Stories tagged james-claffey

Invented Memories of my Father: 15

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You watched their endeavors from the saddle, the way they created four walls with the sheets and towels, an inner sanctum conjured out of their cleverness, within which they pegged bras and underwear for modesty’s sake.

Fish & Spoons

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Mam and I lit candles and prayed to St. Jude for a cessation to the deluge, but the rain kept falling and the flower beds turned to a muddiness I equated with the No Man’s Land morass of World War I.

Cork—July Morning

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Salmon and hake stare wall-eyed from an icy bed. The Turkish coffee seller makes thick lattes for €2.00

Brú na Bóinne—July Afternoon

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St. Brigid’s Crosses go for €7 a shot. Inside the passage grave the walls are tight.

Invented Memories of my Father: 21

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Our legacy in these pages, the first inklings of going into the red, the hull breached, the trickle of debt begun, only to grow larger and finally sink the whole damn thing. A lamb bought for Easter—£4.30. A load of brick for outhouse refurbishment—£5.6/1

Invented Memories of my Father: 22

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Whilst nobody was looking, I placed a hand on the same rhinoceros’ hide recently and tried to feel your vibration.

Stephen’s Green—False Summer 2015

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The famine memorial is ignored by passers by and in a far corner a colorful Oscar Wilde is recumbent on a boulder.

Cobh Harbor—July Evening

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The Titanic Experience is closed for the day and deck chairs sit abandoned in a parking lot

Home—Celbridge 2015

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he limped along his usual route, dogless since the days the beast savaged his hand.

The Crack in my Heart

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We have rhythm; in the way I fork lentils into her dropped lip, how she scratches her left temple with jagged fingernails.

San Clemente Freeway—Late Night 1995

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Maybe that’s why I agreed to get out of bed at 3am and drive fifteen miles to San Clemente, to see if the shreds of my love for you were suspended from the enormous Carrow’s sign like tattered remnants of a hawk’s kill.

Loveless—Kentish Town 1989

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At the time I was selling swimsuits for an athletic store in Golders Green and making sure the middle-aged Jewish ladies had enough coverage for their fast weekends in Puerto Banus or Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Nasty Drunk

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Perhaps it was my painted, fleshy body they baulked at, or even my struggles with the bottle; the long nights passed out nasty drunk on the sofa, the children in bed, the fire smoldering, the television on mute.

Inverted Memories of my Father: 25

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Hounds at the horse’s feet, sniffing air and ground for a trace of the prey; fox, was it?

Inverted Memories of My Father—29

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How the tables turn when I enter the horse latitudes of my life and wonder about you at my age.