shortlisted for the 'I'll Show You Mine' journals 2019 prize in non-fiction. Creative writing work has been published in two volumes of The Quarryman, Motley Magazine and The Cherry Revolution. Non-fiction and news have been published in The University Express, Shared Future News, Motley and SpunOut.ie. 

​Below we publish Maeve's very poignant piece; "To Lockdown and April Showers".​

To Lockdown and April Showers
It feels less poignant now. Drum-hammer heavy on the window-sill,
sitting through soliloquy to a promised summer - this is not catharsis.
No love letter to days broken beneath storm clouds and hurricanes,
disemboweled umbrellas discarded from white-knuckled grasp -
you said there would be flowers.

Grow them in the pavement cracks, wound between two streets
graft ivy through the ribs and lungs submerged, breathe into them
these rivers rising in this eternal tide - what time is it?

Almost a year to the day that hours became a metric to measure death,
mass graves for the future dug deeper, stock markets submerged
like days are - beneath water rippled by you, robbed by you but
April, I am being cruel.

Thought-executing fires put out by rain-drops deliberate, doomed
cities pulled back from dread and cocooned - storm-safe seclusion
swallowed and submerged, the seeds sown. It hurts but you’re here,
our lost April of occupied beds and sheets over head -
​the flowers are coming, aren’t they?

Feminine Rage
Ianna Rosa Román 8/26/20
 
Wind does not know any better but to blow.
 
It whips up my fiery belly
until I can feel nothing else,
Tongues of white-hot flame reaching up through my chest,
Screaming to my esophagus,
Demanding to emerge triumphant.
 
I don’t let it.
It wells up inside, clenching my heart in a cotton grip
So angry I wonder if I’ll ever come out again.
I wrap my mouth in linen and
place two coins on my eyes for the ferryman.
 
When did I learn to keep my rage
Hidden in a music box locked with a silver key?
I’m wound up and all I dare let escape is soft piano melodies.
 
I hope my dog tooth smile conveys what words do not.

I hope I terrify.
 
I wait patiently to rip away my soft skin and reveal iron underneath
Impenetrable and horrific in its beauty
All teeth and gore and broken bones.
 
That will be the day.

The Swimmer
​Who is this seal-like creature swimming towards me?
He, half bare, though broad as a man
Seeks love, as do I.
 
To unite is to set free
The suppressed fire of his heart.
His eyes are misted mirrors.
They, glassed colourless crystals, need protection; not exposure.
 
He, a failure, has nothing to lose.
The water knows this.
Its blueness shrouds him
As does the darkness of his past.
 
He, flesh-raw, reaches me: grasping; grappling; staring.
Seeing himself in me
He falls, submerging like a stone beneath the surface,
Swimming away to other golden shores
In the hope of finding himself once more.