Devilishly- Eoin O’Connor

On the couch in his house, I tremble with nerves while he fetches glasses from the kitchen. He had the fire lit when I walked in, already blazing in the hearth, warming the entire room and fogging up my glasses from the sudden contrast to the freezing weather outside. He seems so at ease with…

A Boxer’s Nose Can Never Break but the Heart Will Take a Beating- Mikayla Kelly

Red and blue never warm up together. No mind games before the ring. The skip skip skip of the girl five fights away. The pah pah pah of some gobshite doing drills as if her technique will improve within the next five minutes. Run up the corridor, run down the corridor, the stretches already done.…

Finn Valley Festival Queen 1985- Mauk Donnabhain

Patrick lit up a cigarette and looked at his phone again, as he stood outside the theatre in Vauxhall, sheltering in the doorway of the service entrance, pulling his jacket tighter around his shoulders. It was always the same with his mother’s emails. She wrote emails the way people had written letters in the old…

Fragile- Aisling Cronin

Birdsong through the trees Glimmers of light And the faintest trace of hope That is what drives you on: Stumbling Searching Barely knowing what it is you seek. You have never fully known. But now you strive and turn To the light that lies ahead And you have faith: You will make it Through the…

The Indiscernible Mother- Katy Thornton

Beth told herself she would wait until the sun came up, but it came up too quickly. She resolved to wait until the first bird chirped, and then until the third, and then until the sixteenth. By the time she got out of bed that morning, she had lost count – the chirping had turned…

A summer reverie- Varghese Joy

It was about 2.30 in the afternoon and I was sitting on the sofa in my living room. It was a hot and bright afternoon in Dublin. My little daughter was having a nap in her bedroom upstairs. The atmosphere was unusually quiet and serene. As I was sitting with my legs stretched, oblivious to…

Barflies- Adam Dolan

INT. PUB - DAY A buzzing afternoon in The Old Barge. The Derby on the TV. Pints can't get drunk quick enough. SHELLY and MICK are sitting in their booth. Mick is wearing his Spurs Away jersey he got at Wembley in '92. He's saving his last gulp of his pint for when Kane puts…

Untitled- Katarina Sarić

When stretched under the bark she whose womb is torn up by her sons and the fear has gone from woman mother life I will collect the hem of the pleated dress and will sew in a new heart to suit a solemn affair as sewed on this face and this picture sick from anemia…

Echo- Natalie Madden

For years, when she walked, the ground did not crunch or thump. Sometimes her feet would make the ground sigh As she followed behind another’s thud, scrape or splash. No sound would come from her throat as if she had no voice, Save for the faint whisper that would follow another’s speech like an echo.…

THE THIRD TANGO- Katarina Sarić

My daughter is playing on the square with the city band a contraption which stands for a classical piano synthesizer it is called-- abusively says my dad who is horribly unnerved by noise synthesized time unites all the sound and sense and I still somehow hope that it will unite all the old Slavs he…