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On Writing ‘Mary of Egypt goes into the Desert to Repent her Lascivious Life’ / Pauline Flynn

As a visual artist I am trained to see the detail in things. As a geometric abstract painter, I’m interested in paring back to shapes, pattern, colour and design in composition. When I began writing poetry, after I took a break from painting and did an MA in Creative Writing in Dublin, my tutor told me my poems were Imagist. I had read Haiku more than any other poetry form but when I took the poetry module and found I could author a poem, I was thrilled. Words have become a new medium that allows me to express myself more figuratively. The poems complement the paintings, and my life is now enriched by my engagement with both.

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‘Walking with the Weather’ by Medbh McGuckian

A  grey light with a gossamer tinge

Through his eyes. Those diaphanous

Hands, on the dawn which follows

The midnight after a death.

Their nearness lent a new weight

To the interlocking between angels,

Blackmarket lemons on a forest day

When I cottoned on to this and ruled

The winter, in a sheltered river whose

Mouth is hidden, since death itself is

After all an angel.

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‘Turning Saints into the Sea’ by Taz Rahmann

‘Turning Saints into the Sea’ is featured alongside two more poems by Taz in Issue 14 of The Lonely Crowd, which may be pre-ordered here.   Turning Saints into the Sea   Stubborn pink scales a cliff-face becoming heather, the sea crests hours instructing gulls to remember nothing, footsteps totter in throat knots like a…

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Issue Twelve Preview: ‘Space is a Doubt’ by Fiona O’Connor

Fiona O’Connor introduces her new short story ‘Space is a Doubt’, featured in ‘Five Years’: Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · Read by the Author: Introduction to ‘Space Is A Doubt’ by Fiona O’Connor   Fiona O’Connor is a former Hennessy Short Story Award Prize winner. She contributes to The Irish…

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‘The Red Cycle’ by Kathy Groan

You will hold yourselves up to the light, like this, every twenty-eight days. You will turn, mopping the sweat and blood from your bodies, congealing in the heat of the sun. To congeal: to solidify or come to rest, as in ‘lumpen mass.’ As in matter: to change states, to coalesce, to be in one…

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Online Fiction: ‘Strange Bird’ by Órfhlaith Foyle

He went downstairs, shoved the hamburgers in the oven then turned on the radio. He listened out for the news and when he heard about the woman found dead in her kitchen in somewhat suspicious circumstances. There was evidence of sustained attack but no conclusive evidence of murder. George heard his father fat-creep from the bed to the bathroom. He stared at the sun outside. It looked ordinary. His father was fat-creeping down. One step, two step, three step, four step…then eight then the slow heave of his father’s body along the hallway floor.

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