Stories tagged ireland

Belfast Diaries

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In the morning I’m hearing the roar and swoosh of engines. They’re coming at me from the opposite side of the road! Every thing’s flip-flopped! Tiny, boxy foreign cars gunning for me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m suddenly swerving

Three Stories

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First was the priest, and I only mention it for the sake of completeness. It was a fine and courteous eulogy but gave little insight into the meat of the man. We were told of his friendliness, his generosity towards his neighbours, all the base levels of

Young Skin

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“And you can fuck off,” I said. Only once, twice, maybe three times a year did I watch television. I would grow quietly keen on some kind of miraculous event like the Olympics. I had my dinner on my lap & because I’m deaf I would read the subtit

Not The Saint (March Paddy Whacker Challenge)

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I only mention it to complete the picture of a thirst in me that was never satisfied, especially not by reality.

God on Paddy's Night.

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Paddy's night arrived in the manner of finding a half torn fiver, initial anticipation usurped by disappointment before a chancer's edge suggested some craic might ensue after all. A great crowd had gathered somewhere else, for under Hill street bridge…

Ireland

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Ireland - her beauty is like a drug.

short novel excerpt

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On the edge of the bed steam rises from the teacups on the top of the SuperSer. She scratches at her stockings where the heater element points and folds her legs sideways. Somehow I cannot stop staring at her. The changes in the years since we last met ar

hitchhiking

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an old Jaguar S-Type pulled over and the driver honked its horn. I picked up my bag and ran toward the car. A tiny old man sat in the driver’s seat, a black and white Collie beside him on the ground. The back seat was missing entirely and three chickens

marbled toes

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Master’s nerves fray, the cigarette smoke pouring from hairy nostrils, displeasure writ large on his horse-length face.

bolt the door: revised & shortened

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After her death I begin to see and hear her ghost. It’s at night she scares me the most. The mumbled groans from behind her bedroom door. Granny, lying there, rigid, arms by her sides, her watery eyes fixed on the ceiling.

placenta

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he old man shaves with his electric Remington razor the morning the baby dies. The shrill echo of the phone in the hall brings him thundering down the stairs and as he stands there in his string vest and y-fronts he begins to shake. I make it halfway down

sixteen magpies

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Sixteen magpies patrolled the patch of grass behind the house, splitting the soil with their shiny beaks and siphoning earthworms from the wet earth. Your blood and bile suctioned into waste receptacles, your sallow skin pitted and bluing as the sun made

skull of a sheep

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You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r

The Empty Stool

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I walked up to the bar and sat down on the empty stool.“You don't want to sit there,” said the bartender.“Oh? Why not?” I replied.“It's haunted.”I laughed, but then stopped when I saw he was not laughing with me.“You're…

Leaving Seamus Heaney's Funeral

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The sky cannot fall in Ireland. It threatens constantly, a wagging finger pointing at the fog rising, an upside down heather cake with a peat and bog center. The sky in Ireland is held up by stories and the rhythmic sound of sean-nos,…