Icarus Vol. 74, No. 1 (2023)

ICARUS

VOL LXXIV | ISSUE I

ICARUS MAGAZINE

VOL LXXIV | ISSUE 1 | MMXXIII

© Trinity Publications 2023

ELOISE RODGER EDITOR

CHARLOTTE MOORE EDITOR

FOREWORD When Eloise was eleven, she swallowed a small duck-shaped paperweight, because she was practising kissing with it. She had to go to A&E and use a potty for days. This is not something she usually admits to. Charlotte has never done anything embarrassing herself but does appreciate this sentiment. If it weren’t for art, Eloise would have had to change her name out of the humiliation. But, art can make terrible feelings worthwhile.

You all seem very concerned with earwax and words coming out all wrong; with good jokes about bad things; with slimy kisses, delusional dates and brains kept in brine; with years and years of boredom.

None of these necessarily feel a cause for celebration and yet, celebrate we must. This issue proves that alive people are sad, gross and clumsy — and still very much worth the telling. All these pieces make us feel much less awkward about being human.

We hope these poems and paintings, stories and drawings remind you of you, even the bits you’re afraid of.

Tenderly, Eloise & Charlotte

*Eloise Rodger’s autobiography Unlucky Duck: Beast in my Belly is in the works.

Charlotte does not have a digestive system so she’s very eager to read it, indeed.

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

I My Waxie Dargle Megan Ní Mhathúna Hunting Trip Matthew Pewter Reclamation / Letters To Cooper #1 Fiona McShane Talk Paul Hammond Night Walk Alone Íde Simpson Gentle Thorn Harry Forkan Sad Moody Doomsday Commute Ella Spitz Very Large Databases Isobel Mahon (Last) Supper With Friends (You’s Plural, Pt. 2) Rhys Pearce New Look Fionn Andrews Night Song Eoin MacNally

II Paul Pascal’s Wager Below Deck Pickle Poem Self Portrait Lewis Dad Poem Return Week Lurch I ask For Your Forgiveness on a Walk Home

Ruby Eastwood Eoghan Conway Molly Robinson Lily O’Byrne Lara Prideaux Angela Thoma Joe Prendergast Ella Mae Cromie Louise Norris Elise Carney Frazier

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III Genesis In My Dreams Worm On Boa Island’s Graveyard Eruption of the Great Wicklow Sugarloaf Jump Ship Meditation on Nazi Stickers and Heartbreak Paratext Warlecchino

The Church Road Lolipop Lady Finally Quits Her Job

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54 55 57

Ella Spitz Ruby Eastwood Emily Linehan Harry Forkan Rosa Thomas Fionn Andrews Megan O’Driscoll Jack Briody Yeva Huseva Amy Kennedy

IV The Creeps Manifesto in an Unknown Language Crush

Rhiannon McGavin Rhiannon McGavin Rhiannon McGavin

V The Spaceship Coasted...

It’s Getting Harder to Wear Suede These Days Remember The Stars Overhead...

Simon Armitage Simon Armitage Simon Armitage

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ICARUS LXXIV

MY WAXIE DARGLE

by Megan Ní Mhathúna

You made me redo your tarot Until you got the cards you really liked the look of Which was fair, really, I was only pretending I knew what each meant I cupped my hands in front of the cake These candles are for the birthday girl Not the wind Pads of my fingers got burnt but who cares I forgot how to play the violin like years ago I told you that I liked the girl who played Mary in our school play and you said I was weird And my breath got lost inside me Until you said it was because I was Playing Jesus and that’s incest You’re asleep and you Make me sweat and you snore and That’s fair really Cos I like the smell of your ear It smells like you and it’s warm and waxing And I told you and You said that was gross But I do it anyway it smells like You but warm and mixed with cheap metal earrings like the coins I held cupped for too long at the arcade

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HUNTING TRIP My father and I will go out hunting him with his shotgun with two black eyes me with my snarl and coarse imagination.

We’ll bring back all that we can from the woods strapped to the rack on the roof of our car.

Our haul will be paraded in the squares and in front of the school for the children with no tongues who were given to the town the winter before last as collateral.

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by Matthew Pewter

RECLAMATION / LETTERS TO COOPER #1

by Fiona McShane

Not counting myself a proud man, baby, but I need you to come home. All those things you said, tired and stupid, gone and gotten them stuck in my head and now I can’t stop picturing you like a little junco all tangled up in my hands and I’d have to feed you sugar-syrup ‘til you’d get strong again. I know I done fucked up good this time but you know I don’t go hurting you on purpose and the dust fills up the house faster without you here. Your brother said you were healthy but I don’t recall a time where you were sickly and he told me to stay away from you so I said if you told me so I would and I would. Baby in my dreams you’re the junco and I’m a hound but I hold you all gentle in my teeth. If you came home I’d hold you all gentle in my teeth. I ain’t got no sugar-syrup as you know but I swear I must’ve learned my lesson ‘cause I got patience.

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TALK

by Paul Hammond

I parked where Jarlath asked, about five doors down from the house with the music. Two young lads passed the car, chatting loudly, each carrying a six pack of beer.

‘Shit,’ Jarlath said, hiding his face with his hand.

‘What?’

‘Could you wait here a minute while I go up to the house?’

I said I would, and Jarlath said he’d text if all was okay.

I watched him jog towards the house, hands pocketed, the heels of his suit shoes clacking the concrete. He disappeared behind the hedge that lined the driveway and a moment later I heard male laughter – a few different voices – and protestations that sounded like someone being compelled to stay when they were trying to leave. The voices then ceased, a door rattled shut, and Jarlath reappeared – a large grin on his face.

‘I knew they were going to do this,’ he said, once he’d opened the rear door. ‘I just had a feeling.’

‘Do what?’

‘Tell me they were wearing suits.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. ‘So it wasn’t a suit night?’

Jarlath didn’t respond, preoccupied as he was with the contents of an M&S bag.

‘Lucky I brought a change anyway.’

I looked away as he clambered around the back seats.

‘I’ll see you so,’ he said once he’d finished. ‘And, eh… could you maybe not mention this to Mum?’ I agreed not to, before watching Jarlath approach the house again, this time wearing a T-shirt and jeans. After I heard the door open and close, and it was clear that Jarlath was inside, I started the car, before trundling past the house as if staking it out. The curtains in the front room were drawn, the glass around the door blurry. I could see various heads moving around inside, but any one of them could have been Jarlath’s.

I turned around, looked at the suit jacket and trousers strewn across the back seats. I thought about the effort Linda and Jarlath had gone to in preparation for the party.

‘Jarlath my love,’ Linda had said last night. ‘You couldn’t have told me earlier in the week that you needed a suit?’

We’d taken down Jarlath’s tux from the attic – the one he used to wear for music concerts – only to discover that the sleeves ended halfway up his forearms. Today Linda had collected Jarlath from school before driving him to Dundrum. They bought the navy suit that Jarlath had earlier this evening donned in our garden, standing next to his beaming mother, while I took a picture.

‘Right, now one with your father,’ Linda had said, and I’d said there was no need, and Jarlath had agreed, but Linda said she wanted it taken and so it was.

Jarlath’s lack of a social life had been worrying Linda for a couple of years now. She would say to me (always in a whisper, even if Jarlath wasn’t in the house): ‘Is it that he has no friends? Or is it that his friends don’t meet up outside school? Or has he just no interest in having friends?’ And I would say that we needed to trust Jarlath’s judgement, his ability to 12 ICARUS LXXIV

find a group of people for himself. And anyway, wasn’t it a good thing that he wasn’t out getting drunk every night? ‘Yeah well, I don’t think we need to worry about every night,’ Linda would say. ‘How about just one night? I mean, for God’s sake, Tony, he’s almost eighteen. Do you know what I was up to at that age?’ – a question to which I never pushed for an answer.

At the door, Linda had hugged Jarlath the way you’d hug a son going off to war. ‘Have a great time now, love.’

‘Careful now,’ I’d said. ‘You’ll crease the suit.’

We’d all laughed.

When I got home I could hear the humming and popping of the microwave.

‘Thought we’d do a movie night,’ Linda said. ‘Now that we have the house to ourselves.’

She asked how the lads had looked in their suits; were all the girls done-up beautifully. She kissed me slow enough that by the time it was over I had an erection.

Then she burrowed in beside me on the couch and stroked my chest. Even if Jarlath hadn’t asked me not to say anything, I don’t suspect I would have.

We were sitting at the table when Jarlath, wearing pyjama bottoms and an oversized fleece, trudged into the kitchen just after midday.

‘And how are we this afternoon?’ Linda said, which Jarlath responded to with a grunt.

‘Long night?’ she then said, which caused Jarlath to look at her, and me to tell her to relax, that he’d just woken up.

When Linda left for her walk I went out to the car and brought in the suit. I then dropped it onto the floor of Jarlath’s room in a manner that felt in keeping with the place’s general untidiness. When I returned downstairs and told Jarlath, who had the Everton-Chelsea game on in the living room, that I’d done this, he thanked me in a way that suggested he’d forgotten about the need to do it at all.

I then sat next to him on the couch, and for the first twenty minutes of the match, I couldn’t stop talking. I spoke about the line-ups, the referee, the general validity of Everton’s low block, even the state of Chelsea’s kit. Jarlath, in comparison, said very little.

Eventually I asked about the night.

‘It was good,’ Jarlath said.

‘Must’ve been a long one.’

‘It was yeah.’

‘Town busy?’

‘Busy enough. Friday night like.’

‘True.’

And though I knew that Jarlath’s reluctance to speak was likely explained by his experiencing one of the first hangovers of his life, it felt like there was also an awkwardness between us. As if I had last night seen something I shouldn’t have, something that wasn’t intended for me – something that couldn’t now be undone. And when Jarlath, just before half-time, said he was heading to his room, though this

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wasn’t an uncommon thing (he often only watched parts of matches), it felt like I had done something to push him away.

For the rest of the weekend, every venture Jarlath made out of his room, every appearance at the fridge where he would check whether any additions to the contents had been made, every time he took a golf club out to the garden to swing with, felt like opportunities to bring up what had happened. Opportunities that I, invariably, let slip by. I told myself that I was respecting Jarlath’s privacy, that he was almost eighteen and deserved not to have me investigating his social life. I told myself that Jarlath was reasonable and intelligent, and would come and talk to me if there was anything to say. I told myself that, though it maybe seemed unlikely, there was a chance that nothing worrying was going on, and that by making a thing of it I would only be embarrassing both him and me. But these were things I told myself right after one of these opportunities had passed by, and were swiftly followed by a sense of dread at the prospect that my son was bearing an invisible weight and sadness, was a victim of some kind of torment, and that I was doing nothing whatsoever to remedy it.

At no point that weekend did I actually want to tell Linda what had happened (I was determined to keep my word to Jarlath), but there were more than a few occasions when I would have liked for her to have somehow known about it. She would have blown up and wrung the whole story out of Jarlath, and I could have been there telling her to go easy, trying to deflate the matter rather than having to bring it up and solve it myself.

‘Are you okay?’ Linda asked, in bed, on Sunday night.

‘What?’

‘Are you all right? You’ve seemed off all weekend.’

‘Have I?’ ‘Yeah. Quiet.’

‘Don’t think I have.’

‘Okay.’

‘Don’t know what you mean to be honest,’ I said, turning over.

I was annoyed at her, or at myself, or at the situation. I knew the only way out was to speak to Jarlath. Tomorrow I would.

I worked in Merrion Square, and drove into town in the mornings along Appian Way, where Jarlath got out and took the 46a to school. Last night’s intention of speaking to Jarlath felt this morning like an impossibility. Jarlath had a copybook open, a single earphone in, and was going over his notes in the manner of someone who didn’t want to be disturbed. On days like this, with an upcoming exam, Jarlath would often go the whole journey without speaking. By the time we reached Appian Way, all I had asked was what time the test was at, and Jarlath had said right after lunch.

The next day Jarlath didn’t have a test, didn’t have a copybook open, but still sat quietly in the passenger’s seat. I could overhear the rap music he was playing – which sounded extremely angry – whenever we were stopped at a traffic light. This silence couldn’t now be explained by studiousness, or by a hangover. Maybe he was tired, but normally Jarlath would react enthusiastically when I’d ask for his predictions for the night’s Champions League matches.

‘Hard to know really,’ was all he said today.

On Appian Way, after Jarlath had gotten out of the car and was about to close the door, I leaned across the seat and said: 14 ICARUS LXXIV

‘You know you can talk to me.’

With the door open the traffic was loud.

‘Sorry?’ Jarlath said.

‘You know you can–’ He closed the door, motioned for me to roll down the window.

‘If you ever need to talk about things,’ I said. ‘You can talk to me.’

This time the words, once they left my mouth, didn’t sound like my words at all. They felt too unobstructed, too clean, like when chatter in a crowded room suddenly stops, save for one voice, their words now naked for all to hear. Even my posture, leaning across the seat, looking up at Jarlath, felt weak and desperate. Why had I been so keen to say it?

‘We do talk,’ Jarlath said.

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘I suppose we do.’

The light turned green. The cars in front moved.

‘But yeah. Thanks, Dad,’ Jarlath said. ‘I know I can talk to you.’

The car behind beeped, and I, before I had a chance to respond, released the clutch. I approached the junction and moved into the left-hand lane and could see Jarlath briefly in the rear-view mirror.

It was hard to say if Jarlath said what he’d said just to end the conversation, or because it was the right thing to say, or because he could sense the impatience of the driver behind.

Maybe if I hadn’t waited until the very last moment to say something I could have found out.

Maybe we could have talked about Friday night, or about something else, if Jarlath had been willing. Of course I didn’t know if he would want to talk to me about that, or about something else, or if there was even anything troubling going on. But saying what I said, in spite of how wrong it had felt at first, did put me at some ease, and made me happy after all that I’d spoken up. And I was comforted by the knowledge that I would be there, this evening or tomorrow, or any day after, should Jarlath want to talk. All I needed was to keep being there for my son, keep showing up in his vicinity, which felt like something I could absolutely do.

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NIGHT WALK ALONE

by Íde Simpson

I love you on every tube to Oval station, and when I blow a kiss through the closed glass window of the northern line, two Italian ladies opposite me smile through their masks in knowing, as if to say, we have loved too, it’s okay.

On the way home I make lots of lists on my phone and imagine us in the smoking area of a pub in the middle of the city, sculling pints of beer, letting the air wonder whether we’ll kiss tonight or whether the bartender will go home wishing she knew what it felt like to be with you.

Scared of myself, I run home through the rain knowing how she feels.

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GENTLE THORN

by Harry Forkan

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SAD MOODY DOOMSDAY COMMUTE

This was the summer my right hand said to my left, “Boy, do I’ve got a hangnail to pick with you.”

My skin got dryer and greener like the spots near the tops of my breasts.

I thought maybe I was just a peach.

Fuzz was everywhere, in drains, and on the road. Wildflowers draped the highway like a plant fur coat.

I drove east at sunset and all the good stuff was behind me.

Somewhere between Bittersweet Lane and the next town line, harmony held together my shoulder blades.

This was the summer men had shroom-epiphanies about things I knew in the third grade.

I felt the space between atoms as their electrons repelled each other.

I had to stop gripping the wheel.

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by Ella Spitz

VERY LARGE DATABASES

by Isobel Mahon

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(LAST) SUPPER WITH FRIENDS (YOU’S PLURAL, PT. 2)

by Rhys Pearce

Enter Disaster Artist, pursued by themselves.

Turning and turning but never in turn,

(I feel most alive when I’m burning) You call my behaviour a cause for concern, (while yours is just “interest converging”) In shop-fronts and windows you pause to reflect – (you’re searching yourself for an icon) of the false deity that you kneel to protect (though it’s such a hard shoulder to cry on) You’re casting the spell of your own abolition: (you swallow yourself like Atlantis) When our hands fall apart, it’s a nuclear fission – (I wallow in how you’re so frantic) And these lines don’t come easy, I can’t tell what to say (as we sit here surveying our city) and you ask for the truth – “look me in my eyes” (but all I can think is: “they’re pretty”.)

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Then I sound out your breath, make the unluckiest guess – (it’s the buffet and we never left:) since for just twenty pounds, the feast’s all-you-can-cheat (and the refills are free until death.)

Exeunt

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NEW LOOK

Six months since your diagnosis and we are searching for a wig to conceal your balding head, to disguise the fact that your liver is failing, whitened with the shapes of a clouded sky. Hours pass, until we find the perfect match, to play down your new complexion, to blanch the glow of your buttercup skin. It is snug and synthetic, then taped in place.

But the transformation has torn you.

It is written in your sunken eyes, across the sharpened ridges of your haggard face, in the manner you uncoil each curl before the mirror.

Let’s cut to the chase.

You’re a Stage Four liar.

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by Fionn Andrews

NIGHT SONG

by Eoin MacNally

Meeting under a lunar mansion Time takes off and leaves us; Basking in the glow of a stolen Moment, we turn towards Our shared source, at last ourselves.

Received without reason needed, This gift is unbounded By any given measure, ungivable to another; Like death’s endless, ending, question, It stills with a breath all sun-pale speculation.

My love, however slowly, time accrues Like a late rain falling finely, Rivering our current voidward; We allow it to lead us to an ended Evening, endlessly returning.

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II

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PAUL

by Ruby Eastwood

After dinner everybody sat and talked For hours around the kitchen table And nobody paid me much attention Except for you Paul You drew blobs and squiggles on napkins With your eyes closed And I could draw on top of them To turn the abstract scribbles Into concrete things Like jellyfish and airplanes and faces You said I would grow up to be A very great and famous artist You lived with us for a while After your girlfriend threw you out You smoked hash by the window Sat with your guitar playing Phantasmagoria in Two As the day tipped into night Don’t you know any other songs Said my mother She said it was lanky sad man music It was your favorite song They played it at your funeral And when they told me how you died It was years later But it was as if I had always known

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PASCAL’S WAGER I’ll wager you this Pascal For you’re no Paddy Power.

Where art thou our Lord and Saviour?

Is he hidden amongst the bowers?

God’s existence has noble odds Coming in at 3 to 1.

Tenner bets he’ll give to us His only begotten son.

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by Eoghan Conway

BELOW DECK

by Molly Robinson

I like to loiter below wrapped in a sea-net near me floats a deliberating shadow and above a hairy seamoss flies in the lantern flame a gaunt watersprite hides for a while to snore in tune with the sighing tide

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PICKLE POEM

And you looked at me More than the others And I looked at your hands More than the others How you held (didn’t hold) The steering wheel as we drove To the sea, got in it, were kept In the salty swell, finally being Kept together, And I wanted to keep my eyes On you but didn’t want you to know You were being kept you are not mine To keep and there are things I did throw away things you gave But now I want your mind to be kept in brine In jar beside my bed, would like to Consider it from the outside, before Deciding to put a lid on top and prolong it in my life I would just like your eyes back please I like The creases at their sides when they smile

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by Lily O’Byrne

SELF PORTRAIT

by Lara Prideaux ICARUS LXXIV 29

LEWIS Eight months old, round like a roly poly. Lew has milk skin, soft as rabbit fur. A smile that’s all gum and charm. His laugh is a squeak when I cradle him in the bend of my arm.

He’s a mold, in which you poured your bone and blood.

I remember ten years prior. We spent frozen afternoons in your kitchen. Our red-chilled hands held steaming coffee cups etched with elephants and narwhals in pastel hews. We stacked marshmallows and hershey bars on graham crackers, confided our secrets and dreams of what we hoped would be.

You wanted a garden with golden daffodils and to raise hens who’d lay eggs. I wanted a license and open roads with nowhere to be, and everywhere to go.

We took two divergent forks in the road.

Now, a first-time mom. Your eyes linger on your son. You kiss Lew’s plump, potato cheeks. We sit in a different kitchen. Sip glasses of bitter wine that dries our tongues in the orange glow of the fading afternoon.

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by Angela Thoma

DAD POEM

by Joe Prendergast

Making a coffee in the morning I think of the scene you made me watch in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid Where Steve Martin measures out each grain with precision And I remember all of the different things you left behind A few days before you died Mom took your picture in the new Gourmet Burger Kitchen Defiant with your gherkins and your Diet Coke And smiling as if to say, “I know what is coming; this first.”

Oh and I never got to thank you For that starry slice of time as the family arrived And I held your cold hand in bed And I was the only one who ever knew you Mom printed off that photo, later, And framed it And we both agreed that, despite everything, you look very well in it.

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RETURN WEEK I’m on a mission this week To get back all the things I’ve loaned out, to each and every person during the long years of my short life.

I’ll begin with gathering the objects Books and pencils Scarfs and hair-clips Eyelashes and keys.

I’ll call in to people’s homes Catch them on their way to the shops.

They’ll say “oh yes sorry thank you sorry I’ll get you that now sorry” I’ll say “no worries its grand sorry thank you yes just wanted it back thank you”.

I’ll feel rude, even though I’m perfectly entitled to my things and it’s their turn to fulfil the contract we made when I gave them my belongings on the condition that they’d be returned eventually.

I won’t stop at objects I’m on a mission remember?

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by Ella Mae Cromie

So, I’ll ask for everything I’ve loaned to be returned All the meals I’ve made, all the caresses I’ve given and all the lies I’ve told Return them all to me, inflict them on me I’d like them back now.

Then finally, On the last day of this missional week.

I’ll knock on your door And ask for my most prized possession back.

You’ve had it for too long And you don’t want it any more But still it lies in your drawer.

It’s no use to you now and I miss it’s dumdumdumdumdum in my chest so it’s time I take it back.

That Sunday night, the end of my return week, I’ll lie on my bed and surround myself with my prodigal belongings.

With my heart back in my chest its sound will lull me (dumdumdumdumdumdumdum) And I’ll sleep soundly again.

LURCH

by Louise Norris ICARUS LXXIV 33

I ASK FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS ON A WALK HOME

by Elise Carney Frazier

Grumpy and bewildered, We bend our knees.

We enter this space together.

Slacked and dusty, and on a stoop, You tell me things I wish for in secret.

We furrow our eyebrows and buy biscuits in the rain.

I promise to kiss you by the end of May. It’s quieter now.

The road is dry.

Sit down for a while?

And try?

Remember, remember, remember.

Strong, loud, I told you.

And I’ll say it again, Like the first time I said, I love you.

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III

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GENESIS

by Ella Spitz

Dogma: I am God. Reviver. Deified sagas. Tenet: sexes deleveled Eve name. Now one man.

“Madam, I’m Adam.” “Do geese see God?” Don’t nod.

“Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.” “Eye Eve.” Eve gift fig. Eve mad at Adam. Won’t lovers revolt now? Mad Adam: Dad. Eve: Mom. Cain: a maniac. No devil lived on. “I did, did I?” Don’t nod.

“I did, did I?” No devil lived on. Cain: a maniac.

Mom: Eve. Dad: Mad Adam. Won’t lovers revolt? Now, mad at Adam: Eve. Gift fig, Eve. Eve: “eye madam in Eden.” “I’m Adam.”

Don’t nod. “Do geese see God, Madam? I’m Adam.”

Eve name now one. Man deleveled. Sexes tenet. Sagas deified. Reviver. “Dogma: I am God.”

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IN MY DREAMS

by Ruby Eastwood

I am on a cruise ship with David Bowie One night he asks me to marry him I say maybe I’ll think about it Time passes He says if I don’t marry him he’ll jump Vanish forever into the dark waters Fish will nibble at his eyeballs His beautiful heterochromatic eyeballs Is that really what I want? I laugh He puts weights into his pockets I see that he is serious I remember that the year is 1970 If I don’t marry him there will be no The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust Nobody will ever throw their arms out Drunkenly on the dancefloor and scream Oh no love you’re not alone To the stranger standing nearest Nobody will ever hold an imaginary mic And look their lover in the face singing I’ll be a rock n’ rollin’ bitch for you So I say ok He clicks his heels He spins me in the air We run on deck where the captain Is waiting to marry us David is wearing a black kimono Cherry blossoms fall over his heart Violins weep Waves crash below The night wind is cold on my skin We are pronounced man and wife His fans are all very disappointed They look on me and weep bitterly

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WORM

by Emily Linehan

Hello? You’re up? You haven’t slept? Why not? Catching up on the match? Wales won; you don’t need to bother. Why am I calling? You don’t beat around the bush.

No, I was being funny. I know I can call you whenever. I brought a worm back to my place. Yeah, I know, I’m a player! What are you, twelve? Yeah, we did ‘do it’. Ew, gross! Google it, I’m not telling you. No, she’s asleep. I’m calling because-I don’t know why I’m calling I just felt like I had to. It was good, like really good, I just don’t know. I feel weird. No, she wasn’t drunk, she had literally a drop of cider. After the pub, we were walking back to my place, and she was tripping over herself. Some lad nearly stepped on her. Huh? I guess like three feet when she’s bent over, probably a foot longer when she’s all stretched out. Anyway, she was- Ah Jaysus what’s the place called again? It’s by the bridge. You know the bridge the one with the religious wan singing outside? Something O’….O’ Donoghue’s I think. Yeah, that one.

You know it so. Yeah, it was packed, could barely get a drink. As I was saying, I got her back to my place and- oh he works there now? No, I didn’t see him. I thought he was working at Vipers club? He got fired? Right tell me that story next time I see you. Okay, so by now she was on my couch, and I asked if she wanted some tea.

It would have been midnight. What do you mean what was I thinking? It’s only polite to offer tea, did your mammy teach you nothing? I have decaf lad! Can I finish talking or what? She said sure but only if she could share mine. I was like okay I guess no harm so made the tea and all and brought out the biscuits. We drank our tea. No lad, not like the lady and the tramp. We took turns like. Anyway, I had a few biscuits, and she had a crumb or so from one of mine. I know she’s small, but you have to fill your stomach with something. What? I thought they had stomachs?

The more you know, I guess. So, then she asked me to give her a tour of the gaff.

I was like there’s not much to see but go on then. Yes, I know now it was a hint, would you shup? We get to the bedroom eventually and she kind of slithers on top of it. Sexy? It was actually. Anyway, we did the deed, and she was lying there beside me and- yes, I am skipping that part. Because it’s none of your business! I told you to Google it if you’re so curious! She’s lying there beside me and we’re completely silent. I’m lost in the after-bliss and I’m about to go to sleep when she tells me that I could kill her so easily. Too easily she added. I was freaked out too! I said sorry?

And she just repeated herself, like it was nothing. And I said, I guess? And she was like do I actually realise it though? Like really think about it she said. I said no. She said she wanted a better answer than that, so I thought about it. I told her then that she probably thinks about mites the same way I think about worms.

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She asked what I meant, and I told her that mites are smaller than worms so you’re probably subconsciously gentler with them than with other creatures. I asked her if she got my point. She said she did and said that humans hated when she asked that question. I could see why, I felt hugely uncomfortable, but I didn’t tell her that.

She then went on about how the whole world is predicated on the power dynamics between animals and stuff. And not only animals but plants as well. Hm? Yeah, it is pretty weird post-sex talk but what is standard post-sex talk, you know? Anyway, she said that all our behaviour depends on power dynamics, and power is just how much physical strength someone has over you. Every natural things’ prerogative is to avoid as much pain as possible. How could I disagree with that? It was weird but true but like, what was she trying to say about me? That I was a predator?

Anyway, she then went on about sexual dynamics, how it once again revolves around power but that it actually excites us. It excites her that she’s the weaker one and that it probably excites me that I’m the stronger one. She described sex as a friendly wrestling match where not only do we know the victor, but we also expect it, and like it. Then she told me to look at her. I said I was already, but she was like look really closely. She slithered out of the sheets. I wasn’t mad at the view, bro. I kinda wanted to go again but she seemed really serious about this conversation, so I thought it better not to. She then asked what labour could she possibly produce with her body? How could she survive in a system that doesn’t need her? And isn’t it funny how capitalism created two genders through its division of responsibilities?

I was like I’ve been out of college for a while now, I don’t really wanna think about this stuff. Yeah, I know, right? But listen to this, then she went on about her hating how much she depends on humans to not kill her. I was like what? She said that every day when she walks down the street, she hates the gratitude she has for all the humans in the world deciding not to kill her. She said she’s at their mercy basically and I was like maybe back in the cavemen times? But like, not anymore? And then she said that it doesn’t matter how many laws there are in place for worms, humans will always have the advantage of having had more time to do everything, time to build companies and have sons and give the companies to the sons and they will always have more money and therefore more power, and they can only hope to marry the sons who will take over the company. Luckily, by then, she was getting sleepy, so she didn’t say much else after that. I mean, she said a few more things but she was yawning a lot, so I didn’t catch most of it. I was kind of tuning her out at that point anyway. But she said one more thing before she fell asleep or maybe she was still asleep when she said this, I don’t know. She asked me if I would still love her if she was a human. What did I say? Well, I told her no.

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ON BOA ISAND’S GRAVEYARD 40 ICARUS LXXIV

by Harry Forkan

ERUPTION OF THE GREAT WICKLOW SUGARLOAF

by Rosa Thomas

Since the compression and explosion Of original light Every man in your family Fathered a gentle, sweet-toothed son And on And on So when lowly Fionn sucked his thumb What do you think omniscience tasted like?

Licking a gazillion envelopes?

Chewing tinsel?

The metallic thrill Of a surprise nosebleed?

Your eyes do a terrible job at hiding their depth A sheet of clingfilm stretched over a geyser?

And you were always engrossed with how Cultures marched along the bridge of my nose, Like your great great grandfather who harbored the Roma In the morning She put cardamom, sumac in his porridge Not to be crude but we are a million different people fucking one another in a million different Dire circumstances And I get a whiff of that forbidden spice every time I pluck your nose hairs That’s how I know you’re hers.

Dun Laoghaire Arts Council in her final metres above sea level As we crunch along the pier of frosted stollen The knife of midnight air impales me like a fat kebab and comes out all clean A seal emerges with a sleight of hand You must’ve put it there this afternoon And asked it politely

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To hold its breath And it said yes All of these presents.

The arrogant Georgian mansions and their windows Concrete men of Tinder, setting their height two inches taller We wouldn’t want to rot in those We resolve Puffing our lychee flavoured vapes Like used car engines.

Later on In the witching hours All is silent and A creeping scent of butterscotch Slinks down your golden arm hairs We look upThick hot huffs from the giant’s nostrils We skip through his smoke rings, soft ships dust the horizon Then churning molten caramel projectile vomiting Crystalizing the town cathedral Fervent priest Mid-wankA lamp post bends A buggy melts.

We stick out our tongues amid the screaming Hot, sweet pellets rain down Us vertebrates twitching in sap Museums bid for our frozen embrace God wears us on his ring finger.

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JUMP SHIP

by Fionn Andrews

Hold your horses.

We should have our ducks in a row before we get this show on the road. And let’s face the music. It’s shit or bust.

So unless you’re on the ball we could end up in hot water.

Nip the fags in the bud. Go cold turkey. Because if you’re not fresh as a daisy we’re just pissing into the wind. You drink like a fish. Eat like a horse. And that’s no way to skin a cat.

Knuckle down. Buckle up. Or bolt like a rat fleeing a sinking ship.

Look, we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. And I don’t mean to make a mountain out of a molehill, but I’m in the red, failing to make ends meet. So pitch in. Pony up. Don’t bury your head in the sand. And if you don’t like it, lump it. This is my bread and butter and you’re the bad apple. I’ll bring home the bacon.

Look like a million bucks. I’m not driven up the walls. About to blow a gasket. My blood is cold as stone. Go and get fucked.

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MEDITATION ON NAZI STICKERS AND HEARTBREAK

by Megan O’Driscoll

i scrape the national party sticker off the lamp post with my keys i cross the road and find another sticker i tell you about how i scraped two national party stickers off of lamp posts with my keys i attend my class on right wing populism in contemporary democracies i cross the road and find another sticker i am handed leaflets about irish antifascist action groups i attend my class on telling you about leaflets i scrape my keys across the road i cross the road and find another sticker i am handed a lamp post in a contemporary democracy i tell the antifascist action group about my day i key a car outside the garda station i attend to its wounds i bleed all over your leaflet, sorry i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker i cross the road and find another sticker

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PARATEXT

by Jack Briody

‘cOW Sliths’. Boy’s lisp was noticed in the path leading from Bondura lake.

‘Cow slips are your mother’s favourite flower…Do you know what a sloe is?’

‘Is it your favourite flower?’

Boy was given the berry. He eyed the sugary spittle running from the half-plucked stem. It looked like a blueberry. Larger, more promising.

Whole. First bite; puckering. Another bite; cheeks were drawn over the tongue, dry thirst over the gums.

Boy felt unnatural in this instant. As the lurch in his throat kecked, he thought of the earlier embarrassment concerning the fish, and, believing this berry-pain to be a sort of test, pinned his face neutral.

‘Nice’ ‘It isn’t meant to be. It needs to be boiled and turned to jam. You couldn’t like it’.

Later, boy would find the words to describe this experience across a book in McNally’s bookstore, Sea Port New York. ‘A_TI - _EDIP_S’ This book allowed him to understand why his father gave him the sloe and the sloe gave him an appropriate analogue for his experience reading those kinds of books.

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WARLECCHINO

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by Yeva Huseva

THE CHURCH ROAD LOLLIPOP LADY FINALLY QUITS HER JOB

by Amy Kennedy

I do not know if I have the capacity for any more eight year names and number-plates, sewn to suburban cars driven by suburban mothers, blonded, bored by babies, tying lace-up shoes by the crossing I man in my yellow.

The good-mornings, half-smiles, and my namelessness, like an unclaimed tables test, stand by the zebra, by the lights I hate and live by. A tarmac saviour, martyr, maybe, by working here yearly, against September new-hires, and staff car-park space disputes and exhausted Thursdays that wait on the tar for my step, and my signal, and the light, but!

In June I can carry myself (this human sign this metal sign) down the yellowing path by the road (my road? the road) and I can learn how to say

Goodbye.

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rhiannon mcgavin

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THE CREEPS yesterday we went hiking and i told you how my mother’s best friend was murdered when they were a few years older than us her ex choked her and the jury wasn’t allowed to know he had a history of abuse when the late august flies tried to lick the sweat from my face you blew them away with quick breaths one hand on my jaw to keep me still but it’s why i’m afraid of men and the wood grown to protect them because yesterday i wanted to believe the trees near your house have never clapped with a gavel but you let the dirt of your fathers rot under your nails

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MANIFESTO IN AN UNKNOWN LANGUAGE No, I couldn’t sleep, I’m building a love from the smell of rain and the bus driver’s soft wave when I’m broke, from a sea that carves cracked bottles into gems, and a stranger’s laugh runs a vein of silver through the night, a love cut from the dark when a kissing scene fades on a film screen. Say the last time someone touched me with a tender feeling and I’ll eat the clock. Name the next time, win all the lucky pennies I’ve thrown away waiting for that love like a nasturtium, the petals with their birthday candle flames, hot and sweet. The kind of love in my steps where empty rooms are only rooms you’ve left.

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CRUSH Not that, but the firstest love in the old neighborhood that you would cross to walk the dog in front of her house, just in case. The whole way there your heart would shiver like a box of matches as you rushed through the concrete churn of your city with the poodle mix in conspiracy to strut down the street whose name you never learned, knowing it by feel alone, your neck screwed to keep the other girl’s house always in sight: what must be her bike sprawled in the driveway, red curtains closed with light spilling out or else open to a hallway where she must drum her bare feet down to deeper rooms where she’d sit on the kitchen counter with her girl-legs dangling or practice scales on the caramel cello she wheeled around school, her fingers tough from the strings. Never mind what you’d do if she actually saw you: catch fire and die, probably.

You loved: the bony knob, a green peach, on the back of her neck, the sugar-gap in her front teeth, the handful of inches she had on you, each a little star to wish on in the constellation you told of this girl, the subject of dandelion-blown prayers and lucky coins, every word she said to you polished into a song. Up one sidewalk, down the other, and the whole way back with nothing new to worship but next time, next time. Of course, her house was really on the next street over which struck you long after you stopped watching the loquat tree ICARUS LXXIV 51

where she didn’t live bloom & rain.

When someone does touch you finally you leave the hot room with splinters between your hips.

The late bus home glances past it, your best house, the blessed sidewalks pearly under streetlights, open as the first curve in a seashell where the living thing had carved spirals with its living and then gone. You remember being told it was the whole ocean rushing in the conch when it was only your own pulse echoed but you still hold it up, hear your blood sing.

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simon armitage

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THE SPACESHIP COASTED...

The spaceship coasted past the old planet

and they cut the engines as a mark of respect.

I believe the captain

took off his hat.

One of the gods in the glass-bottomed lounge said,

“I even gave them a teardrop moon that wept every month.

What did they do when they got there?

Emptied the khazi

and played fucking golf.”

Another god muttered, “My soul, my soul,

half drowned, half burned.”

In the children’s version of this poem

the ship’s cat (Leo? Tigger?) lifts a bandaged paw

to the toughened porthole; the artist-in-residence sketches the Earth

as a punctured beach-ball.

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IT’S GETTING HARDER TO WEAR SUEDE THESE DAYS You’ve done velvet nights and denim weekends, dressed up in make-believe and let’s pretend.

That birthday onesie was never the skin you wanted the heavens to see you in.

Above the clouds the sun’s still shining and every shroud has a silver lining but suited and booted in back-to-front leather you’re a living breathing map of the weather.

It’s getting harder to wear suede these days.

And if that sounds like a Belle & Sebastian song I’m just writing down what the wardrobe says about too much rain in a world gone wrong.

You get the drift. You’ve cruised the aisles of the vintage shops, you’ve floated for miles.

You know what it is to walk the streets with rivers for sleeves and oceans for feet.

Your animal spirit mouldering, sunken.

Your inner creature floundering, drunken.

The salt marks climbing knuckle by knuckle, the tidemarks rising button by button.

It’s getting harder to wear suede these days.

And if that sounds like a Belle & Sebastian song I’m just writing down what the wardrobe says about too much rain in a world gone wrong.

Do you think the weather’s some kind of backdrop?

Do you think the pavement’s some kind of catwalk?

Do you think you can breeze through the broken climate in cowboy clobber, on autopilot?

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You were too cool for school, striding about in a pelt or hide turned inside out, strutting your stuff, strolling the tarmac in spotless shoes. Now here’s the forecast: the needle swinging from good to fair to biblical-pissing-down everywhere; your wallet plugging a waterlogged heart, your pockets swimming with great white sharks.

It’s getting harder to wear suede these days.

And if that sounds like a Belle & Sebastian song I’m just writing down what the wardrobe says about too much rain in a world gone wrong.

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REMEMBER THE STARS OVERHEAD… Remember the stars overhead, like coins in a well?

Remember the coloured shells?

“It was cold,” my soul said.

No, I said, it was life in infrared, never having to queue, chugging cocktails from glass shoes, side-stepping the dead.

It’s not like there was a polar bear in the wardrobe or ice in the oven or snow on the bread.

And all my one-liners dazzled like solar flares.

My soul said, “The pillows were frozen.

There was frost on the bed.”

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AMY KENNEDY is a first year English and Sociology student who writes poetry less frequently than she would like to. Most of her free time is spent sitting on public transport, reading books entirely unrelated to her course, or making coffee for the people of Bray. She is currently engaged in the pursuit of joy, wish her luck!

ANGELA THOMA is a writer from great Boston and holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin. She writes short fiction that explores the intricate dynamics of family bonds, the immigrant experience, and the process of cultural assimilation. Her short story ‘Catch and Release’ was published in New Square, the official publication of the Sancho Panza Literary Society. In addition to her creative pursuits, Angela’s journalistic contributions have appeared in numerous Massachusetts newspapers and prominent online platforms including the Cambridge Chronicle, Watertown TAB, MarketScale, and Killing Kittens. She is currently working on her first novel.

ELISE CARNEY FRAZIER is from Galway and is a final year student in English and History. She likes reading and writing poems, putting feta on a variety of foods, and going on late-night (safe) walks with the people she loves.

ELLA MAE CROMIE learnt a lot about death one summer, when all eight of her pet hamsters died. Since then, she’s been attempting to put thoughts and feelings onto paper with varying degrees of success. She has also been leading a private campaign against allowing children to own pets with lifespans of less than two years. You can support her work by giving her a hug.

ELLA SPITZ is an American visiting student from Boston, America (no Irish heritage), and will be flying home on Delta Airlines in December to go back to her American college and drive on highways again.

EMILY LINEHAM, a Tipperary native, has shown a great interest in all things literature from a young age. She has been published in the anthology Cork Words 2, The Quarryman, and is a 2021 runner-up in UCC’s Eoin Murray Scholarship.

She is currently waiting on her portfolio grade from the Oscar Wilde Centre.

EOGHAN CONWAY is a Senior Sophister Spanish and Sociology student. He hails from County Meath.

EOIN MACNALLY was born and currently lives in Dublin.

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FIONN ANDREWS is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. He recently completed the M. Phil. in the Creative Writing programme at Trinity College Dublin.

FIONA MCSHANE has never written a poem. It’s just prose with line breaks.

Find more gay cowboy “poetry” on Instagram @agscriobh.

HARRY JAMES FORKAN is a photographer with only one fully functional eye.

To make up for this, he likes to add free hand illustration and poetry to his images, in the hopes that more two-dimensional content might just make up for the missing third one in his life.

JACK BRIODY always thought his name was both comedic and elegant.

JOE PRENDERGAST is a Junior Sophister English Literature and French student who has gravely misunderstood the implications of time travel, and just wants to go home. ÍDE SIMPSON is an actor and writer. Íde recently acted in, and produced David Ireland’s Ulster American (Samuel Beckett Theatre), and is currently writing and acting in ‘Cailíní’ (Samuel Beckett Theatre). She has just developed a play with the support of the British Council, and the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, as part of the ‘Words Without Borders’ scheme. Her play ‘Listen! The Adults are Talking’ was performed in Mumbai earlier this year, with another play of hers, ‘Childsplay’ running in the Etcetera Theatre in Camden this June. She has just completed a six-week bursary with the Irish Writers Centre, and her poem ‘You and I: Dancing’ was recently published in Fortnight Magazine.

ISOBEL MAHON is a recent graduate in Computer Science and a painter. Her work focuses on themes of domesticity and femininity.

LARA PRIDEAUX finds that painting allows her to enter another realm, to explore and express ideas that she otherwise may not have been able to formalise.

Each painting she does adds to a sort of dictionary that she subconsciously draws from in the next, it allows her to speak to herself in a new way which is what she did when painting the self portrait published here.

LILY O’BYRNE would like everyone to please try and be a little clearer; ambiguity is totally overrated and so last season. This season she will be collecting rocks at any given opportunity (it’s hard for a rock to be ambiguous).

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LOUISE NORRIS has watched The Lion King musical more than the average person.

MATTHEW PEWTER could not be reached for a comment at this time.

MEGAN NÍ MHATHÚNA is a poet and cartographer, and spends her days mapping the Irish countryside. Previous work has appeared in Icarus, the Irish Times, the O’Brien Press and the inside of select bathroom stalls.

MEGAN O’DRISCOLL is a writer from Dublin. She studied Political Science in Trinity and now lives in London. Her work has been featured in Icarus, VIBE, the Martello, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Sweet Tooth, the author of the verynormalgirl2000 Substack and the owner of one 8 foot long surfboard.

MOLLY ROBINSON is 22, and a Senior Sophister student of English Studies.

She wields a soldering iron, delights in cow-spotting and thinks you should cut yourself some slack.

PAUL HAMMOND needs no introduction.

RHYS PEARCE is a SF English and Classics student who has recently re-entered her academic weapon era. Hailing from Scotland, she doesn’t quite have the accent but can put one on if it’s that big of a deal to you, and was appointed a young makar in her native country. She has appeared at festivals such as Dandelion, Wigtown, the Edinburgh Fringe and StAnza, and is very excited to be here (third time’s the charm). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Attic Literary Magazine, which is undeniably one of the publications at Trinity.

ROSA THOMAS is an artist based in Dublin. Her poetry has been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize and Hotpress National Poetry Competition. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly and Hotpress Magazine. Her debut play, ‘Prawn Cocktail’, premiered at Scene and Heard Festival 2023. She is currently completing a Dual B.A. in Philosophy from Trinity College and Columbia University. She likes bugs and treats. Also surprises and money.

RUBY EASTWOOD is a filmmaker and writer from Barcelona.

YEVA HUSEVA is a multidisciplinary artist from Ukraine, who relocated to Ireland & lived in a Galwegian convent in 2022 before attending Trinity. Has always used art as the stabilising force in life. Instagram: @soundsoffensive.

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EDITORS CHARLOTTE MOORE is yet to be convinced by the baboon community. Read her work @ccam_poems, if you can stomach it.

ELOISE RODGER sees things that are not there. She only wishes you could see them too. You’re not even trying?! You can find her confessions on @eloiseiswriting and should keep an eye out for her big break, which is bound to happen any day now.

FEATURED WRITERS RHIANNON MCGAVIN is a writer from Los Angeles who has failed the driver’s licence test three times. Her work has appeared in The Believer, Teen Vogue, The Los Angeles Times, Taco Bell Quarterly, and more. She is the author of Branches and Grocery List Poems (Not a Cult), and a 2023 Irish Chair of Poetry Student Prize Winner. You can find her online @rhiannonmcgavin and on the street, walking.

SIMON ARMITAGE scored at least one goal in every football match he ever played in. A gifted centre-forward with a cultured right foot and a surprising turn of pace, he retired from competitive physical sport in 2017 to concentrate on dreaming.

FEATURED ARTIST JESSIE HUANG likes to pretend she is an arts student so she can forget about drug names for a while. She functions off pure adrenaline and willpower.

She created this issue’s cover page, See No Evil, the editors’ portraits, the section pages and the back page.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We owe our thanks: to our writers and readers for keeping this all so alive; to Trinity Publications for their support; to Jessie, Simon and Rhiannon for offering up their time and talent; to Alex for being troublingly suave and perpetually there; to Ava and Cathal for their hard work and guidance; and to each other, for being so very clever.

Icarus is a fully participating member of the Press Council of Ireland.

Serious complaints should be made to: The Editors, Icarus, Trinity Publications, Mandela House, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Information concerning copyright and permissions can be found at www.icarusmagazine.com

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