The last word in the series goes to poets Matthew Geden and Christina Hession.  Matthew is based in Kinsale, the author of three collections, the most recent entitled Fruit from Sur Vision Books (2020). He teaches poetry to undergraduate writers and on the MA in Creative Writing at UCC. Christina Hession graduated earlier this year with an MA.

 

Second Chance

The last day drags down the narrow lane,

crosses a stream of cheap champagne,

stumbles out to the headland navigating

the gorse. Wild yellow furze, clusters

 

of suns at the centre of small-scale solar

systems unaware of the self-isolation

in another world. Nothing is lost

but what we lose for ourselves,

 

memories buried beneath the paper-

work. There’s an end to it, he says,

washing his hands. But the truth

is you have taken a winding path

 

ascending into the mist which advances

in on breakers, subdued splash on the rocks

far below. The wanderer in you is forever

hopeful, hastens now to climb above

 

it all into the final seconds of a second

sunset, relive the warmth, resurgent

birdsong amongst the ghosts of tractors,

last loitering light and a fingernail moon.

Matthew Geden

 

Mañana

 

Suspend the squalls of the heart,

Stow them with circled calendar dates,

must do lists,

and under stairs detritus

till mañana.

 

Sit seiza-style

in a faux fur saucer chair.

Pick up a spine-cracked

paperback, and inhale

the perfume of passion

– the aroma of vanilla

and almond.

 

Savour a marshmallowy

hot chocolate,

perched perilously

on your patella.

Watch flames frolic

in the fireplace,

taking solace from the seething sky,

and whining wind.

Tomorrow,

is a clean, though imperfect slate.

 

Christina Hession

Today is our last posting of “Creative Corona”, a month-long platform of writing from students, graduates and writers associated with the MA in Creative Writing at UCC.  A special word of appreciation goes to all the writers who made this project possible.  Their work was donated free of charge and represents a great generosity of spirit in the service of creative commons at a time when conditions for writers are so imperilled.   Many thanks to all.

Mary Morrissy, Associate Director of Creative Writing

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Kelleher graduated from the MA in Creative Writing in 2016 and is currently pursuing a PhD in contemporary American literature at Dublin City University. Mary Morrissy is a novelist and short story writer.  She is the Associate Director of Creative Writing.

HOME

Tonight, I am thinking again about breathing.

When I was a child, I did not like the eeriness of bedtime fairytales. Instead, my mother used to read to me from my father’s old science almanacs and add her own twists to their incogitable truths. I never forgot them and some have contributed of late to what seems now to be the fundamental mood of my existence.

For instance, once, when I was off school unwell, she read to me that in a day’s worth of breathing, one is likely to inhale at least one molecule from the breaths of every human who has ever lived. This thought soon became a peculiar source of comfort and many times when I felt the urge to misbehave I put it down to the fact that for a fleeting moment I had Hitler inside me.

I have been doing something different lately – I have been thinking about breathing in the entire world.

This is what was on my mind while looking through the bedroom window just now. It is something I have been doing every night for the last month – looking out there and thinking about breathing, while behind me the man on the radio whispers replies to callers who seem so faraway I sometimes imagine them to be in worlds entirely separate from this one.

The skyline looked totally on fire a few moments ago. The sight of it lifted me out of this room and into the arms of my mother again. I was seven. It was night in summer and we were in a caravan in Swansea. My father was outside with his cigarette and my mother was at my bedside, inventing some truths of her own to help me fall asleep. With her hand lightly squeezing mine, she leaned towards me and said quietly that red evening skies were made by the lonely of the world. Everyone who had no one, she continued, had their own unique light and it shone brightest when they felt at their most alone. Their collective shine was to remind them that they were alone together.

I didn’t know then that my father was dying.

The scenes from my window here are not, I suppose, spectacular. In fact, they rarely change. There are the backs of houses and the backs of more houses beyond. There is a motorway some miles to the west, but it is not visible from here; it registers its presence only through a sound that is scarce now. To the east, two cranes located on a site that has stalled. That dog four doors down seems to only come alive at night. There is no menace in his barking and I do not find it a nuisance. I tell myself that he is singing in the only way he can.

I haven’t seen anyone for days, but it doesn’t stop me from imagining how I would appear to someone if they looked up and saw me here. They may wave and perhaps mouth a greeting of some kind. Of course, it’s just as likely that they might see me and turn quickly away.

What they wouldn’t see is a woman trying in her own way to find her way home.

I’m seventy-six now and for a long time now I have contemplated making a wound in myself just to see if I glow. 

But for now, at least, I am at this window and I am thinking about breathing.

Mark Kelleher

EXPIRY DATE

Margaret’s latest shop, ordered online – oh yes, she is computer-literate, thank you very much – and delivered to the front door by an anonymous gloved hand, is lined up on the counter-top like a miniature city. A thuggish, spouty container of detergent, a thin tower of disinfectant spray, a monolithic nine-pack of loo rolls lord it over the low-rise goods, cans of mixed beans, chickpeas, salmon.  She’s not sure why she’s ordered these.  Since Fintan died she hasn’t bothered with cooking much, resorting to hyphenated food.  Film-wrapped.  Oven-ready.  But with someone else doing her shopping, she was afraid she’d be judged nutritionally if she only ordered microwaveable stuff.

She used to be proud of her store cupboard.  There was always something in there she could mix in, or add, to zip up a shop-bought soup or bulk out a stew.

“You’re thrifty,” Fintan used to say. “Like a war bride.”

“Excuse me,” she’d say, “I’m a war baby, born in 1945, thank you very much!”

She liked being 12 years younger than Fintan. She’d been the baby of the family and she’d never lost the notion that everyone in the room was older than she was.  If it hadn’t sounded so foolish, she’d still be declaring her age in fractions – I’m 74½, thank you very much.

Now her age is an underlying condition. She’s vulnerable. It’s official.  She walks and swims and sings in a choir and was, up to a week ago, a perfectly functioning member of society, but now she’s somehow lesser.  That’s why she’s given up watching the news with its fruit machine of fatalities.  She feels targeted. 

When she begins clearing the press to make way for the shop, she realizes she’s been presiding over a food archive. Supplies for emergencies long gone. Late night snacks for when the boys would come in from the pub, ravenous, or Trudie would bring college friends back for a home-cooked meal. With all of them gone, she no longer has to draw on these reserves. Now she finds tuna sulking in brine that expired five years ago last August, soya sauce with a 2012 date, a tin of green lentils from 2007!  Just-in-case provisions – condensed milk from 2001.  Cut-price exotica – sauerkraut that came of age in June 2010. The only up-to-date items are the packets of chocolate biscuits and bars in the “goodie” box for the grandchildren and who knows when she’ll see them again. As for herself, she’s lost her taste for sweetness.

What should she do with the out-of-date tins? Throw them out?  And in which bin, for pity’s sake? And wouldn’t that be wasteful? Could a food bank use them?  Or should she hang on to them in case things get worse? Will there come a time when she’ll be happy to spoon decade-old processed peas direct from the can?  What’s the worst that could happen? Aluminium poisoning? How does that compare to being an untouchable, lungs filling up, tended to by nurses in goggles and space suits, dying alone and being buried without ceremony?

She fishes out the next old tin – it’s tomatoes. You’d think they’d last forever. But no, best before May 16, 2020.

It reads like an epitaph.

Mary Morrissy

TOMORROW: Last word goes to Matthew Geden with “Second Chance” and Christina Hession with “Mañana”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Noonan is the author of two collections of poetry – The Fado House  (Dedalus, 2012)  and Stone Girl  (Dedalus, 2019). She teaches French literature at UCC.  She offers a “dream of the Mediterranean, now that we’re all trapped at home!”  Breda Joyce, who graduated from the MA in Creative Writing earlier this year, revisits a hospital in the past.  

Somewhere Else

 it’s a cold Spring, three cormorants

are flying in, maybe, to huddle on a

rainy weir, but here, at the Wednesday

market, it’s fat strawberries from the garrigue

and golden onions with wild green hair

and inky octopus lolling on reefs of scarlet

bell peppers. Through dapple-dapple lime-

green freckles flickering on piebald bark

and limestone clock-towers and fountains

we drive, stopping at the sign of the scallop-

shell of Saint James to drink the citrus wine

and eat the sweet oysters of Bouzigues.

In the streets of Sète, a seagull presents

himself at locked glass doors –  knock,

wait, hop on, dome-headed pilgrim!

Are you looking for your mate? She’s been

snared in nets, bamboozled by the oysters,

the lake’s slinky contortionists, shimmering

under water on their salty daisy chains.

Gull cries follow us. Somewhere else,

three cormorants are raising a black flag

above an icy river.

Mary Noonan

* garrigue: scrubland in the Mediterranean region

 

Visiting Rite

 

I was four and my brother nearly two and I squeezed

my mother’s fingers in the ward with the bad smell.

We found my brother red cheeked and crying in the corner,

hands raised about the gate of his cot.

 

My mother took an orange from a brown paper bag,

held its coolness against his raging cheek,

then peeled the hissing skin and sprayed

the air with a citrus mist.

 

She offered him a segment and my brother

squeezed its sweetness between his tiny teeth.

(I took one too, to show him what to do)

 

When visiting time was up my mother

unclasped sticky arms from around her neck,

laid down her little boy among the orange balls.

 

I saw tears in her eyes, and I blocked my ears

against my brother’s pleading cries as from his cot

he threw each orange out between the bars.

 

Now it is my mother who stands inside a gate,

and from her doorstep looks out across

a vacant space. My brother tells her she will be ok

that he will visit soon again and wishes her

a happy Mother’s Day.

 

Before he leaves, he leans across the gate

to place a bunch of tulips beside a bag of oranges

on the other side.

 

Breda Joyce

TOMORROW: “Home” by Mark Kelleher and “Expiry Date” by Mary Morrissy

 

 

A “compromised” boy deals with lockdown temptation and a grandmother makes an unlikely COVID-19 connection in these two short fictions.  Jacqui Corcoran is an MA alumna from 2017 while Debra Fotheringham is a current MA student. 

VECTORS

Nobody noticed the new teen in No.9 The Fairways, because he was well locked down under strictest, hysterical instruction. His mother dropped him off late at night, weary and dazzled after another day in the hospital and the three-hour drive from Dublin. She had custody, of course, but with his cystic fibrosis the lad was maybe safer down here. 

Seeing his father softened the parting for the lad, but a few days into lockdown, the novelty had worn off and there wasn’t much to be said between them. Thank Christ for PlayStation, the father thought, but there wasn’t much thinking overall, and both were happy enough, or not unhappy anyway, doing their own things, whatever they were.

The online football could go all hours in this curfew-free house. There were no ground rules, only the mother’s nightly pleadings on the phone to stay put. 

A couple of weeks into it, Kyle’s father shouted at him to come downstairs late one night. He was swaying like a tree and pointing at the bottom of the closed front door.

      “That’s a fucking threshold, right?”

       Kyle clenched his fists, wanting to get back to the game. 

      “You don’t cross it, right? I’m sick saying it to her. You tell her, OK?” 

*

On screen the players were from all over, but mainly from Kyle’s Dublin school. Half-way through a match one night a locator App pinged and Brian came online.

       “You’re here!” 

Their mothers used to nurse together and the boys had kept sporadic on-screen contact after Kyle moved to Dublin.  

      “Yeah,” said Kyle, relieved he didn’t have to explain. “It’s shit. I can’t go outside the door.”

In daylight he would look through his attic window at tracks going through the hilly field of the now closed golf club. More and more seemed to form each day, worming their way towards the flanking forest beyond. He looked out for Brian in the groups and singles out there. One day he thought he saw him walking through the tall grass, but it could have been any boy in any family.

*

Brian invited him into a local online league. The concentration and lockdown focus forged quick bonds and Kyle’s feelings towards his faceless companions bulged with a sort of urgency. But he didn’t share his team-mates’ joy when they reached the final.  The tick-tock countdown might be the beginning of the end. Soon they would head off to play games with different, real boys.

During the on-screen league final game Lucas said: “We sometimes go down the forest when the folks are asleep. Wanna come?” 

Kyle thought of the trees at the end of the tracks. 

He thought of the threshold. The fucking threshold.

      “Nah, can’t.”  

      “Why?” said Lucas, who didn’t like to leave a question unanswered. 

      “My father, he’d probably strangle me.”

The match battered along into an overtime debate about who’d take the penalties. 

     “You take our first,” said Lucas and Kyle had to ask twice: “Who, me? Really?”

      “About the woods,” said Lucas. “Sure, your father wouldn’t know, he’d be asleep.” 

      “Yeah,” said Aaron, who was usually quiet. “We wanna meet you face-to-face.”  

Kyle was trying to focus on the shot. He was swelled up with it all and finding it hard to concentrate. 

      “Cop on, you lot,” said Brian, and Kyle pulled back his chair, away from the screen, willing Brian to shut the fuck up. Lucas came in quick though, like the brilliant team captain that he was. 

      “I’m only asking him, Brian. You can make up your own mind, can’t you?”  

       They know. Brian fucking told them, Kyle thought. 

He was trying to guide his blurred player towards the goal, struggling to line up and take the shot. 

      “Well?” said Lucas.

      “Maybe,” Kyle said.

      “Maybe what?” said Lucas. “Maybe you can make up your own mind, or maybe you’ll come?”

      “Maybe like shut the fuck up and let me take the shot, boy!” Kyle said in a thick, comical country accent.

      And all the players online, even Lucas, even Brian laughed at that, because Kyle, it turned out, could be kind of funny.

Jacqui Corcoran

 

WRONG NUMBER

+1 (801) 617-5894/ Text Message/Thu, Apr 9, 10:15 AM

Is this the number I text to have my groceries delivered?

     <nah. wrong number

I’m sorry. Do you know the number for the Neighbours Helping Neighbours organisation? My grandson was delivering my groceries but he’s not feeling well and doesn’t want to risk giving the virus to me if he has it.

     <nah sorry. can u look it up online?

No, my internet isn’t working. I only have my phone. My grandson wrote the number down for me but I can’t read his writing very well. I was going to call him next.

     <I looked it up 4 u. 8019347348. u were just one number off.

Thank you!

     <no prob :smiley:

Thank you so much! My name is Pearl, by the way. I’m very appreciative of your help.

     <I’m Dante

Thank you, Dante. Are you in Salt Lake City too?

     <yep, I live in liberty wells

I see. My home is in The Avenues area.  

     <fancy :mansion:

Well, I suppose it’s considered fancy now. When my husband Ken and I first moved in sixty years ago, it was just another neighbourhood.

     <is ur husband still alive?

No, he passed away ten years ago.

     <sorry :sad_face:

It’s ok. The time we had together was wonderful and I’ve learned to live on my own.

     <cool. ur grandson takes care of u now?

Yes, my daughter lives in New York City but my grandson moved back here to raise his young children and I’ve loved having them close.

     <dope

Does your family live here too?

     <I live with my mom. I’m 13. she’s a nurse at U of U hospital. She’s been gone a lot lately helping with the virus stuff

She’s doing wonderful work. I hope you’re proud. Are you continuing your schooling online?

    <yeah, I was Zooming with my teachers and class but we had to switch to google hangouts cuz a hackers

I’m not really sure what that means but I’m glad you’re still able to learn.

      <yeah, those are just online video things. its cool but I miss my friends

I’m sure you do. It’s hard to be alone and stuck indoors. I miss my friends too.

     <sorry ur alone too :sad_face:

It’s ok. I’m glad I have a new friend to talk to. Feel free to text me any time, Dante, if you get lonely or even if you need help with your homework.

     <dope. hope u can get ur food

Thanks, Dante. You have a wonderful day, ok?

     <cool. u 2 :wave:

 

Debra Fotheringham

                      

TOMORROW: “Somewhere Else” by Mary Noonan and “Visiting Rite” by Breda Joyce

 

Poet John FitzGerald won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2014 and his debut collection First Cut appeared in 2017.  He is the director of information services at Boole Library UCC, which part sponsors the Department of English annual reading series.  James O’Sullivan is a poet, publisher and a lecturer in Digital Humanities in the Department of English.  “The Holy Ground” comes from his most recent collection, Courting Katie (Salmon, 2017)

Easement

Spring’s other gift

is the illusion of youth.

 

Today, still in recovery, I sit

on the front terrace, a generous

 

gin in hand, to hear the birds sing

vigorous as fiddlers — and go

 

with all my senses in the song

of every bird of Ballymichael,

 

Dunisky, Warrenscourt, Crossmahon,

all the way back to Kilbarry, where

 

the quick ticking of a wren,

with the insistence

 

of Mossie Brady’s polite poetic stammer,

silences everything.

 

John FitzGerald

 

The Holy Ground

It greets you like a bookshelf, or the selection

in a sweetshop—Saint Colman keeping a watchful

eye on greedy little boys, and mischievous girls,

reaching for a taste of something sharp and sour—

Black Jacks and Fruit Salads—gobbled all at once,

packed and chewed between watery cheeks.

 

Joseph guards the western door so children

might not pass with sticky fingers, smudging

the fine limestone from Mallow, the blue

Dalkey granite and Kilkenny marble,

the Belgian slate, and Californian pitchpine.

Here is not a place for unwashed children.

 

Sailors sang about this oasis, raising anchors,

hoping to find a torn rigging that might send them

for shore with the secrets of their mind piled high.

Vigil is still kept from the hill, but like the shanties,

they have been seen for what they are—the shop fronts

are fading now, and children keep hold of their mothers.

James O’Sullivan

TOMORROW:  “Vector” by Jacqui Corcoran and  “Wrong Number” by Debra Fotheringham 

 

Change and hope are the themes of today’s poems. Alison Driscoll  is a poet and fiction writer and a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing.  She has just been announced as the 2020 Molly Keane Writer-in-Residence. Hayley-Jenifer Brennan is a student on the current MA.   

 

When It Is Over

There won’t be an empty seat at the table in our house for months after.

Kettles will be boiled off the stand and glasses will be clinked in the air.

The roads will pothole and commuters will beep and curse in the rush.

Floodlights will burn like leaving cert sun and exams will be sat,

pitches will pucker and balls will be won as stadiums fill up to the max

– from the drive-thru testing you can still see the tyre tracks –

 

We will hold hands and shake hands and say ‘I’m sorry for your loss’

again and again for all the caskets closed behind closed doors.

Children will fill classrooms and shops will raise shutters

We will stay on the footpaths as we walk towards others

but we’ll all carry anti-bac and recoil at coughs and splutters.

 

We’ll keep singing Happy Birthday at the sink as we try to wash away

the final statistics and images off the news – hospitals on the Hudson

and army tanks shouldering coffins instead of family and loved ones.

We will try to get back to normal but some tables will be emptier,

some families will be smaller and our doctors will face their mental scars

But people will try, and they’ll walk out their front doors

and they’ll sit in the driveway reluctant to start their cars.

Alison Driscoll

 

 

The End of the Day

Ssssh…

   The world is quiet – cloaked in thickened ink

               Shadows flicker, glimmer, stagger, shimmer

                           The Moon is on duty and the candles are sleepy now;

                                       We are outside of Time.

We drift softly as the scraps of Stardust that fall on our lashes

gather at the close of our eyes, ready to enchant us with Secret Wishes

                                                   nothing contains them, they are limitless

 

Ssssh…

   The world is in slumber – stilled by hushed tranquillity

               Stars sparkle, shimmer, twinkle, glitter

                           We are Poets and Artists now;

                                       We do not have to be careful.

Imagination is wisps of cloud that we scatter absentmindedly during the day,

forbidden from leaving our heads in them when there is sunlight

                                                   not bound by Time or Space, our thoughts can wander

 

Ssssh…

   You are at Peace now – tethered forever to Inspiration

               Moon Shavings dance, flurry, twirl, scurry

                           You are unafraid, you are free;

                                       there is no need for reservation.

We can walk through this Warm Winter together,

tingles of touch on the tips of our fingers as we meet again in Dreams

                                                   there is no sorrow here

                                                               Hope is not a requirement but an absolute.

Hayley-Jenifer Brennan                    

TOMORROW: “Easement” by John FitzGerald and “The Holy Ground” by James O’Sullivan

 

Robert Feeney is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing working on a novel inspired by the life and work of the Irish-born Japanophile writer  Lafcadio Hearn. Robert goes back to another natural crisis in 2011 in this piece of short fiction. Mona Lynch who graduated from the MA in Creative Writing in 2017 considers the virus in mythical terms.

BLACK AND RED

The man is swept from the bridge by a tsunami of dark water and sports cars. No matter how many times he watches this, he can’t tell what the man is doing in those final moments. That’s probably a phone in his hand, but it could be a small book. The camera is too far away. The man is just an insect. The clip finishes and the newsreader returns. He can’t hear what she’s saying. Nami, the bartender, has the TV muted. She plays light jazz from a DJ setup in the corner. The TV is normally set to some soft porn channel, but that seems crass now. The man was some daughter’s father, some mother’s son.

In about ten minutes, the power will go off. It’s a scheduled cut, part of a national power-saving initiative. Kris deals the cards quickly, so they can get one more game in before the lights go out. The game is skulls and roses, but now they just call it black and red.

“Paul got a ticket on the Thursday flight out of Osaka. Twenty-four-hour stopover in China though.”

Paul is a traitor. Paul is a coward. He doesn’t even have the excuse of children. They’ll have to cover his classes while he eats his mother’s rank cooking. When classes begin again.

“I hope the Chinese detect and cut off his irradiated cock.”

Kris flips over a card. It’s a skull, no, black. He smashes the counter with his palm. Nami comes over, refreshes the complimentary dishes of corn nuts. Normally it would be potato sticks, but they come from Fukushima, so supplies are low. Corn nuts are fine, but they wreak havoc on your teeth. And no-one wants anything else to go wrong; no trip to the dentist, no lost credit card, no unexpected call from mum at three am because she’s forgotten the time difference. It’s too much right now. Kris flips over a card. It’s red. Nami changes the channel. The man gets swept away again. Maybe it is a book.

Nami shows them a video on her phone. A Russian man is testing tap water in Tokyo with a Geiger counter. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Nami makes a good White Russian. It’s good because it’s about nine parts vodka. It dissolves the bits of corn nut that get stuck in your teeth. The windows in the bar are tinted, but outside they can see people hurrying home, back to their families. They’re probably hurrying because the power is going off in a few minutes.

Last night, after Nami’s, he went home and realised the cockroach traps had been empty since the meltdown. He says this to Kris, who’s deep in thought. He needs to turn over one more red to win. A man outside is in so much of a hurry, he falls over in the street. Paul was always rushing about, always running, the stupid bastard. When something bad happens, the trick is not to run. Just sit still on a bar stool and let it flow past.

Nami taps her watch. She left her phone on the bar and now it’s showing the man again. He probably gets crushed by a car before he drowns. Hopefully it was a good book. Kris is frozen. There are only two cards left, so it’s a straight fifty-fifty to win, nothing much to think about at all. He finally makes a decision and flips over a card, just as the lights go out. Everything is so silent, Kris’ breath sounds like a sigh.

They sit in the dark for a while, until Nami sweeps them out the door.

Robert Feeney

 

REVENGE ON THE WORLD

Elena was leading a stolen life with a man she loved, who had no idea that the girl he had met basking on the rocks below his house – who stole his heart – was a selkie. As news of a dreaded virus spread through the land, she knew her time was up.

She loved her underwater family from the tiny periwinkles to the giant octopus.  

The mollusc family was in the forefront of the revolt. They had suffered most due to increasing human activity. They had tried minor kickbacks; they could cause anaphylactic shocks. Their snails in the Philippines caused death to thousands, hosting a fluke disease. In India they fought back with another intestinal fluke. In America their clams and mussels fought back with poisoning and the conus omaria used its venomous sting to inflict injury and even death.

But these efforts did nothing to stop the devastation. Their families were being used for aphrodisiacs, as medicine for sore throats and coughs.

 Windowpane oysters were being used in a plasma for youth and vitality. Paolin from oysters was extracted for use in polio and flu vaccines, venom from Conus as a muscle relaxant. Snails were being wiped out in the Mediterranean, their glands harvested for a dye that did not fade for 100 years. There was greed for their pearls stolen from the oyster shells. Add to this the massive fish markets where humans delighted in buying molluscs to boil while still alive, enjoying their cries of pain.  

Elena had grown up with the fear of extinction all around her.

They needed to teach humans a lesson. They enrolled the help of the electric eel, knowing they could spread the word to the population in the Sargasso Sea, who migrated to Europe, and through the Panama Canal to the South China Sea.  China with its vast fish markets was chosen for the first strike.

Razor fish from the Yangtze river volunteered, knowing that due to human activity, their neurotoxin had become more insidious having morphed into a virus which when they were sufficiently aroused and angry they could spit out onto an unsuspecting host.

As the virus spread, Elena knew what she had to do.

That night she left Cathal’s bed, ran barefoot through the night garden, through a pathway edged with spring buds where daffodils were already in bloom. A full moon guided her as she made her way down to the cave hidden under the overhanging cliff. Moonlight sent enough shafts of light through the entrance to show her where she had hidden her seal skin.

Mona Lynch

TOMORROW:  “When It is Over” by Alison Driscoll and “The End of the Day”  by Hayley-Jenifer Brennan 

Laura McKenna was conferred with a PhD in Creative Writing (Fiction) from UCC last year. She is a novelist, short story writer and poet. Bridget Sprouls is a graduate of the inaugural MA in Creative Writing in  2013. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker and she published her first collection, The Remaining Years, last year. 

 

Mum and Jasper in the Morning

 

She rises before eight to oversee his peeing, no matter what the season, weather,

or her own inclination —

Downstairs, she ignores her damn knee, and while he leaps and circles, she makes a cup of tea

Takes an old rain coat, slung over her dressing gown, and opens the door onto the garden.

 

Onto darkness or lemon dawn or barley sugar skies or low slung cloud

and seeping rains or

The trickle drip from last night’s storm, the pots tossed on windblown grass,

or soaring birdsong,

Or onto stillness, a hush of frost, a slip of muffled snow. Or the grey heron

unfolding from the dark pond.

 

While he snuffles through soil or poppies or sodden leaves, she pauses —

To lift a drooping hellebore

Scour her hostas, pluck and crush a snail underfoot, brush past a salvia,

deadhead a rosebush,

Pickpocket seed pods, water saplings in the greenhouse.

 

Though why she bothers she doesn’t know

Having no more space

to grow anything.

 

And yet —

 

She turns back up the garden again, calling for Jasper,

carrying inside

Earth on her feet, scent of salvia

on her hands.

Laura McKenna

 

Sinkhole

 

The hour arrives of illicit shadow puppets,

 

summer juries barking

in tiki torch light.

 

Scenery: gritty floors,

hydrants of sweat.

 

Hear death trot his pristine gutters,

the tinkling of muds,

 

wizard of messy removals.

 

Build a mantel with these unintended bones — 

 

teeth

 

for the ceiling popcorn,

 

marrow summoned up the stack

to drift along

 

metaphysics.

 

Quiver and sing

Oh candy!

 

Oh monstrous rewards!

 

So bright with microscopic morgues. . . .

 

Loved me more than breath she said

 

Who?

 

Who was it she meant?

 

Some decades.

Some structures occasionally

chomped

apart.

 

Sometimes in the half-light,

custom knife-making stares innocently from the shelf.

 

Conifers sway where they will die.

 

How special to bleed

the right amount.

 

Bridget Sprouls

 

TOMORROW: “Black and Red” by Robert Feeney and “Revenge on the World” by Mona Lynch 

 

Fancy yourself as a translator?

In association with the publication of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh’s poem “éinín/francach”  on  today’s “Creative Corona”, we’re inviting writers and readers the chance to translate her poem into English.

Ailbhe will adjudicate and the winner will receive E100 and a copy of her latest bilingual volume, The Coast Road.

While a knowledge of Irish is helpful, it’s not absolutely necessary.  Ailbhe provided a glossary of words used in the poem posted today  – see  http://creativewritingucc.com/www/creative-corona-day-22/ – or go to Day 22 on the home page of this site.  All posts can also be accessed through the Department of English Facebook page. Another useful translation resource is – www.teanglann.ie.

The contest is open to all.  Please email your translation to mary.morrissy@gmail.com no later than 12 noon on Friday, May 15. 

The winning translation will be published on this site and on the Department of English Facebook page under the “Creative Corona” logo. 

Mary Morrissy, Associate Director of Creative Writing 

 

Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh is an Irish language poet.  She has published three collections in Irish, Péacadh (Coiscéim, 2008),  Tost agus Allagar (Coiscéim, 2016) and her bilingual The Coast Road (Gallery Press, 2016).  Ailbhe teaches in the Department of Modern Irish at UCC. In this prose poem she queries how to define the current lockdown – staycation or prison term?  

Ailbhe has kindly provided a gloss below for those of us without fluent Irish.

 

éinín / francach

 

an éinín atá ag bíogadh sa sceach – nó francach

an staycation é seo nó tamall sa charcair

an leanfaidh an mhuir ag tuilleadh is ag trá

an gcífear go brách an samhradh bán

an fearr do ghnúis a chumhdach feasta

an bhfuil masc aghaidhe anois sa bhfaisean

an éisteann tú le bachlóga ag péacadh

bhfuilir gafa le bratbhuamáil an nuachta

ar thug tú leat do leabhar ciondála

an roinnfeá liom sciar den cháca

an dream béal dorais, ar thugais faoi deara

iad ag sárú rialacha oíche is maidin

seachain seanóirí agus seachain aosánaigh

fainic anois an tsíocháin bhradach

sáil agus barraicín timpeall an tí

bardaí an ospidéil ag cur thar maoil

bhfuil pictiúr den sourdough in airde ar Insta

is do chleachtas ióga ina údar gaisce

an luíonn an imní mar ualach ar d’ucht

bhfuilir ullamh don tubaiste atá le teacht

an raibh an ceart ag cearc an phrompa

nó an bhfanfaidh an spéir in airde tamall eile

– agus an baol dom thú a chréatúir, a dhuine?

Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh

 

 

TOMORROW:  “Mum and Jasper in the Morning” by Laura McKenna and “Sinkhole” by Bridget Sprouls