*Drabble: A form of microfiction of 100 words.
Sé mhí níos déanaí
Gearóidín Nic Cárthaigh
Cheapfá gur tríd an mballa a shiúil Deaglán chúm an mhaidin sin. Balcaire breá fir. Chuimil sé barr an vardrúis lena mhéar. ‘Níor chás duit beagán dustála, a Mham.’ Meangadh gáire. Scinn sé as radharc aríst.
Chaitheas súil ar na piollaí suain ar an mbord cois leapan. Nás dheas bheith i dteannta mo linbh bháin……
Ghlaoigh m’fhear céile ón gcistin. ‘Cár chuiris an caife, a Mhéabh?’
Rugas ar mo chiall. B’fhéidir nach ar thaobh an tsléibhe sa tsneachta i gcéin a bhí Deaglán in aon chor. B’fhéidir, taréis an tsaoil, gur insa tseomra ba ghaire dhom a bhí sé.
Six months later
You’d think that Deaglán walked through the walls to me that morning. A fine strong man. He wiped the top of the wardrobe with his finger. ‘Some dusting wouldn’t go amiss, Mum.’ A smile. He slides from view again.
I glance towards the sleeping pills beside the bed. How lovely it would be, to be with my fair child……
My husband calls from the kitchen. ‘Where did you put the coffee Méabh?’
I compose myself. Maybe he wasn’t on the side of a snowy, faraway mountain at all. Maybe, after all, that he was in the room closest to me.
Aistrithe ag/Translated by Julie Breathnach-Banwait
Previously published in Howl New Irish Writing.
Gearóidín Nic Cárthaigh lives in West Cork. She writes flash fiction, short stories and poems in Irish and English, and her work has been published in various journals. Geansaithe Móra, her flash fiction collection, was An Post Irish Language Fiction Book of the Year 2024.
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Intentions Fade
by Louis Mulcahy
The wind though only a force four
roars at me round window panes,
squeals in the cracks of leaking frames,
rustles paper on my desk
and wrestles pages to the floor.
How often in late Spring and Summer
have I thought to stop those leaks,
make sure next Winter’s wildest shrieks
could not intrude upon my peace,
become again that paper drummer.
But nature’s love of lethargy,
while safe in softer seasons,
thwarts such good intentions,
so again I’ll hear that rustle,
pay the price of apathy.
Louis Mulcahy is an Irish potter who sings and writes poetry. He has published one collection in Irish and four in English, the latest of which is Lisbeth – New & Selected Poems (Concerto Books, 2024). www.louismulcahy.com
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HOMEWORK
By Emily Cullen
I
Geography
When my son shows me the bare outline of Ireland
with nothing but veins for the fourteen main rivers
and related boxes to fill with numbers, I flashback
to my own sixth class where I memorised those
meandering branches, starting on top with the Foyle
working clockwise, around to the Moy
He will not study Famine roads on any map in school.
I discovered those myself much later, Trevelyan’s twisted
dictate, the futile labour of those arteries tapering
into the ether, as if Sisyphus had typhus pushing
that boulder. Here are the uncharted rivers we don’t
remember, the lingering fissures of our hunger
II
Maths
When the younger brings home a one hundred square
to find & follow number patterns
my eyes skim the laminated table
count integers, forwards & backwards
as I take old comfort in numeracy
scanning, scaling the serial grid, where
digits add up in their configurations
totals tally as they ever did, but
what of abstractions we can’t make visible?
Dare I mention those ladders & snakes that sidle
up to us on the lattice of life? While maths is not random
strange things still happen when values spiral
descend, we must learn to factor, for ourselves
not all transpires in desired sequence.
Emily Cullen is a Galway-based writer and the Meskell Poet in Residence at the University of Limerick. She has published three collections of poetry to date: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003). Conditional Perfect was included in The Irish Times round-up of “the best new poetry of 2019”. Twice nominated for the Pushcart prize, Emily’s poetry explores themes of history, social justice, cultural memory, ecology, music and the female experience. Emily is also a cultural producer, scholar and harper who has performed throughout Europe, Australia and the United States. She was awarded an IRC fellowship for her doctoral research on the Irish harp and gained a PhD in English from the University of Galway in 2008. Emily has served as Arts Officer of the University of Galway, (1999-2002), Director of the Patrick Kavanagh Centenary (2004) and Director of Cúirt International Festival of Literature (2017-2019).
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Pegasus
by Ben Keatinge
My bicycle hove to
one childhood Christmas,
a gift with gears:
yellow, red and blue.
I was set
for galloping
through empty lanes
on Dublin’s edgelands,
but soon took off,
a youngster going
to London, flying
but not fledged,
lifted out of view.
Ben Keatinge is an Irish writer and poet who won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2022. His poems have been featured in The Irish Times, Irish Independent, Poetry Ireland Review and in several anthologies, including Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019). He was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series in 2024 and his debut pamphlet, Waiting for Goran at the Broz Café: A Balkan Sequence is forthcoming from HOWL New Irish Writing.
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Tinteán 