Three Fictions from Martin Keaveney

Image via Unsplash

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Carcass

Dead carcass sinks. We watch. Dragonfly passes. Old, worn, out. Out, worn, old. This is where it ends, the trees begin, the heat begins. This is where it began, where it ends. We don’t move through generations, don’t love through generations. Not like the boggy mess, twenty million in the ground. Use rings to age if you could. We have no rings. Out of sight, it sinks, it stinks. Old, worn out. Out worn, old. Sinks carcass dead.

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Enough

Listening, helping, talking, knowing. These are my skills. Walking, eating, crying. These are what I do. I told them that in a small room, to three of them, one suited, a jacket, one just a shirt, the third, a long dress-like ensemble. Old, tired. You have a lot to offer. Looking, helping, talking, knowing. These are my skills. Walking, eating, crying. These are what I do. Enough.

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Noiseless 

Light is short. Nails tacked. More nails, no hammer. No hammer, more nails. Noiseless. Light comes, light goes. Occasion of light. More dark, less light. More nails, no hammer. No hammer, more nails. Tap the nails, no hammer. Light is short. Light on, light off. Nails tacked, head first. Noiseless. Light comes, light goes.

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Recent stories by Martin Keaveney have appeared in Small Lives (Poddle Publications) (IRL), Crannog (IRL), A New Ulster (IRL), The Galway Review (IRL), Gold Dust (UK), The Crazy Oik (UK) and Agave Magazine (US). Flash fiction has been published in Burning Word (US) and Apocrypha and Abstractions (US). Poetry will appear shortly in Carillon (UK) and Sleet magazine (US). He has also written, produced and directed many short and full length independent film projects, which have been screened at local and national festivals, including the Galway Colours Festival, the Fastnet Short Film Festival , the Galway Film Fleadh and the Flatlake Festival in Co. Mongahan.

He is currently a PhD candidate at NUIG, 2014-18 where he is researching the John McGahern archive and also writing a novel as part of the course. He has a B.A. in English and Italian and an M.A. in English (Writing) from NUI, Galway, Ireland. He also studied Advanced Media Production at GTI, Galway. He was guest speaker at a postgraduate seminar series at Trinity College where he presented a paper on ‘The process of John McGahern’. He was recently the recipient of the 2016 Spranacht U|i Eithir award at NUIG for his research. This August he will present his paper ‘Idiom and Revision in John McGahern’s The Dark’ at the European Society for the Study of English annual conference in Galway.