The Robin
G.R.C.C. (Galway Rape Crisis Centre)
affairs of the unsettled
making do (collected haikus) your heart beats so loud Relapseyou are walking the twenty-five minutes home with a push forward, push forward to your step, and you are furious but you don’t know why, and your lips are chapped but slippery with spit, and it’s there in your hand, in a plastic bag with handles sweaty and digging into your palm, and god above do you wish it weren’t. because you’re going home to an empty house and just on the end of your phone there’s a girlfriend and a best friend and someone who’s somewhere in between, but they can’t see you now, and he is thirty metres away but you cannot do that to him, not now. on the bottle is some kind of fucking bird or dragon, and you stare at it and wonder what it’s got against you to make you this way, and you pour it into a cartoon mug, full and slopping over the top, and you swig, and it rattles against your teeth, and you’re close to tears, and you know why. and now you’re swimming in this haze, and that buzzing bites into your ears, and things are not normal but it feels okay somehow, it’s all in real time and it’s a relief, it’s a relief, it’s a relief. it’s two hours later and you are screaming, screaming, ripping out your throat at nothing, you are ringing his doorbell and he sees, sees it’s you and does not answer, and you are lying outside prostrate on the ground waiting for him to be there because there is no one else left in this town for you. now you are seeping, sinking deep into the screen, a friend helps but it doesn’t help and you’ve called four times but he is nothing but a voicemail and you don’t know where he’s gone, where inside himself or inside another, and it pushes you towards the edge. calmer, calmer now, you sip from your bottle, the drink all gone, you turn wine into water and you pray that he will forgive you for tonight’s fuck-up—do not judge me for what i have been, good god, but sharpen your knife and cut me free. two thirty and here it is, you communicate with the angels, you offer yourself up to her and she accepts with grace, rocking you into your gentle sleep and sending you off with bullrush dreams, and you are free. you wake, and each side of your body wakes too with a jolt of pain, and you regret it all, how you fucked up yesterday’s casual calm to try and satiate the roaring in your ears, you are lying there, wishing you could forget it all and sleep forever, but it’s morning now, and you have to get up. affairs of the unsettled and other poems are © Olly Lenihan. |
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Olly Lenihan is a twenty-year-old poet who is originally from Dingle in the south-west of Ireland. Their writing career began during a disastrous attempt at living in Galway, and they’ve been penning angst ever since. Their poetry encapsulates the dreadful clichéd romanticism of being in love in one’s early twenties, along with themes of mental illness, sexuality and loss. They are currently in their first year of IT Sligo’s Writing and Literature course, and are also working on their first novel.
E.D. Hickey is twenty-four and living and studying law in Dublin. She most recently spent half a year in Vienna, Austria working for the United Nations and graduated from UCD Law with Philosophy in 2017. While at university she recorded, edited and produced a feminist discussion-panel podcast called Pink Void (episodes available on Soundcloud) with two friends.
Lisa Ardill is a twenty-something-year-old woman with a passion for feminism, human rights, neuroscience, literature and film (roughly in that order!). She writes poems and prose to entertain herself, cheer herself up on gloomy days, and keep the spark for creative writing in my brain alight.
Shreya Barua is a recent Trinity postgraduate. She moved halfway across the world, from Delhi to Dublin to be able to indulge in the two things that have her heart: literature and travel. When she is not too busy daydreaming, one can find her hiking on the Wicklow mountains or sipping a glass of red by the grand canal.
Kate Ennals is a poet and writer and has published material in a range of literary and online journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain plus many more). Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection comes in 2018. In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan, and organises At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office.
Aoife Read is a 34-year-old woman born and bred in Dublin. She is a breast cancer survivor, a lesbian and a quiet activist. Aoife has been writing from a young age, from journaling all through her teens to working as a journalist now, currently on a freelance basis, but in the past for local newspapers and as a deputy editor for various magazines. Her true love has always been for poetry though, and she has kept all of the poems she has written throughout her life from her early teens until now. A longtime resident of Swords Co. Dublin, Aoife lives in her family home with her cat, Xena. She has a partner of 6 years, Franky, who has been the focus of many of her poems. You might even say she is her muse, although she would murder Aoife for referring to her that way. Aoife has a huge passion for science, physics in particular, and is a comic book geek and gamer chick and a bit of an all-around nerd. These interests and fascinations are often found creeping into a lot of her work in various ways. Her recent battle with cancer is also something that has coloured a lot of her latest work. Her poetry and writing is laced with something deeper, perhaps thicker ever since.
Chris Murray 