor football team. And I, Greta Gardner, had been given the solo. Girls wanted my blood.
Waiting for the bus, standing in the queue at Dunnes Stores, walking home from school along the Grand Canal, Iâd be practicing my line. For weeks I was picking apart those verses, wondering were you supposed to rhyme âBoyneâ with âtimeâ and thinking what a right eejit I sounded when I tried it. I put on what I thought was a Meath accent even though the only person Iâd ever known from Meath was the madman with the shorts and socks up to his groin who gave tours of the crypts and mummies under Saint Michanâs. Him and his white cotton socks pulled up to the knees and his âLord ... Leitrim ... executed!â
On the day of the serenade, a sight we mustâve been: a gaggle of girls draped in flowing white surplices, flat black choir folders tucked smartly under our wings, hair so lacquered with hairspray it crunched to the touch. We filed behind Mrs Hugh, wobbling over the cobblestones of the Trinity campus. The footballers stood as we entered the hall, sizing us up and elbowing each other in the ribs. Stern portraits glared down at our exchanges from the walls, grimacing from their place in the dusty past. Fuck off, schoolmasters.
The one I fancied was a midfielder. He played for Kilbride in the minors.
He was a bit thick but had soft-looking hair and a polished smile. We stood against the wall in firing-squad formation while Mrs. Hugh struck a tuning fork and hummed the note. My mouth went dry as we lurched into the ballad of âBeautiful Meathâ. I felt the midfielderâs eyes on me and felt sure I was going to pass out but when the solo came, I carried out the task nobly. It was over so fast I was hardly sure Iâd sung it. But afterwards all the girls said it was class.
At dinner, the midfielder winked when he passed me the pudding. I still have the joke from the Christmas cracker:
Q: Whatâs yellow and very dangerous?
A : Shark-infested custard.
One of the footballers said they were headed over to the Stagâs Head for a
couple of pints and that we should head on over later to join them. It may have been a casual invitation, but Mary-Kate Moriarty was not one to see opportunity laid to waste. From a payphone outside the main gates Mary- Kate rang home, then I did the same. The two of us spun a two-faced lie that placed us squarely at the otherâs gaff for the duration of the night. We had the whole night ahead of us for whatever adventures awaited. And the night, we knew, was young.
*
There they were, drinking Heinekens. A tableful of fellas with no girl accessories. It wasnât exactly a bet, it wasnât exactly a dare. It was Mary-Kate whispering in my ear and saying we should take them home with us. We couldnât take them home any more than we could take them with us to Sunday Mass. But we could suggest it, as it were, or lead them in that direction, their direction, whatever direction, that wasnât important. What was important was that it would be our idea. Why? We were liberated.
Hey Mary-Kate, I shouted, and she said What? I pointed to the empty bottles that littered the sticky table and said, Look at all this liberation!
The craic was ninety, the music not too loud. The bar gleamed with bottles sparkly and lovely under warm pub lights. Mary-Kateâs silver bracelets clattered as she tilted her head back and downed a long drink of cider, pressing her knee against mine under the table.
I sidled up beside the midfielder and then Mary-Kate had made her selection. Hers was taller and better looking. The team captain. He drank pints like they were water and I saw where his hand went under the table when he thought no one was looking. Get a room, we used to screech.
The midfielderâs name was Eamon. He worked at the airport at the Hertz rental car counter. He said he had to be at work at eight the next morning. So youâll want to go to bed early, I teased. I whispered in his ear that it was past my bedtime. He said I looked so innocent, then tugged out the rubber bands that held my hair in bunches. I laughed. Mary-Kate looked as young as I did, but when they asked, if they asked, the answer was always the same: eighteen.
By the time I realized I might be on my way to drunk, I was already meeting myself coming back. We drifted into a pub off Grafton Street to catch a few songs by a band called The State Pathologist Dr John Harbison. It was too loud to talk so we ended up in another pub with a dark sticky basement and Thin Lizzy on the jukebox. When we wobbled out into the lane with our fellas, I didnât know where we were headed. I only knew I was still too drunk to go home. And then I remembered: we werenât going home.
The streets were streaked with the grease and neon of the takeaway, the smells of vinegar and kebabs frying. Talk turned to a night bus home. We asked where they were headed and they said Bray.
â Bray! said Mary-Kate. Iâve always wanted to go to Bray!
We missed the last DART and thatâs what condemned us to the Nitelink. Stagecoach of the sloshed and sledgehammered, your last chance out of Dublin on a late night weekend. We bought our tickets out of the bus parked on Westmoreland Street, then found our bus and staggered up to the top deck. There were burger wrappers and beer cans rolling up and down the aisle under the seats. There were lads absolutely locked and cross-eyed girls screeching at their antics. Then the aggressive and sweaty ones who didnât get lucky at the pubs and clubs and thought theyâd get lucky on the Nitelink. If you got onto the Nitelink and found you had to vomit, you were not alone.
We lurched up the spirally stairs, fellas on our arms. The bus was jammers. It was revellers all, not a single aul wan in a headscarf clicking her tongue. As the bus pulled away from the stop, Mary-Kate handed me a brown paper bag. The whiskey burned a path down my throat and was swiftly dispatched through my body, working its way down the arms and all the way out to the fingertips.
On the upper deck was a drunk man in a patriotic mood serenading passengers. Mary-Kate shouted at him to shut the bloody hell up but then I called him the Rebel Song Jukebox and she decided that was gas. If we gave him a coin, any coin, heâd sing any song we asked him to, so long as there was a spate of brave souls dying for Ireland. After two and half songs, the body count was already up to seven. We had to stop our body count during the Jukeboxâs rendition of âA Pair of Brown Eyesâ because no one could decide whether dismembered body parts counted as dead bodies.
â Of course they bloody well count, Mary-Kate said. Where do you think the body parts come from?
Then the Jukebox had a change of heart and gave out with a rousing
rendition of âWild Roverâ to lift the spirits. No dead soldiers, no weeping widows, no rifles of the I.R.A. Just a load of roving and rambling and whack- fol-the-do to take us home. Or away from home.
The sky stretched out over the sleeping houses as the lit-up bus rattled along the dark N11. It was well past midnight when we arrived in Bray. The last thing we heard was a rambling chorus of âPiano Manâ swallowed up into the suction of the closing bus doors. Then it was dead quiet.
We made our way down the dark side alleys till the boardwalk stretched out before us. Down onto the squishy sand we went. Come on said our fellas. Or we said to them. I forget now who said what. A drink too many but only one too many. Could still see the sand, still knew my name. Mary-Kate unlaced her boots and wriggled out of her socks, stalking across the cold sand in bare feet. A hard white moon gleamed above. An abandoned ice cream booth stuck out in the middle of the no-manâs land, a livid-eyed seagull pecking about its splinters. We were all four of us strewn out in the sand looking up at the stars. Eamon put his arm around my waist and pulled me in for a long, lager-heavy kiss. What was it like? It was like this: goal.
Mary-Kate shot up and said they were going out for cigarettes. I asked where were they going to get cigarettes at that hour and she said the Superquinn. I said it was the Superquinn not the Miraclequinn and did she think theyâd be open? She laughed and they left. I donât think she went out for cigarettes. I donât even think there was a Superquinn.
My head sunk in the damp sand. I looked over the horizon at the sideways water and rolled over on my side. The midfielder pushed his hand in my hair and kissed what was left of me. The night went up in smoke.
They call it blacking out. But what do they call it when there are flashes of light in the shadows? When you can see it wasnât you at all but someone who only looked like you, whoâd broken into your wardrobe and, yes, your life? When you can remember some details and not others: the zipper but not the face, the ash but not the cigarette, the punishment but not the crime?
*
I could tell something was wrong straightaway from the taste left in my mouth, tar and stale beer and ashtray. I was covered in damp sand on a beach when I should have been in my bed, waking up to the smell of my maâs rashers and eggs. This wasnât home and it wasnât a hostel. It wasnât, as far as I could tell, even Dublin. The boy from Meath, the midfielder with the leafy, lager smell? Gone. My hair was a mess. There were bits of sticks and seaweed stuck to my coat sleeve. In the sand I hunted for them. Clues, that is. Where were you, Greta Gardner, on the night of. Eyewitnesses? Only Mary-Kate. And she didnât see a blink of it.
I turned my stiff neck to the rolling waves and looked out over the craggy black rocks. Slowly, without much conviction, dawn was forcing its way in. A rusty sign riveted to the wall nearby informed me that we were being watched by CCTV. Some show it was. Hi Ma. Hi Da. My neck felt stiff. I shook the sand from my hair and smoothed down my skirt. When I opened my eyes again there was Mary-Kate standing over me like a surgeon. The clumped mascara, the lips chapped and tinted slightly blue. She looked lost, ruined. She looked like something dumped off the back of a lorry.
â Where are we? I managed.
â Where are we? Christ, Greta. Donât tell me you donât remember.
â Remember what?
â Remember what?
Before me in the sand was a green plastic bucket with a crack in it.
Reminded me of what we used to take with us down to the seaside. Holidays on Bray. Nothing to do but kick round collecting shells, keeping our eyes peeled for a jellyfish, those were the days.
â We took this bucket to the beach, I said, feeling tears rise up. Weâll build sandcastles with it!
Beside me in the sand a red triangle on a bottle blinked at me like a hazard sign. Warning: Bass Ale Approaching. A melody was scratching around in my head, rolling from side to side like a stray can on a bus, and a memory along with it. I knew what it was. It was âBeautiful Meath.â
In the palm of my hand I was holding a coin the midfielder had placed there, telling us to get home safe, telling us to take the first bus in the morning back. But when I opened my hand I saw what the sharp edge was all about.
â Put that down, will you?
â No!
â Drop it, Greta. Itâs trash.
â I want it. Itâs mine, itâs mine.
Thatâs what I was going on about. That and the sandcastles. No wonder
Mary-Kate smacked me. It didnât hurt as much as it surprised me.
It did make me drop the bottle cap. That hit, I had coming to me.
The first dirty white light of day came crawling up the chimneys. Soon we
would be in church singing the Latin: agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi and listening to the gospel of Matthew, the one about the five wise virgins and the five other ones. But now we were on this beach. The dim lump of Bray Head loomed in the distance, a cross stuck into its peak like a syringe.
According to my piece-of-crap watch it was 7:44. We had exactly one hour and fifteen minutes to get back to town and into our Sunday clothes and show up for Mass. Mass, then bed to conk out. A bed was a faraway, magical thing, unthinkable as a unicorn.
Up we walked. Up streets so vast and deserted in the early morning light. A bent man in a yellow vest was sweeping up last nightâs leftovers. All of town to clean up, and just him and that bristly broom. A wrecked black umbrella was sprawled upside-down in a dustbin, nothing left to it but the skeletal silver spindles. There were cans and bottles, a soggy cardboard French fry shell with the golden arches. And the red pinstriped straw from a strawberry milkshake, you know the one: post-pub, 2 a.m., on a stomach of five pints of cider.
Churches all over town were ringing out with bells clanging, doors flung wide open begging: please come in, good people of Dublin! O not today my Lord, Iâm afraid. A bit indisposed, outdid myself unfortunately, not up to the task. The only god youâre praying to this morning is the deity in the porcelain bowl, who shakes His I-expected-so-much-more-from-thee head and says: not you again! Only come to me when youâre in trouble!
All the church bells were ringing out, calling us to Mass. Calling us to confess. What is Sunday for but to repent for the sins of the night before? Should carry a notebook and pen to keep a running tab: sins Iâve done and sins to do. Always some sins you forget about. And then the ones you donât. And itâs no, nay, never, no nay never no more, will I play the wild rover, no never no more.
I watched a wave as it came coasting over the seaweed and stones and swept away a Tropicana drink box. It was something to behold! All that trash! That rubbish making its way bobbing out to the Atlantic! We used to sit for hours on the beach along Sandymount Strand, sticking out our toes and dipping them in the cold summer surf. Can you believe this waterâs connected to the ocean? I remember saying to Mary-Kate once as we gazed out over the bay, thinking of the unthinkable future, awestruck to believe that in this dirty old town there existed such beauty, such water.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Therese Cox lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, gorse and The Anti-Room. She is pursuing a PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City.
Weâre not the first to speak of spiders,
crawling out from under citadels,
spying assorted moths, toeing snow-drops
 on Abbey Street, dreaming of storefronts
lined with daffodils, a fractal realm
of balanced strands, gathering dust.
April isnât the sole offender, beyond the pale
tone of violet sit forgotten garden gnomes
who would relish surprise. We put them there.
Surrounded by nature, stem and root,
soaked by showers, where mounds are mountains,
facial structures estranged to expression.
The Mardyke is real; those that wander thither
did not put it there, and when the doom comes
crawling they do not think of pawns, thunder,
overzealous clergymen or shifting tides.
They built in a flood plain, and were shocked
when it flooded where they built.
Nobody crosses the shaky bridge anymore,
where it is always winter; perpetual fog
rolling across a city that burned as penance â
it would seem waste is worth ruling;
one can grow fat anywhere, kiting
above ashes as well as girders or soup kitchens.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
James OâSullivanâs work has appeared in The SHOp, Southword, Cyphers, CrannoÌg and Revival. He placed third in the Gregory OâDonoghue International Poetry Prize 2016 and has twice been shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize. His most recent collection of poetry is Courting Katie (Salmon 2017). He is a lecturer at UCC. For more information visit jamesosullivan.org
Breakfast consists of a plate of blackened comal-fried eggs and beans flavoured with those ever-present, anti-flatulence leaves of epazote. An ancient woman sells me some tepache on the roadside and I alternate gulps of that with the sweet coffee that comes free with the eggs. A familiar fizzle and rumble in the gut follows â caffeine mingling with the fermented juices of the hacked skin of a pineapple. Warm liquids darkening each other on the way down. Slow explosions of vapour must have risen from behind the hills and blotted out the sun while I slept. I look around to see myself breakfasting inside a cloud and, from the steps of a wooden shack, being spied upon by a kitten, a dog and a duckling.
Iâd decided to stay at La Cumbre. High up above the town it had normally been the perfect place to be alone. However, as soon as I arrived I realised that Easter week was a busy time up there. A wooden structure clinging strangely to the mountain slopes, La Cumbre is dusty and cold and multiple blankets and a mezcal or two are needed at sundown. I was shown to a one-bed room. Mattress on the floor, eight woolly blankets and mushroom-trip graffiti on the walls. I took out my battered Toshiba and got ready to settle in for some work. I stopped. I thought Iâd lie down and think for a while and look at the mountains through a light vapour. Talk to you. Iâve told you before that I have conversations with you when youâre not around. I always say what I feel. I told you that I missed you. I must have dozed off as I remember drool on my chin followed by a hazy awareness of the insistent comfort of Familyman Barrett on the bass from the speakers next door, shaking La Cumbre. I heard a table fall and some heavy shuffling around the room. Oh god! Jesus! said a Southern accent. I went outside to see what was going on and my neighbour, clearly American and probably Texan, was shaking dirty clothes from his rucksack, crusty and creased. Six soft pellets of pinkness on the floor by his feet. A mouse mustâve come into my room one night to nest, he said. I found her babies in my clothes. Man I need to get my stuff washed. I knelt down to look at the little fleshy lumps. They were pink but almost transparent. I could see blue and purple veins and capillaries pulsating on the floor. Each one vulnerable, cold and living. Tiny lucent eyes looking for help. I feel bad, man, but what can I do? I canât be looking after a family of mice. He placed them carefully on the corrugated ceiling of the lower floor' s mezzanine that jutted out from our own floor. They lay in the shade for a few hours as the sun continued to rise and its reddening light encroached. The next morning I saw them in the same place. Dry and dusty; of course they were dead.
His name was Dan and he was strange and memorable. He told me he couldnât drink mezcal because he used to go down to MiahuatlĂĄn de Porfirio DĂaz to drink until he could drink no more because he wanted to die. I wanted to die, he said. Why? Well I had a lot of problems. My dadâs a Baptist preacher and he doesnât approve of the way I live. I just wanted my parents to love me but I thought they didn' t and, for that reason, I wanted to drink until I died. I once spent seven thousand pesos in one night down there. Are you one of those guys that goes binge drinking, buying shots for everyone in the bar so that theyâll hang around with you? Yeah, I guess I am. He told me that he had just put a suppository up his arsehole and that he was feeling good but kind of sick. Over the next few days I learned a lot about Dan. Too much to set down right now. He was the son of a missionary couple and he grew up in Kenya. That' s where he started smoking weed. Then he was moved to Corpus Christi to attend high-school. I wasnât too good at school, he told me. Iâm dumb, he said. He left school to join the army. He thought that would set him straight and so did his parents. He was involved in communications and lived in Germany. He was kicked out of the army in Germany for smoking weed and for being an alcoholic. I didnât talk much to Dan but I did listen to his life story many times. I felt sorry for him. It wasnât his fault he was the child of missionaries growing up in Kenya and Texas. It wasnât his fault that a part of his brain never worked. He didnât stay off the drink for long. About six weeks later I heard the news. He was stabbed in the belly outside a cantina in MiahuatlĂĄn.
V
She gets onto the truck just outside Candelaria and sits in the seat frequently reserved (unofficially, but oh so obviously) by the truck drivers for girls travelling on their own. In other words, she takes her seat between the driver and me. The conversation starts and itâs clear that theyâre sure I donât understand their Spanish. Just coming from work? Yes, thatâs right. Where do you work? I work at the coffee plantation we just passed. Picking the coffee, right? No, I do the cleaning. Finished for the day now? No, just a few hours off in the afternoon to go down to Pochutla to the Banco Azteca. Iâve seen you before havenât I? With a couple of youngfellas? Thatâs right but Iâve left them with their grandmother now. And their father, a skinny lad, always wears that cap? Ah, sure he left about six months ago. He said he wasnât ready to be a father. He said heâd rather leave and not be their father than to stick around and be bad. He was right I suppose. Do you have some free time in Pochutla? I know a place. Iâll pay for the room. No, my mother expects me back at six. Call her and tell her youâll be late, go on. Ah go on. Ah, stop that I canât. This goes on for the best part of an hour as we get closer and closer to Pochutla. They talk about her bills and how sheâs struggling to make payments. He badgers her relentlessly to go to a room with him for a while. It wonât cost her anything and sheâll make enough to pay the bill sheâs on her way to pay anyway. It makes sense, the driver insists. He wonât leave her be and she keeps saying no. When we reach the terminal, she stays behind when all the other passengers alight. I want to tell her to get out, to choose for herself without any pressure and to only do something that she wants to do. I donât say any of this and I tell myself that she has made her own decision, to stay behind and to go with the driver, some twenty years her senior, to a room to make some money. I picture the room with one window and a rusty fan whirling slowly. Their bodies sweating and heaving, sticky foreskin peeled back in the half-light. Sheâs a young, round-faced girl with a tight pink t-shirt and shorts. Sheâs as fat as the driver. A single mother with two children in rural Oaxaca.
VI
Almost dusk in Pochutla and, after stopping at a cash machine, I make my way to the plaza for a glass of fresh hibiscus water. I place the glass up against each cheek, my forehead and neck. Sweat streams pool in the small of my back. My shirt is sodden. I have a look around the square. People are listening to a marimba duo, laughing at one of the clowns, smoking or just leaning up against the evening. They call it the Plaza de las Golondrinas and itâs no surprise. The crisscrossing power cables above the square are always lined with swallows in the evening. Not a millimetre of cable is spared the hopping feet of birds getting ready to settle in for the night. I see that the odd pair of sneakers has been slung upon the cables, splattered with bird shit. I finish my drink and turn off towards the truck-stop. The truck to Mazunte is empty and I jump in the back so I can stand in the open air and let the warm rush shake the dust from my hair and beard.
VII
What opinion do you guys have of me? Tell me the truth, Iâll know if youâre lying. An uneasy silence followed as always it must when someone asks you what you think of them out of the blue. While I had always preferred to eat down in the village, for some reason, that night I decided to dine up at La Cumbre. Amarillo de pollo, something similar to a light curry. Don Esteban, permanent resident and owner of at least part of the property, had managed to rope me into a small but dedicated drinking group after dinner. Shots of mezcal flavoured with nanches. Alberto from Chiapas, a very thin boy with long hair and an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things hallucinatory, was part of the group. He had come up to La Cumbre to give himself some time to think after finding out his girlfriend was expecting his baby. I wonder if she got to go anywhere to think. I had dismissed his Paulo Coelho as a charlatan, an empty proponent of the worship of the self, and he had gone quiet. So there we were, about five of us, drinking and all smoking something or other. Esteban, an ex-convict, had to get up early to go to the jailhouse in Oaxaca (a three-hour drive) to register and, thus, prove that he still resided within the state. Heâd have to wake up at four. His wife and daughters watched nervously from the kitchen to see how much he was drinking. They gently asked us to intervene. Take it easy Don Esteban, donât forget you need to get up early. Sure weâre all gonna hit the sack soon enough and so on. Then he stunned us with his question. The silence began to hurt my face and so I told him that while I didnât really know him he seemed like a nice guy to me. Do you think Iâm an alcoholic? No, I said. Good, he replied and urged me to down another shot. We finally got him to go to bed. His wife and daughters led him away by the arm and he stumbled towards the family cabin. Alberto said he had a button of peyote. I told him he needed more than that. I told him he needed at least three per person. But no, he told me he was going to smoke it. Iâd never heard of anyone smoking peyote. We went down to the balcony overlooking the black valley of clouds and he skinned up some weed and peyote. We swigged from the nanche flavoured mezcal and smoked that bitter cactus mixed with the weed. Time to sleep. I slept instantly and with dreams of stars. Then, cold and uncovered, I awoke in convulsions. My body shook and I wretched and felt a mustard-coloured acid in my stomach and tried to picture a river of cooling milk. I recovered, drank some water and stared below into the abysmal woods. I was never going to write anything up there. I needed to go to Mazunte to meet you as we had planned before later deciding we would never see each other again. I needed to go and to believe that you would be there and I needed to go soon.
VIII
I arrive in Mazunte just before dusk and know what to do â hike up to Punta Cometa (a small peninsula slightly west of town) to watch the sun go down. The sun is always red in the evenings in Mazunte. Its hacked body trickles its rivulets across the horizon. A hand-beaten drum counting down the seconds, getting quicker and quicker as the sun approaches its disappearance. I feel your hand on my shoulder just as the sunlight begins to disintegrate like an effervescent vitamin pill. A quick flash in your eye. A flame in the retina, kindled then quenched. The sun now subaqueous. An apricot lava oozing through saltwater. You have some worm-salt mezcal in your bag and you give me some and it makes me feel warm. Are you really here? As darkness floats in from the sea like a sad fog we decide to head down to the beaches to find a palapa or a hammock or somewhere to sleep later on. While the morning began in mist, the humidity in Mazunte is different. A hot steam that emanates from every pore and you feel the evening as a gelatinous residue in your nostrils. Just before the descent we stop to catch our breath in the small unfenced-off graveyard. Desperate wet gulps of oxygen. My shirt heavy and pointless. Did you see that? Yes, did you? Yes. One followed by another, then another, then another. The paparazzi madness of a hundred drunken fireflies. I capture one then feel guilty and let it go. I tell you to bury me in that place. I tell you I want the tendrils of the saffron cempasĂșchiles to hook onto my dead bones and to use me as an anchor. Flashes of light all around us. You smile, but Iâm only half joking.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Currently based in Mexico City, Dylan Brennan writes poetry, essays and memoirs. His debut collection, Blood Oranges, was published by The Dreadful Press in 2014. His co-edited volume of academic essays Rethinking Juan Rulfoâs Creative World: Prose, Photography, Film is available now from Legenda Books (2016).
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About the Author
Annie Wiles is a graduate of the creative writing program at Trinity. Her poems can be found in Poetry Ireland Review 114, Boyne Berries 18 and The Bohemyth. She is currently working towards her first collection.
When my motherâs father was a child, he lived in a cottage that became a shed when Grandad got the farm. It had gray walls when I was small and the roof was corrugated iron. I never saw it differently to that, so I felt sorry for my little Grandad, growing up in the big dank shed with hay on the floor and plywood in the windows instead of glass.
There were three of them, and their mother and their father in the house. There was a granny too, who lived upstairs. Her face didnât work properly, and they didnât like going up to her because sheâd want things from them and they wouldnât understand and her eyes would fill up angry in her nightdress in the daytime.
It was a small shed, and dark and there were spades on the walls and a big thing like a pliers for making bullocks out of little bulls. When I was little. When they were little, things were different. It was a house back then, with fields around and stones and neighbours close but not too close for comfort. I always liked my space when I was small. I like it now. When people want too much it makes me nervous. To look at you. To touch you. To say things and to hear things and to listen. To eat you up like sandwiches at funerals. Dry and soft and not the thing you want.
My great-grandmother was very beautiful and she always had a scarf and a brooch and she wore lipstick too sometimes as well. Everyone thought she was elegant and my great-grandad was mad about her. Marriages in those days werenât always about love so they were lucky in their little house. And children can be hard. Not to mention Granny in the attic, needing cleaning, needing feeding. Needing talk. The one of her was not enough to do all of the womanâs work accruing. She needed help. He went and got her help to make her happy.
You could get a person from out of the workhouse then to help you if you wanted in your house.
They didnât have a hoover or a washing machine, they had to sweep the floor and beat the rug out on the washing line and they washed the clothes in the stream and got water from the well for cooking and washing up the dishes. Thatâs a lot to do.
Itâs hard for a woman to admit that she needs help, especially an elegant woman. Theyâre supposed to be unruffled, get things done and not bother anyone. Keep the head down and get on with it. Be peaceful and beautiful and streamlined and in motion. Like a dolphin through the water, not a heifer loping down the road.
My great-grandad was running the farm and didnât want to make my great-grandmother sad with all the housework but there wasnât time for him to do it for her and the children were steps-of-stairs-small so they couldnât really help. Granny in the attic was a list of jobs all by herself. He bought her a sewing machine. And that was something. She needed more. And so he bought a person. It makes sense in a way. We package ourselves so people choose us. Squeeze dead-eyed into bras before weâve boobs. Looking down, youâre scared that they will come but still you want them. All we want what everybody has. And maybe more.
I donât know how you went about choosing who would help you from the workhouse. Like a job interview or a hiring fair or what. But great-grandad came back with this bockety little woman who looked like sheâd be no help. Her legs didnât work, sheâd been born that way, so she kind of snaked around on the floor to get where she needed to go. Her arms were fine. She could do anything with the arms.
I donât know what my great-grandmother thought of the bockety woman, or if she had a hand in bringing her inside their house to mind the things and children. She liked her later on. Pretty women often like women who arenât threats and sure whoâd run off with a bockety woman.
Farmers like the land, you see, as well. So there was that to keep him, that and love.
Some people who are bockety like to sit down and complain about how bockety they are and thatâs no good to anyone. She wasnât like that. She didnât talk about their âtwo good legsâ the way their mother sometimes did so pointedly beside her. She was fun. Sheâd plough down to the stream and wash the clothes, baskets on her back or pulling them with teeth. She must have had good teeth for all her poverty.
I donât know how people open bottles, pull at plastic floss. My teeth are soft chalk, crumbling, all give and no resistance.
They loved the bockety woman and my mother would tell me the story and she would tell me how many legs I had and that Iâd the use of them and list the jobs to do around the house. They didnât have a hoover or anything back then. She had to scrub. Down on hands and knees. Or hands and legs. She was always down on hands and legs. And never up.
She loved the children. She loved their little faces. Loved to look at them. She canât have been all good. If I were bockety, it would make me cross. It would make me angry. Angry at the things my body couldnât do. I get that way already. Looking at the television, all the slender women. Rail thin. Nothing poking over their elastics and I worry Iâm too much and not enough at the same time. And havenât I two good legs? And shouldnât I starve? Shouldnât I starve myself to be as good as them. Imagine if. Imagine if her legs would work, if she could just be selfless and renounce things. Biscuit crumbs on jumpers. Brush them off, they work into the fibre. Smell them later hungry on the bus.
Did she never rage I never asked. Did she never hate my great-grandmother and her husband and her kids and little scarf. Did her mouth fill up with blood from champing down on angry, lonely tongue?
When mother tells it, Delia is a saint. That was her name. But women are not saints. Not even saints are. All of us have anger. Burrowed in the marrow of our bones, running up our spines and tensing muscles. Anger pulses through. How do you live through days where nothing seethes?
How do you keep on dragging on the grass, your little gut all wet from dew and panting with the effort of it all, youâre strong, they couldnât do what you have done and you only do these things because you have to. What if there were other ways to be. Did she never want to die from how it was? Did nothing hurt her?
People talk a lot about resilience. Offering things up. Offering it up. My mother offers me up like a sacrifice a lot. Looking at my mouth and thinking âeatâ and thinking âeatâ and when I eat sheâs analysing bites and I. am. Trying.
They had nothing back then. Nothing. But they kept on going. Delia kept on going. She had to for the children. I donât know what they paid her. If they paid her. Probably in roof over her head. In food and bed and water. She had to work. She had to work to stay she had to please them. Love grew though. With children love can grow so easily. Theyâre soft. The world hasnât carved pores into them and filled them up. Hasnât etched the stretches on their thighs. Hasnât butter filled them fat with soft.
Eat. She says. And softly. For fuckâs sake. She thinks it is a thing I do to her. On purpose. Sometimes she is right. But not entirely. One bite on the plate of this is spite. A little sprig of greenery. A cherry. Itâs me and her. The two of us. Iâm all she has. All she has is me. And I have so, so many things. Thereâs such a lot of things for me to do. And I am tired.
What happened to the bockety woman, Mam, I ask. To Delia. She looks at me. An apple rests between us. I slice a sliver off. Push it through the maw. When I was little, I was all for stories. Hated food. Even then I always hated food. One more bite sheâd say. And then Iâll tell you. I can hear her think it. Up my spine. I hear it up my spine and work my jaw.
They all got sick and she got sick as well. My great-grandmother caught it. And so did Delia. And the pretty woman died and on her deathbed asked her to mind the children and the bockety woman lived. So she did. She was loyal and hard-working. Apple taste is soft and artificial in my mouth. Golden Delicious. I like a little sharp beneath my sweet. The mildish pulpy texture feels like rot. We all begin to rot. Food inside your stomach rots as well. It hastens things. But you can still outwit it.
My great-grandmother buried in the ground and in the cottage just a man and Delia and the children. It wasnât right but still it wasnât like she could get married. Who would have her? Who would have anyone at all? Weâre all so human. Delia on the floor, curled up on the hay, a massive hairless cat with apple cheeks. The children there. The children were her reason for it all. And then they grew.
You feed things and they grow. Up and out. Soft fat of the apple meat. The bony little pips Iâll shit out later. Apples. Milkless tea. And sometimes toast. One slice. Crusts off. No butter. I know itâs bad but I keep wanting things.
Not many things. But her. She had a fat brain. Sliding through the mud like slug to beer. I cannot stand the broken things around me. They pad and fumble through. They offer things to gods and carry on. I want things offered me. I want an altar. For my sacrifice I want an altar. Look at me and love me. Donât come closer. In a church, thereâs places not to step. You canât go there Iâll say. Itâs mine itâs mine. And they will leave me fruits and eggs and loaves and I will leave them rot and be replaced. I want so hard to matter. My mouth. My two good arms.
The children ripened. They were fresh. They married and they moved. Her work was done. Come live with us they said. Come be a person. Crawl out of the story of the martyr. No she said. They didnât ask again. People do not give you second chances when theyâre used to taking. Hard iron of the handle of the bucket. Splintered wood. Cold water.
The colder you are, the more it burns your skin the more the padding wears. If you want to lose weight, leave your coat at home donât bring a jumper. I was walking home and it was cold one day and I was hungry. I sat on the side of the road. Beside the stone that has the yellow square with squiggle-writing. I opened up my book. And pulled and plucked and wadded shoved and ate. A journeyâs worth of chewing in the paper. All you needâs three leaves, rolled and curled and wadded. And you put them in your mouth and chew and chew and chew and feel so guiltless.
And after Grandad came home with this bockety woman, didnât she work very hard for them for years. And when my great-grandmother died, didnât he fall in love with her? And she stood up. Uncurled her twisted back, her little nape and wiggle-stretched her toes and scratched her ankles. True Love she said. True love was what I needed all along. And he said will you dance with me my darling and the children were so thrilled with their new mother that they didnât miss the old one but a little. And she was small and finely built, even at her full height.
And love is what it takes to fix us all.
She died back in the place they got her from. They never saw her after she said no. I brushed the grass-wet off my two good legs and took the long way home for cardio. My heart. My heart. My heart.
[from issue #1 â autumn/winter 2015]
About the Author
Deirdre Sullivan is a writer from Galway. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in The Dublin Review, Mslexia and The Penny Dreadful. Her most recent books are Tangleweed and Brine (Little Island) and Perfectly Preventable Deaths (Hot Key Books).Â