Billy Ramsell was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1977 and educated at the North Monastery and UCC.Complicated Pleasures, his first collection, was published by the Dedalus Press, Dublin, in 2007. He has been shortlisted for a Hennessy award and a Strong award. He has been invited to read his work at many festivals around the world; most […]
This is no season of the quartered orange, squirting and splitting in your exquisite fingers. Like the leaves. You’ve gone, like the carbon-dusted yellow leaves. Last night I dreamt of the dark dogs nuzzling and tearing at the refuse sacks that languished in doorways, that bled like cunts when they slit them. I am hunched […]
It is said that the philtrum, or indentation between the centre of the nostrils and the lip, is caused by the finger of the angel Gabriel as he comforts each child on his or her entrance into the world. Sssh. My finger on your lips and my finger tracing your tears is not quite enough […]
1 I could have sworn that it was him the other night, half-cut and ancient, in a pillar of lamplight, his shrivelled face twitching beneath his Trilby as he gawped at the girls squatting and vomiting in the alleys behind the night-club. Why did I blacken so many pages, so many pristine unyielding squares? he […]
My eyes opened. I gained the whole world and lost you.
It was half time. Aphrodite sashayed from the kitchen with the tartan tea tray. Hermes looked from the soiled dinner dishes to the paisley wall paper to the telly and emitted a long sigh of boredom. Hurling, like most team sports, isn’t much fun when you know how it finishes. And being gods they knew […]
Play me something. Though you’re not really here, with the rain tat-tattooing the kitchen window like a snare and the wind, the wind, the weary wind droning like the bass on Tuesday Wonderland, the heating creaking in the key of A, the fridge voicing the same two notes in perpetuity (I’m improvising here for accompaniment; […]
Here are the daughters you permanently exiled that night you didn’t let him pull your pants down in your breath-hot postered bedroom, and on those nights you stayed faithful, and on the nights that you took the recommended precautions. And there are the boys without whom your life is diminished, just as hagfish are diminished […]