Eilish Mulholland

Memento

Sometimes, it will tug its teeth

And remember the conjuring.

A hungering. Fizzing under my eyelids.

The blackberried skin,

Mottled purplish, plushed

Is uselessness.

Fuzzed halos of halogen

Have a delusion

Of softening, so

I shall not ask you now

For any kind of touching

Into the arm

Of something soft for an imaginary

Let the lining

Of this exploration

Speak slowly of scales

Between ritualism

Between tyranny–

Plying away at a ribcage

The fluted weight

Of old familiars

Reveal themselves

Under the reflection

Of my mirrors.

It gleams to be

A bit of silver

On the edge of my tongue

And it rasps gildingly,

Obscenely intimate

With a belly of crosshairs

That revolves in a tedium

Of slowing years

Between fluctuations.

---

Ciel Femme

The moon is howling to the stars
Yearning for something to hold onto.

Vastness is elasticity. But then whoever held onto anything in space?

It floated from her, dancing. A taunting thing.

So close it’s carved faced could taste it,
Clutch the black scarves and haul her

Fat body upwards, ankles and buttocks that a Ruben

Would want to kiss

To the sky
Shaking, waking in the eves.

She can taste the metallurgy

Little iron welts she smelts into her handkerchief .

But the moon still suffers. How long
Has the birth been now?

She shall be long dead before it is born entirely
She  shall be an eye pit blind to the soil.

Before you can know what it is

She will ill deliver

Some form of meat .

Moulding his wombs of imperfection,

Low slung and sentient

Her botched Pandora Box

Is hunched like a conch shell
Over the salt swirl.

---

We require words so we can express ourselves. It seems simple, or rather it should be-but the very act is difficult. I am no stranger to the numbness that comes with mental illness, and I use poetic form as a medium to uncover my experiences of starvation, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, depression, grief and anger. These things, whilst by no means an extensive list are still parts of myself that I continue to struggle with- but deciding how I write my narrative has made all the difference.

Having come from a country whereby issues such as mental health, sexuality and the body are enshrined in secrecy, the need or rather the rebellious requirement to give a place to language as a point of refuge is a necessity. Being part of this vast network of people who identify as female, we are all called to use our voices to talk, record, create, write and shout about what we feel. Our words are our space- what is transcribed upon it in ink cannot be erased.

Eilish Mulholland [she/her] is a 21 year old student currently studying English at the Queen’s University of Belfast and her work has been featured in Hidden Channel, Plath Poetry Project and Re-Side Zine.

A native of Ireland, her work takes inspiration from decades of Catholicism, culture, her country’s hidden and visible trauma, personal experience and the natural world. Her current interests include the dark, dreamy world of modernist feminism, hammering out poetry on her 1920 Remington Portable and collecting tea sets.

You can find her on twitter @PlathandCo.