two poems: Sunspots / Why are you telling me this by Alicia Byrne Keane

Sunspots

There was an unlocalizable hissing
That for a second I thought had to
Be connected to the rain smell, the
Landscape like a struck match. An
Angling of the head in relation to
Noise seems to echo against how
We are all waiting to become some
Other thing, currently, or for time
To become some other thing, to
Diffuse or melt. The buzzing part
Came from a haloed tangle, the
Dense clot of wire conversing. If
Predictions serve us I suppose the
Peak will be in four days, or seven
Days, and I hate how they don’t
Know. I hate how I don’t even
Know what a peak means, really,
And would you notice one in its
Pre-crash swelling translucence
From the couch, from the folding
Chair in the garden. I hear tell in
Video calls of people wearing
Masks in places closer to town, or
Police coming to a friend’s house,
But out here I can’t really imagine
Centres, space appears to have
Both grown and shrunk as I angle
My way into the backgrounds of
Sitting rooms in Germany but I
Have not seen Grafton Street in a
Month. As I cried the room began
​To swell with sunshine like there
Was some sort of fizzling energy-
Spike, most pathetic of fallacies
Really. The desperate feeling itself
Seems like something that lights
And wells, nervously filling corners.

Why are you telling me this

Alicia Byrne Keane

is a PhD student from Dublin, Ireland. She has a first class honours degree in English Literature and French from Trinity College Dublin and a MSt. in English Literature 1900-Present from Oxford University. She is working on an Irish Research Council-funded PhD study that problematizes ‘vagueness’ and the ethics of translation in the work of Samuel Beckett and Haruki Murakami, at TCD. Her poems have been published in The Moth, Entropy, Abridged, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. She has poems forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, The Account, and the Berkeley Poetry Review. She has performed at Electric Picnic, Body & Soul, and Lingo Festival, and has had two spoken word performances recorded for Balcony TV.