Our panel of judges described Marij's work as following: 
“In these poems we feel the pulse of a strong and emerging talent. Candid, surprising and original, Marij Bernart’s lines impel you to the next one with an energy that excites and always entertains. ‘There is something in the air demanding change.’ … Marij Bernart's poems struck me immediately—they have a humour and a lightness that only emphasises the seriousness of their focus and construction. I read her poem 'How to share an orange (I love you)' with a genuine pleasure, relishing the softness of the language, the playfulness, and the echoes of Frank O'Hara. Sweetness is a deceptively difficult tone to strike, and perhaps for that reason quite rarely found in the wild; in this poem, it rings true.”

​How to share an Orange (I love you)
I peel them slowly, while talking
The orange, clementine, tangerine, mandarin
is an afterthought
My thumb slowly pries it open
Now that it’s spring, the skin comes off in one easy swoop
Weeks before - it was a cold january - bits of orange peel would get stuck under my nail
The fragrant remains reminded me of you all day

I always separate the pieces into quarters first
and I count to make sure:
even number of those bright little half moons means I can make a wish
I wish you well

Silently I hand them over
(I never offer less than two)
and take a bite of my own
​Here is some sunlight,
Here is some sweetness,
Here is an orange (I love you)

Below is Tess' excellent submission, a time-traversing experience of UCC and the complexities of familial relationships:

Unmoored memories of campus

Here’s a boy: tearing down the long corridors of the Kane, giggling then gasping from exertion. He 
finds shelter behind a half opened door, tucked away from searching eyes. But as I pass his hideout, 
I can hear his asthmatic wheezes. He won’t stay hidden for long.
             I know what he did, of course, and who he’s running from. He messed with the beast’s food. Beeping and whirring and blinking in the dark, the beast needs its cards to think. Lined up in particular order by undergraduate hands, they are pre-packaged dinners waiting to be devoured. It’s Saturday (for the supervisor) and his day with the kids (while mum makes a dash to get her hair fixed) but he needs something so he’s come into the office. The girls are old enough to do what they want with the weekend, so it’s just the two boys. The small blond one is quiet anyway, but this one—the one I’ve found in the hallway—is trouble like my middle sister. He poked his nose into a room more lightless than a cave and saw its glimmering trays, its cards neatly stacked in particular order, and seized an opportunity. A deck left unshuffled is a foul thing—he’s spent enough rainy-days playing 45 to know. So, heedless of the horror, he did some rearranging. Now here he is failing to catch his breath, his exit from that computer room pursued not by a beast but by something worse: his father, frustrated and furious.
             I keep walking, I know he’ll survive. For him it’s the nineteen-seventies. Years yet before he’ll meet my mother, more still before he’ll meet me. But today, for him, he met the thing that will bind him to this university for four years, and then tie him to a desk for forty more. He is only a child. I keep walking. Up the stairs, out the door and
             plunge into this moment in January. There are two ways to the Rest from here: pass by the Cummins building, or bypass it and head straight for the door. I’m hungry and in a hurry, I take the long way around. Surface ninety-seven years back to buy myself time, when the events carved on a
plaque outside the Elec-Eng Building are happening now down at Gaol Cross. A shot rings out, sharp like the backfire of an engine, and a man best described as my great-granduncle-in-law (although he’s not the one who married in) plummets to the ground. Dead days before the truce. The shape of him gleams out of the stone, water run into the rivulets catching the glare. Tears in rain. One moment I can see it, the next the whole surface is lit up and I’m not sure which name is his. Up north near my eldest sister’s new house, his brother’s is set into the side of a pub. Worn with honour, they don’t know he married the wrong sister. Or that he, mad with jealousy and traumatic stress, chased the right one out of the county with her lover. Stole her sister and her state and brought another beast to the family, lurking in the shadows of tipsy conversation, or in the misty mounds of north Cork on the seventh day of Christmas, when Dad brought us to see the family plot. 
             We passed the old farmhouse on the way. Down the hill from the cemetery, not ours
anymore, not for many years. Dad’s grandmother sold it when her husband died, left the war and the
land behind, and moved into College Road. Then Grandad won his scholarship and traded lines of seeds from lines of code, built a thinking room and sealed my father’s fate. Fed like one of those
cards into the Machine. Now here I am. 
             I don’t recognise the face as it comes towards me. I never do nowadays, though I’ve known it for twenty of twenty-one years. It’s only once we’ve passed, once he’s returned my confused look, that I see the ghost of the kid he used to be. My cousin, the emerging energy engineer (fancy meeting him here, outside the engineering building) dressed for a funeral and unrecognisable. Neither of us stop to talk. We’ll text on our birthday, maybe, but the days of cutting cakes together are over. It’s as if somewhere along the way we switched. He’s not some fair-haired kid fresh off the soccer pitch anymore. He’s all dark and brooding and I’m the blond coming from the gym, bleached out and faded. A photograph consumed by time.
             But Time splits its husk when I enter the Rest, or rather, it opens its maw; lets me see what’s
digesting inside. Spoon soup into a shallow bowl, take a piece of soda bread, line up, and all the while I can hear his laugh from upstairs. My dad: no longer a skinny kid playing hide-and-seek in the Kane, but twenty-something in nineteen-eighty-something, rolling a die, dividing a deck, crashing a car into the door of the bar. Understand: my dad is no drunk; no gambler, no dosser either. Those dice belong to a gold-greedy dragon, the deck still to a game of 45, and the car to a family legend I could not recount if I tried. The details slip away, the past always wet and floundering when you want a good grip. But images like these float back: a rowdy game, a raucous laugh, he cuts the cards.
             ‘Card please.’ Ding! Say thank you. Move on. Hesitate.
             I always eat downstairs. Won’t venture up to the abandoned pizza place where the bar used
to be. What if I did today? What if I went up and went back and sat myself down at a round table full of elec-eng and comp-sci kids. His comitatus. Would I fit in, loyal retainer to his tormented lord? I wouldn’t. Not this shy slip of a thing with a Brontë book under my arm. I don’t read half enough sci-fi for that. But it might be worth it, to see him hesitate, see him recognise the jaw, the nose, the faulty hip and think for a minute they’ve put a new mirror in here. Maybe he’d deal me in. When did they close that bar? We’ve always had New Bar, the old one just implied. Remember first year? Surrounded by fresh faces and me, so proud to tell them there used to be a pub above the Rest. So proud to have so many ghosts to wade through everywhere I went. The air is thick with them here, thank God I didn’t get Dad’s lungs. My sister did, not as bad as Dad, but––
             But why always Dad? I wolf down my lunch, torn between two lives and think about my own. It’s not called New Bar anymore: they changed the name last summer. Another fish floundering to the sea, erased before I even leave and I’m not sure I’ll have someone to send swimming back up the Lee in search of knowledge.
             I’m late for class.
             My mother is there, when I come gasping into the Boole, dismissing tears with tight blinks as she looks at the carcass on her desk. Unattended for five minutes and someone pilfered all the prescribed pages, left the spine, face and back to sag without their organs. Always books with her. Split her leaving cert ones with her brother, an unfair timeshare, seventy-thirty to him. Thirty years from now she’ll hoard tome upon tome under her desk, scribble her name down the sides in secret code. She told me she knows who did it. She won’t give a name. If I could get it from her, I could avenge her, I could tear that thief to shreds. Arrive here five minutes earlier, while they were looming over the volume, eyes glinting, fingers twitching, ready to claw out the life-blood of those vital chapters. I can’t wind back time. I sit beside her and look. She is thirty-something and so different but I still don’t know how to fix it. Someone hurts her and the façade splinters, letting liquid gold to patch up the cracks. Her spine will straighten in compensations and it’s a good thing too because I get dazzled by her vulnerability. Sit tharn in headlights and don’t know what to do. And all the time new fissures appear. I take her hand. She disappears.
             A double exposed image takes her place. My eldest sister: at eighteen, at twenty-eight,
sitting in the same seat in the same lecture-hall. She did this module too, I shouldn’t be surprised to see her here, but we seldom speak about her degree. Seldom speak. I want to speak now but won’t. I can’t whisper anymore, too good a student now, fear if I tried I’d find my throat all clogged and auric. Not like she’d respond anyway. Too old and busy for her youngest sister when I was five; same old story now that I’m twenty-one. But at twenty-eight, she talked me through her thesis and at fifteen I nodded along, not knowing a thing. Swam over my head, like this lecture wriggling in one ear out the other. My word-processor stares back at me. Blank. White. Blinking cursor announcing that I’ve been left behind. What was that about being a good student? In my scramble to catch up I lose sight of her. Turn to tell her something and she’s gone. Like my mother. Gone. Like Rosamund Pike. Empty space. Funny how one feels the lack of a body. Funny how one blends into another. Here’s my mother: measuring breaths in an effort not to cry, meditation tactics that, from one moment to the next, morph into my sister marking time in huffs. And then I am alone, and rising alone, and leaving this lecture alone.
             Never alone on this goddamned campus. Outside a stream of students: past and present, push me towards the Boole—the other one, the library. Did you know that there’s a tunnel under here, connecting one Boole to the other? It’s one building really but they cut it off from itself. I cut across the current. It’s confused, not quite sure where it wants me to go. The centre churns where some of the student-body move against the mainstream. Fast flying mackerel, you have to dodge them like bullets, or wind up with your name engraved in stone. Among them I see one I know.
             ‘Mum!’ I cry out, reach out, brush cashmere wispy wool with my fingertips. ‘You who were with me at breakfast—’ But she does not turn around. I do not see her face.
             What year is it for her? Which degree? I couldn’t count the gold-filled lines, the stream carrying her off and depositing me at the doors of the library. 
             Blink and I have climbed three flights of stairs to sit among the trees and stare at a laptop screen. Look up to see my sister—the other one, the middle one— across the table. Funny how one feels the presence of another body in the extension of a breath. My not-twin, my mainframe; we share the same brain, and I, a mere hard-drive leaching from the side. The year ahead of me, two years, a year behind and slipping, slipping away and
             always here. He always parks here, after work and offers a lift. Oscar-mike since eighteen-hundred, now waiting in position on Connaught Avenue. The metal of his Mazda throws dying sun into our eyes and, blinded, we climb into the back, slam the doors in practised tandem, slide seat-belts into clasps. My dad; tearing up College Road, whisked far and fast from the centre of theuniverse, from the unmoored memories of campus.

Below is Luke's excellent entry to the scholarship competition, highly evocative and a wonderful blend of modernity and mythology:

Glade
It is always night here, though it is not dark. Moonlight playfully winds itself around my pine tree enclosure, lingers on the leaves a moment before continuing down to dance across the lake. Upon reaching the island in the middle, it falters a moment; a titan willow tree resides there, and its shade is impenetrable. Undaunted, the lunar glimmers dart past the island until they hit the cliff that juts from the depths. With nowhere else to go they revert to a slow waltz on the water. The trees atop the cliff are different to the ones down here, snowcapped – evil – and I know that winter lies just beyond them, that I’ll freeze when I go out there and die face down in the snow, alone   
             I am not there. I am here. I am walking along the misshapen pebbles barefoot, but not one has harmed me; they are familiar with my step, only slightly removed from water’s edge. Soon I will reach the face of the crescent cliff, at the point where it makes landfall. I might run my hand along it, feel its ridges, listen to the stories they tell and form a new interpretation. I might look upwards to the top without stepping back for a better view. I might carve my name into its body with a sharp rock. I might slump down against it and rest.
             Afterwards I walk back the way I came. A campfire that never goes out awaits me. Still, I toss it a redundant twig. It is lapped up gratefully, and I feel warmer for it. In return I ask for a light, and with an inviting crackle the fire answers: be careful, but go ahead. I steal a cigarette from its family in their cardboard home and offer it tentatively to the flame. Within moments it is smoking, and I yank back before my friend gets greedy.
             Excusing myself, I relocate to a spot nearby, where a fir tree has fallen and found that the afterlife amounts to being used as a lakeview seat. Sympathy does not come to me, for there is no wind in this place, nor loggers. Crickets flash between the waterside reeds and then settle, taking up places in the orchestra. They are all vocalists, but their rhythmic song is well-practiced. My cigarette recedes, and my lungs fill. An ugly thing in a beautiful place, maybe, but the glint at its end matches Ares’ red above. 
             His many sparkling followers are content in their usual formations until I, vainly, attempt to rearrange them into groups with new meaning. Simple geometric shapes are all I can muster. A square here, a hexagon there. The Greeks were masters of this; I am but a Roman. The constellations reform in the lake’s reflection, insulted. The crickets are kind enough not to chide me as I rise and head for the cold woods.
 
I don’t know if I’ll make it back – today hasn’t been kind to me. Branches reach out and prod and poke and draw beads of blood that freeze instantly, they’re trying to topple me, to trip me up and keep me here forever, my arm’s numb and blackened by frostbite and it sways uselessly at my side as I stumble towards that place
             The threshold heals all. Try as they might, malevolent arms cannot pierce it. Sensation creeps up my arm and repopulates the rest of me. Pinprick rubies melt warmly back into my skin. The air here is delicious and abundant, so I feast. I can breathe. I can walk. A good thing, too; I am to play a local squirrel in a game of chess, and the tree he calls home is at the far end of the glade. It is unlikely that he has other appointments, but a late arrival might hurt his feelings. I kick off my snow-covered shoes and begin my stroll. 
             This time my soles parley with soft grass. Blades buckle without resistance, gently enveloping my feet before reluctant partings. My regular haunts approach and pass, cheerfully regarding me; there is a grin in the cliff’s recesses, a waved greeting in the campfire’s flickering flames. The fallen fir is curiously absent. It is not like things here to change. I worry that I was too harsh on it. 
The god of war blazes still, surrounded by troops as if preparing to set off on a campaign. I feel compelled to light a cigarette in tribute as I walk. Ever full, Selene illuminates my path once more. I cannot help but wonder why she stays. There are surely more interesting sights to light. To this mortal the glade is refuge, special; I do not know what a heavenly body sees in it. In me. Under her divine eye my smoking offering to Ares feels a foolish thing, almost heretical. I heed her counsel and fling it aside before continuing on. 
             The chess table stands proudly in the shadow of an even prouder redwood. It is sized to my proportions rather than a squirrel’s. This seems fair; when we play marbles I am forced to sit awkwardly on the floor. One stool, all that is needed, faces towards the board and the lake behind. The other side of the table features an overhang, and this is where the creature perches, blinking at me expectantly.
             I take a seat. We cannot exchange words, but we do not need to. The animal gesticulates excitedly at the table and pieces, intricately whittled wonders of wood. To him these pawns are Colossi of Rhodes, the king a Zeus in miniature, rehomed to a chequered Mausoleum. I have an unhappy idea of where he gathered the materials. The squirrel wastes no time in opening, and I respond with a Sicilian defence. 
 
Upon my defeat at the hands of a promoted pawn I bid my companion goodnight and trudge down towards the lake’s edge. I do not like envy. I want to sleep. The willow tree on the island will be my cradle; its leaves are soft, and bunched thickly enough to hold a man. 
             Wading into the warm water is refreshing, and I know I will be dry as soon as I re-emerge. I sink deeper with each venture forwards, my connection to the sludge below tenuous. Before long only my head remains above the surface, in this realm. It is tempting to abandon my foothold entirely. 
             But the moon needs eyes to observe her beauty, and the fire hands to feed it sticks, and the squirrel a mind to match its moves. The lakebed slopes upwards.
             My footsteps leave no mark as I march towards the tree, each imprint quickly replaced by the rush of wet sand. Poseidon attempts to follow me but is halted by a bulwark of Gaia’s making, knotted roots anchoring the great willow. I hoist myself over them. Passing under the tree’s enormous canopy is stepping into a world within a world, one in which a strange nature has taken hold, despite the darkness.
             Aberrant fireflies of teal, violet, and neon red hover lazily about, lending me their glow in absence of Selene’s watchful light. The fernlike foliage here moves about with near human personality, shying away to let me pass and organizing itself into cliquish cohorts. Friendlier than most, a motile vine offers up a leatherbound Odyssey that I had thought misplaced. I wave it away, not ungratefully. I do not feel like reading tonight. 
             The trunk, many times wider than me, is like the cliff face in its weathered surface. The ridges here are less storyteller and more foothold handhold, although climbing is itself a type of story. Before scaling I must reckon with the Cerberus of the tree. They are curled up at the base, wagging their tail, surrounded by plunders: a murderous branch, a link of rusted chain, one of my ragged boots. I scratch the fearsome beast’s heads as they beam at me. It is hardly a toll at all. When they lose sight of me in the tangle of leaves above they will howl until their voices give out. I dig one hand into a crevice in the bark and begin my ascent. 
 
The summit greets me with the smell of singed life. The moon is not within arm’s length, as it should be at this height, but distant in the horizon, devoid of its light in a blue sky. This isn’t typical. Her fiery brother has arrived as replacement, and he’s in good company, joined by a legion infernal rampaging across the glade. They are remaking this place in their own image. Which came first? The heat drains from my body but the leaves are smoking, burning, and this isn’t meant to happen because it’s always night in the glade and the moon’s always there and it’s a temperate summer night not a bitter winter morning and I’m safe here
             Weakened by Helios’ cruel gaze my platform collapses from under me. Falling is a relief. My skin was made to be scraped by tree claws and they slow my descent. Selene has ruined me with a caring suggestion and gone. 
             I am caught by a huddle of restless ferns, and conveyed carefully to ground. The tree will protect us for the time being, but its umbrella lets through a drizzle of ash. The hound of Hades ambles towards me, oblivious to the heat death of the universe, followed by a troop of frenzied fireflies, no doubt anxious for their livelihoods in a diurnal ecosystem. I cannot allay their concerns. 
             Hell has sprung from the glade. Across the lake the border trees are ablaze, burned down to their skeletons and soon to dust. The organs of the magnanimous terrain, the grass, the stones, the venerable cliff, have been buried under a snowlike soot that piles ever higher. Some fight it; the campfire, for one, shrinks and then roars back up in retaliation against the traitor flames, refusing to join them in their destruction. A tiny figure attempts desperately to douse his burning masterwork with water from a tinier bucket. At the edge of the lake, now frozen over, crickets chirp their funeral dirge like the last players on a sinking ship. Once the sun’s doom is accomplished, a nuclear winter will envelop this place. 
             Smoke burns my lungs, and I’m less inclined to enjoy it than before. The willow weeps molten tears. This is the death of a paradise. I’m to blame. I won’t feel the soft grass under my feet ever again and everything here will die and nobody’s going to know the difference. They’ll find this Pompeii and that stupid fucking cig stub and chalk it up to a freak accident, clear it all for land development and erect an office block on my corpse
            But far away from here, beyond the rising smoke, Selene’s waiting. For me. The denizens around me are waiting, too. They’ve been sequestered away too long. It doesn’t have to be cold forever. I will take a torch of campfire flame to keep me warm, a jar of colourful fireflies to light the way, and if any tree reaches an arm towards me I’ll take its hand in my own and shake. The cigarettes can stay – they were designed to burn. 
             I’ll lead my triad hound out of this place – no, they’ll lead me – and tear the squirrel from his burning creations. We’ll walk out of here, and the flames will part to let us pass. I’ll bring a bag of living ferns, a willow seed, a handful of soil, and one day, when the ash has settled, I will create an open glade for all the world to see, an earthen exhibit of my own design. Forget the ancients and their bland marble; I’ll infuse it with myself instead. With memories of fallen firs and stubborn stars. 
             So I step out onto the lake, and the ice holds firm beneath my feet.  
 

The scholarship award includes both €1,500 and mentorship by the UCC Writer-in-residence (who this year is Lisa Harding), as well as scheduled performances at the Eoin Murray Annual Tribute Night (in August) and in a School of English & Digital Humanities event in the autumn semester.

Again we offer our sincere congratulations to Freyja and we look forward to her performance at the Tribute Night in August. Below is Freyja's submitted piece, the very visceral, evocative and imaginative, Wisdom Teeth.

​Wisdom Teeth
​She is growing her new teeth to make up for the lack of love. They won’t fit in her mouth when they finally blooms, but for now new bone peeks shyly out of old gums, painful and tiny.
She can’t see them, only feel them with the flexed tip of her tongue. She attributes to the intruding teeth the status of near personhood.
My wisdom teeth, she thinks almost fondly, even as they ache along the jaw, into the temple.
Where she lives there is a Circle K, a Centra, a pub she never goes into, and a GAA club. It is just her and her budding wisdom teeth, thinking of love.
I have this body, she tells the teeth, and what to do with it?
Today she has done the shopping with it.
The kitchen is barren and filthy, grains of old rice on top of older dirt, the empty fridge humming like a huge fly in the silence.
The big kitchen window is streaky and smudged with the gooey remains of insects. She can see through it to where there is a man standing in the hedgerows at the end of her garden.
Man is a strong word.
He looks more like a human toad standing upright. Even so she is compelled to call it man, though a man would be a much worse thing here.
“Fuck,” she says to herself, unsettled in the kitchen. He beckons, casually.
She’s not sure what to do about it though, afraid to go out to him. She has no one to call.
He’s still staring. Blinks slowly when they make eye contact.
“Am I crazy? Has that happened? I’ve surely lost it.”
But she hasn’t and she knows that.
He lets out a long tongue, catches something out of the air. Looks at her all the while. Waves her over again.
“Fuck it. Alright. Fine. Fine.”
She takes the best knife out of the drawer. Thinks of hiding it but it’s too big to do that well, so she just holds it firm in her right hand. It makes him smile, derisive.
A lot of men she knows smile like that, so she isn’t too bothered by it.
“Sofia. Sweetheart,” he croaks when she gets near him.
“Darling,” he tries again when she doesn’t answer.
“Why are you in my garden?”
The knife held in front of her now.
“Well, what makes it your garden? The fence?” He snorts. “This is my land.”
Sofia’s not sure what to do with that. She bought the house, the garden came with it. This is her land.
But the land’s been here since before she was, will be after. Maybe he’s part of the land, in a way she isn’t. He looks it, dark green and bumpy.
“I’ll be on it when I like,” he pronounces, haughty like he’s far above her nonsense.
“You asked me to come out here,” she accuses him instead of continuing it.
“Well, I suppose it is your land. But I’d like to live on it.”
Her garden is not very big. There is no far-away place she can send him down the end of it.
It’s misty today, the fine silver damp blanketing itself over the mix of greens, long grass and darker bush. He fits in much better than her. She still doesn’t want him there.
He sees the reluctance in the way she twists up her mouth, isn’t brave enough to try to get rid of him.
“I’ll give you something for it.”
“Like what?” she asks, cringes at herself.
He’s got her, then. The tongue comes out again, so there’s a pause before he answers.
“I’m able for anything. I can give you whatever you’re wishing for.”
The reason she believes it is that he’s a four-foot-tall toad man. She wouldn’t otherwise. Plenty of people say things like that, for different reasons.
“Well,” she tells him. “I’ll have to think it over.”
He knows he really has her. Pleased, he bows.
“By all means, love, have a think. I’ll be out here,” and then he waddles away and plonks himself, three-piece brown tweed suit and all, into an especially big puddle of rainwater in the mushy grass.
When she goes in she locks the door, pulls down all the blinds.
If she had someone to consult or marvel with. But it’s just her, sweating in her sitting room, biting her nails.
The ache of the wisdom teeth throbs all along her jaw, into her eye, temple, nose. Even then, she can only bring herself to hate the pain. She is fond of the teeth.
“This is ridiculous,” she tells herself. “Surely I’m crazy.”
She thinks about calling a doctor for a while, but decides not to based on the fear of getting sent somewhere to be medicated. It is better, she reasons, to be mad and see toadmen then to spend the next few years being fed anti-psychotics by some cunt.
And what can he give her? This toadman at the end of her garden cannot provide her with the money that failing everything else she wants.
There’s a precedent for this sort of thing though. Undeniable, that there’s always been thought to be things, green and tricky, in the rocks and stones of this ancient land.
It is night by the time she gets herself to go out, but only just, that bloodless blue still cast over everything like a woven-lace veil. Trees are huge and opaque in this light, swaying minutely.
He’s there, a squat lumpy shape in the grass. He grins gummily when he sees her, can’t resist darting a slimy tongue out to lick an eyeball.
“What’ll it be, so, my love?”
“When you said you could give me anything, what did you really mean?”
“I am able for anything, darling.”
“If that’s true,” and she’s shaking now, trembling in her legs and arms and deep within her belly.
“I wish for love. I want to love and be loved.”
He’s delighted. Trembles deep in his toad stomach.
“Of course! Not a problem, sweetheart. But you know that’s a big one.”
“Yeah, I know, but.” She’ll be sick, maybe.
“It’s just that I’ll need something extra.”
A hot clench of frustration runs through her.
“My garden’s a pretty big one, too, though, I fucking think.”
“You surely understand that it is easier for you to let me live in your unused garden than for me to conjure you love?”
Intimate with the difficulty of conjuring love, she nods. They listen to the soothing coo of a wood pigeon before she speaks.
“What do you want, then?”
“What do you have?”
This is a question that requires reflection.
Her wisdom teeth, as always, ache.
Her teeth.
The bones of many unfortunate animals are precious. Why not so for hers?
“You can have my wisdom teeth.”
“Your wisdom teeth.”
“Yeah. They’re my most special teeth. Not everyone even has them.”
“The garden and your wisdom teeth.”
Rustling in the moment’s silence.
“You’re a very generous woman. You know, most women won’t even talk to me. But here you are.”
“Here I am.”
She feels mostly hope. Fear has slipped her mind with the promise of gifts.
“I’ll have to take them out.”
“Could I not get them taken out and come back?”
“No. Definitely not. That wouldn’t do at all.”
“Oh. Ok, fine.”
“You’ll have to kneel.”
She does, feels the cold damp seep into the knees of her jeans, along the line of her shins.
“Open your mouth.”
Again, she does.
From his waistcoat he takes a pair of black gloves. Puts them on his webbed hands with care and attention.
Her jaw is stiff from holding her mouth open. Drool starts pooling and she’s about to close it and swallow when he sticks a gloved hand in.
Rubbery and alive, twisting over her tongue. Strong, bendy fingers settle around the right-hand tooth and yank. There’s no hesitance – he’s just pulling, like a carrot out of loose earth. The roots of it slowly dislodge, making bloody grooves in the gum. She screams, can’t stop, not until he finally tears it out and waves it at her, a pink-white chunk between index finger and thumb.
She tilts her head down and spits.
“Lovely. Just one more.”
“N-” but he’s in there again, iron grip, like a pair of plyers. She can hear of it, the crunch of it vibrating through her skull.
Screaming again, the sound piercing the evening like the calls of large and unknown birds. The way it gives is almost satisfying, when it comes out in one final pull.
And then she’s left gasping and bleeding in the wet garden.
His gloves are slick and dark, shiny and dripping. He puts the teeth with their vicious roots in the inside breast pocket of his jacket.
The holes in her mouth are pouring and hot. She swallows, reflexively, doesn’t wholly hate the taste.
“You did very well,” and it does make her feel better to hear that. She clears her throat – it bubbles.
“Now I want love.”
“And you have it.”
She waits. Spits. Looks around, the statement confuses her so much.
Gags. Spits again. Sniffs. Wipes her nose on her sleeve.
“What?”
“Isn’t it fantastic?” He’s gleeful. “I already love you so much.”
​

Parasitic
Parasitic
Outside things are beginning to end. This landscape slit down its belly like a
 mackerel, ready to be devoured.
Why this relationship of predator and prey?
And why, of all things, is it the host we hunger for?
The earth beneath our feet has never looked so
appetizing. We shovel it down our gullets in heaping handfuls
It is rich on the tongue and it weighs us down
The greenery does not grow quick enough for this ritual to be anything other than
catastrophic. The grit between your teeth as you take the action of erosion
In these plague-times we ache and retch and cry out in anguis
Keening for all the footprints lost to the bloodwarm soil
This thirst is never-ending
Is nothing here salvageable? Nothing at all?
It doesn’t have to be sacred to be worthy – I think. I think we could make a home here
If the earth will have us
Don’t raze us, please. Please, don’t salt the ground we stand on.
While there is still ground to stand on
We can still grow: thyme, basil, and parsley

In 2016, Aoife placed second in her category at the National Newspapers of Ireland Press Pass Awards. She was also shortlisted for the International IMBAS Short Story Competition in 2018 and was a highly commended entrant of the 2020 NYC Midnight Microfiction Competition. 

A lifelong reader and writer, Aoife is passionate about books, words and stories. Aoife is a former bookseller, having spent four years working in Waterstones Cork where she established the 9-12 Book Club and furthered her knowledge of the publishing and literature industry. She has also spent several years working with various festivals and arts organisations around Cork where she has fostered a deep love and appreciation for all things culture and creativity. 
​
She is thrilled and honoured to accept this scholarship and to begin this next step in her literary journey. She looks forward to developing her ideas and further honing her craft in the next few months. 

Below, we publish a beautiful piece of Aoife's, and one we are sure Eoin would have loved, "Spark". You can follow Aoife's progress over the summer on her instagram account @little.lost.starfish

​Spark
This is what it feels like
When you realise that you will
Survive.
It’s a firework imploding in your heart
Sending electric little sparks
From the split ends in your hair
To the cracks in your nails
In shades of gemstones, rubies and emeralds and sapphires
 
It’s Japanese Knotwood
Growing with your pulse
And any attempt to cut it down
Will only strengthen it.
 
It’s coffee on a bitter day
Or malt whiskey by a cosy fire.
It’s the piercing powder snow, falling on your face
And crushed shells between your toes
 
It’s a breeze whispering its secrets to the leaves
It’s a fire that flourishes without effort.
It’s water that flows of its own free will.
It’s the stars which remain still and yet
They are burning
And alive.

 Man’s Best Friend  
            A man, not over eighty, sat in his tattered reclining chair, by the fireplace in his home. He strained to reach the radio, to turn it up, to hear more clearly the horse racing results. The house was cosy and small, enough for one person to live comfortably alone, which he very much was. His wife was memorialised in photo frames scattered among the house, and his daughter was busy, with her new promotion and an even newer child. His sight had declined over the years. Something about astigmatism, he’d mutter to anyone who asked, but he didn’t mind much, he had his own routine, around his home and around the village, things didn’t change very often there.
            His old chair groaned with him when he lifted himself up, as he had remembered the dinner heating up on the aga. He had just found his feet when he heard a knock at the door. Unusual, he thought; as many did not visit him, not without calling, and not at this time of evening. He called out as he shuffled towards the door, to the person behind it, that he would be there soon. 
            He saw no one at first, when he opened the door. It was raining and the wind was strong; the newspaper had told him a storm with some name was coming tonight. He craned his neck right and left to see who had knocked before eventually looking down, where he saw a dog. A big thing, he noticed, scraggly and scruffy, with thick fur and long ears, almost covering his eyes. The dog sat patiently in the cold, on his doorstep, looking up at the elderly man. 
            “Who’s there?” the man called out, supposing the dog didn’t knock on the door himself. “This isn’t my dog! He’s not mine!”
            The man looked back to the docile creature and thought he was so good to just sit there. He must have sheltered himself from the rain under his overhanging roof and someone presumed him the owner. He couldn’t leave the creature outside, sad and sodden on a night like this, so, he beckoned him inside, and he came in quietly, like a good dog. 
            The old man went to the kitchen and the dog followed him. He sat at the table, with his dinner, and by his leg the dog begged with his eyes. The man threw him bits of beef from his plate, and it would land on the floor, which he admitted needed a sweep, and the dog would lick it off the tiles, chewing it back in two bites. As he washed the dishes in the sink, with the soapy suds parching his hands, he supposed the dog thirsty, so he picked a chipped bowl from the cupboard and filled it with water. He placed it by the back door, and on all fours, the dog bounded towards the dish, and lapped it up happily until it was half empty, with most of it landing on the floor. 
            The man placed a ragged blanket on the couch and told the dog to sleep there for the night. The big mass of fur tried to hop its heavy form onto the couch, but it was not a graceful leap, and the couch creaked under his weight. The man stroked the mutt’s head and scratched his chin, which was prickly like a beard, and the dog leaned deeper into his palm, encouraging further affection. He’d never seen a dog enjoy his rubs as much as this big pup did. He gave his head a final scratch before entering the hallway to ring his daughter on the telephone, knowing he couldn’t search for the dog’s owner on his own, especially not in this ghastly weather. She picked up before the final trill ended. 
            “Dad? Hello?”
            “Hi Sarah, how are you today?”
            She sounded stressed. She always did lately. 
            “Fine. Dad, why are you calling?”
            “Yes, Sarah, I don’t mean to bother you, but I need you to drive me in the car tomorrow”. 
            “Drive you? Where?”
            He could hear his young granddaughter fussing in the background as he explained the situation to Sarah. She was, understandably the man thought, confused when she heard this, but eventually her infant broke into a wail that got so bad that she had to agree, and hung up without saying goodbye. 
            Placing the phone down, the old man saw the dog’s head peeking through the sitting room door. He gave him one more goodnight pet before heading to bed and going to sleep.
            He awoke with the dog on the duvet, by the adjacent post of his bed. He was almost certain he had closed his bedroom door last night, but he truthfully didn’t mind the company, and quite enjoyed the creature bounding by his feet down the stairs for breakfast. He shuffled by the coffee table, to make his way to the kitchen, when he noticed his right set of toes suddenly wet. He bent down with great effort to take off his soggy slipper and sniffed it. He immediately winced at the sulfureous scent of pee. He shoved the slipper by the dog’s nose and told him that he was a bold boy. The dog made not quite a whimper, a strange noise which he could not discern as anything he had heard before. The old man soon softened and patted the dog’s head, conceding that he probably should have let him out the back garden before bedtime. 
            A few days passed and Sarah had still not arrived. The man supposed his daughter forgot about their conversation, she was very busy after all, he noted. He didn’t mind the time spent with the dog; he fried him extra rashers at breakfast and heated up surplus stew for his dinner. At night, the storm would rattle the little house and the wind whistled through the walls. The two companions would curl up by the fireplace after the nine o’clock news and fall asleep together, as the ashes flickered red and turned cold.
It was midday Sunday when the old man suddenly heard a knock at his door. 
He answered it, and there Sarah was, frowning at her feet, before looking up to see her father, and then relaxed into relief. 
            “Dad! You’re okay, I thought you fell or something!”.
            “I’m quite alright, Sarah, don’t worry”. 
            “Your phone wasn’t picking up!”
            “Oh, that’s the dog’s fault, he chewed through the wires. He can be a mischievous dote at times”.  
            Sarah shook her head “Oh yeah, that dog, I remember now. C’mon then, get in the car, I’ll go get the dog”.
            His daughter skimmed past him into the house as the old man left into the biting air, pulling a coat onto himself.  
            “Are you sure you can lift him on your own? He’s quite big!”
            She waved him off with a dismissing hand and disappeared into the sitting room, while the old man seated himself in the back seat of the car, so to keep the dog company on the drive. He had to admit he was going to miss the big mutt, if he in fact had an owner. He thought maybe to ask Sarah to get him a dog of his own, if this one had to go, to occupy the empty house, and to perhaps keep watch at night.
Suddenly, the man heard gravel hurriedly crunching in his driveway. It must be Sarah, he thought, as her blurred form fast approached.  The closer she came to his sight, the more distressed she was revealed to be. She stumbled inside the car, to the front seat, slammed the door, and swore at the fumbling keys in the ignition. She sped onto the road and away from the house, without saying a word, and leaving the old man to watch the dog from a distance, who sat quietly outside his door. He seemed taller than usual, as if standing up on two feet, and with one paw on the handle.
            “Sarah? What’s wrong? Why didn’t you bring the dog?” 
            “Dad stop it!” she screamed, banging the steering wheel over and over. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it” 
The old man saw panicked tears pricking his daughter’s eyes and was so confused by her outburst, that he didn’t even know what to say. In all honesty, he was startled at the lack of coherency she was presenting. After a few minutes, he placed a hand on her shoulder and said “Sarah, I know he’s a big thing but don’t be frightened, he’s gentle”. 
His daughter said nothing, staring intently out the windshield, puffing out a shrill breath. A few moments passed before the old man realised they had pulled in outside their local Garda station. 
“Sarah, what on earth are we doing here? I don’t think the Gardai deal with missing pets. We should go back to the house; the dog shouldn’t be on his own.”. 
She realised her grip from the steering wheel and looked at her father, up and down, taking him in tearfully. She helped him out of the car and brought him inside the station, ignoring any questions he asked. Together, they sat down at an officer’s desk, and Sarah reported a break-in. 

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.