Aiteach Zine #1
Accessible version beneath the issuu slides
Interview with John Cunningham-Ryan
Also: queer parenting, art, spirituality, health, and so much more!
Wexford Pride committee report inside.
Contributors: Veronica Victor (she/her), John Cunningham-Ryan (he/him), Vic Kelly (they/them), CC Darlington (they/them), Andrei Boyd (he/him), Thomas Fitzgerald (he/him), Sióg Faiche (they/them), Declan Flynn (he/him), Nathaniel Barry (he/him), Oliver Bent Grace (he/him), Mx. Adam Khan (they/them).
Reclaimed
The Queer Dictionary / An Foclóir Aiteach
LGBTQQIPA/LADTACIPE
Lesbian - Leispiach
Gay - Aerach
Bisexual - Déghnéasach
Transgender - Trasinscneach
Queer - Aiteach
Questioning - Ceisteach
Intersex - Idirghnéas
Pansexual - Painghneasach
Asexual - Gan-ghnéasach
Contents
Report - Vic Kelly
Rest in Pride
Interview - Veronica Victor
Parenting - CC Darlington
FDYS - Oliver Bent Grace
Health - Declan Flynn
Spirituality - Andrei Boyd
Art - Nathaniel Berry
Entertainment - John Cunningham-Ryan
Poetry - Thomas Fitzgerald, Mx. Adam Khan, Sióg
Ongoing Events
Proudly LGBT+
Committee Report
Vic Kelly-Victor
In case you don't know, your 2023 committee members are John Cunningham-Ryan (he/him, Secretary), Veronica Victor (she/her, Community Liaison), Rían Browne (he/him, Public Relations Officer), and Vic (that's me: they/them, Treasurer). This column is all about what we're doing for our community—and how you can get involved!
Naturally enough at this time of year, our time is mostly focused on Pride in the Park (Saturday, May 27 from noon till 6 p.m. in Min Ryan Park). John has gotten all the permits for the event and he's organising the volunteers. He already has quite a pool of good people ready to take roles in setup, running and breakdown on the day. There are also volunteers taking on tasks in the runup to our big day. There is still room for volunteers though, so reach out to John at wexfordpride@gmail.com.
Veronica is in charge of the acts for both Pride in the Park and the afterparty as well as the vendors and community organisations for the day. On stage during the day, we have great music from solo singers Lili O'Brien Dobbs and Andrei Boyd, bands ELKAE and Peer Pleasure, and drumming group Bloco; poetry and talks from some of the LGBTQIA+ youths from the FDYS; and drag from Cork's amazing group Mockie Ah! At the afterparty, we're excited to have singer Andrei Boyd and queer burlesque cabaret group Disgraceful Cabaret.
Know an act that might fit the bill for the day or evening? Reach out to Veronica at the Wexford Pride email address.
The vendors and community support groups are coming together too: she has over 20 booths confirmed and more to come. It's really important to us to see booths from community-focused organisations like FDYS and Wexford People Helping People at the event.
We wanted a bigger and more celebratory Pride in the Park this year, and we're definitely going to have it, thanks to John and Veronica's efforts in pulling all these people together to make the day happen.
Rían has the job of getting the word out, and you'll see the impact of that on social media, in the local press, on posters around town, and more. He's also contacting local businesses to get prizes for the raffle and if you're a local business owner and have something to contribute, Rían's also at the same email address as John and Veronica. Handy that! Plus, he's going to be documenting the event on the day, which is important not just because it's fun to see what all happened, but also because it helps in raising funding for other events, including next year's Pride in the Park. RÃan will be at the Wexford Pride booth on the day and be sure to drop by and say hello!
Special mention to Larry Dunne, who designed an incredible image for our Pride in the Park, reflecting the celebratory tone and the breadth of our community.
As for me, I'm doing the less glamorous work of raising money, getting quotes (with John's help) and keeping track of costs. It's important to remember that Pride in the Park is only part of what we're raising money for. Wexford Pride wants to offer support to our community all year round. So part of our job as your committee is to ensure that there's money raised well beyond what Pride in the Park requires. If you want to donate as a private individual or a business, contact me at wexfordpride@gmail.com (are you seeing a pattern?) and I'll let you know how. Even small amounts make a difference.
Alongside Pride in the Park, Veronica is organising the Pride Art Trail, which will take place in June, with art from LGBTQIA+ artists displayed in businesses and other locations in Wexford town. We're all involved in making sure Tea on the Quay happens on Sunday once a fortnight — it's an opportunity for members of our community to just hang out at The Trough and have a cuppa. Veronica and John ensure the LGBTQIA+ Support Group keeps going: it's currently in Enniscorthy on Monday once a fortnight, but if we can get enough funding, we'd love to expand it and have groups in other towns. The Wexford Pride Book Club started up in April, with a discussion of Quentin Crisp's seminal work, The Naked Civil Servant. Rían diligently promotes all these events on our socials and via flyers around town, all designed by Veronica.
In June, we're planning a more political recognition of Pride Month, getting together for speeches and a reminder that Pride can be a celebration, but it is still also a protest. Watch out for details of that on social media and in flyers around Wexford.
This will be our busiest month of the year and next issue, I'll let you know how it all went. We want you to know what's going on and how your elected committee is trying to serve the breadth of our beautiful LGBTQIA+ community.
Thanks for reading!
- Vic Kelly
Rest in Pride
[Photographs of Paul O’Grady as Lily Savage and Hecklina]
Last month we lost two powerhouse trailblazers.
Our community knows loss all too well, and it never gets easier.
Rest in pride, the amazing Paul O’Grady (Lily Savage) [left] and Stefan Grygelko (Heklina) [below].
John Cunningham-Ryan Interview
Veronica Victor
I knew immediately that I wanted John to be my first interview. His experience working in the LGBT+ community in Wexford is unrivalled.
My first interactions with John occurred long before we met. I emailed him in regards to an LGBT book club I had found whilst scouring the internet for the queer life here in the sunny southeast. I was fresh to the island and desperate for friends. The book they were reading didn’t interest me, and, hilarious through the lens of retrospect, I found John’s replies kind of cold and rude. Knowing him now, cold and rude are the farthest things from his nature and it goes to show how much of my first impression was my shit, and not his. I wonder how many other people I get wrong.
John was born in Wexford and only lived away for three years, going to Athlone for college. His degree was in business studies and hotel and catering management. He is now working in the public library system. Another thing we have in common; useless degrees.
“I was never out in college. It’s probably the only thing that I regret in my life, that I hadn’t figured my shit out earlier and I hadn’t been out in college and kinda started my gay journey [John laughs here and we both know what kind of ‘journey’ he’s talking about].”
In the 1990’s there was an LGBT group in Wexford called GLOW (Gays and Lesbians Out in Wexford), ironic name considering they met privately in the back rooms of pubs. But perhaps that was out enough for them at the time. In 2003, John and a group of friend started EAGLÉ (The Equality Alliance of Gays and Lesbians in Éire). EAGLÉ represented a shift in the generation of LGBT+ folx in the area. This was a generation who said: “We want to be out. We want to be visible.” EAGLÉ (I love that name because it reminds me of the legendary leather bars by the same name across the States) met fortnightly in pubs and restaurants, but they weren’t sequestered to the back rooms anymore, they were announcing their events on the radio and papers. John frequented the airwaves, but the media he met was very different from the media of today. “The media today is a lot more divisive, and no matter what medium it is, the interviewers tend to have their mind made up, don’t they? Or they tend to have an agenda. They’re looking for that, you know, that quote or that sentence. I don’t get the idea they were doing that as much, or maybe I just didn’t see it.”
The Equality Alliance of Gays and Lesbians in Éire is quite a name for a social group so I asked John about the political side of the group. “We had very lofty ambitions, but it morphed into more of a social group than like a political and advocacy group.” He recalls that people just weren’t interested in getting politically involved. “They wanted to meet in a safe and fun environment. People wanted to go out, to a pub, have fun, and meet new friends. That was the overriding desire of those involved. Which was great, ‘cause actually when I look back now, a lot of the people who met at those social events, since 2003, a lot of them are actually together. Which is really nice, but then of course it means they’re not coming out socialising anymore, [laughs - John has a great, boundless laugh that fills the room] because they’re all hitched.”
EAGLÉ served its purpose for five or six years, hosting social events as well as an annual group art exhibition at the Wexford Opera Festival. I These art exhibits featured around twenty artists, from within and without the LGBT+ community and helped to raise the funds for their social events. “We [also] used to do fundraisers for some of the charities in Wexford, and again, that was another crossover way in which we could get some advertising and promotion about who we were and what we were doing.” It’s difficult to imagine what the wider society was making of such a group being so open and visible. Was there backlash? “I suspect there was, but I think I was so idealistic I didn’t care and I was gung-ho, full-steam ahead. I didn’t care. But I’m sure there was. But we wouldn’t have listened to it. But in saying that, twenty years ago we didn’t have Facebook, we didn't have Twitter, we didn’t have the social media fervour that’s out there now and the hate and toxicity that’s out there in social media. Even if somebody was saying something, like, it was only one person, it wasn’t a thousand people piling on a twitter feed or something like that. Cause you know how social media magnifies everything.” But it wasn’t completely the dark ages. EAGLÉ did have a Bebo account (no idea) as well as a paid Gaydar account, so they could advertise on Gaydar. “This was before smartphones. Gaydar was on a desktop computer and a dialup internet connection. Literally you were 20 minutes downloading that naughty picture on Gaydar [he laughs here and I see the innocence of his past in his face]. Yahoo chat groups and Gaydar were huge ways for people to meet up. In the mid-2000’s, that was the way that Wexford people were meeting, that was the way we were meeting. We didn’t have Grindr, we didn’t have Facebook, we didn’t have anything like that, so that was the only way to socialise with other LGBT people in Wexford, was to come to our social nights. It was literally the only way to meet people.”
EAGLÉ events were happening in a pub called South 51, in the spot which is currently a Costa Coffee on the Wexford high street. “They used to look after us really well. We used to be upstairs, and if there was anybody downstairs that were kind of making shapes, or kind of getting a bit drunk or getting a bit layer-y the bouncer would be saying ‘hey, you know, fuck off, you’re not wanted here.’ If, when we were leaving, like, if there was ever any trouble out in the street or anything, the bouncers would always say to us ‘hey lads hang on there a few minutes before you leave’ or ‘you’re better off to get a taxi home tonight.’ Which made the night safer for us to go out and relax and enjoy.” It’s funny how some places and people just seem to get it, when others seem content to turn a blind eye. Another popular meeting place at the time was Mooney’s, a popular nightclub where LGBT folx would arrange to meet through Yahoo or Gaydar and “leave together or alone, depending on how the meeting went!”
But even with so much socialising going on, not everyone was being seen. John struggled with self-acceptance for many years, failing to see himself in the groups around him. “For many years, from a very young teenager until probably my mid-30’s I was a very anxious person. Worried and anxious about everything! What everybody was talking about, what everybody thought about me, what I was doing, was I good enough in my job; there was just a constant anxiety there. So I was not fitting in because I was anxious all the time, and then anxious because I wasn’t fitting in, and it was a vicious circle” And of course this affected his sex life.“I didn’t really have an outlet in those social nights for two reasons. One is that I wasn’t really confident in myself, in who I was, in my sexuality, in who or what I was attracted to. Not an internalised homophobia - just an internalised ‘I don’t know what the fuck I am.’ And then secondly because I was involved, kind of, in organising, you know, and kind of in being the host and such. Again, in my head I kind of put the pressure on myself. It’s like ‘well I can’t be coping off with somebody because I’m here as the host and I’m keeping an eye on everybody, you know, making sure everybody is ok and safe, and they’re having a good time.’ It wasn’t something that was expected of me. Looking back now, I know it’s something I put on myself… Now that I know that I am a bear, when I think back then, I didn’t even know the subculture of the bear community existed. And in all of my gay friends, they were all twinks, so I was very much an outlier, I never kind of really fitted in. So the type of person I was attracted to wasn’t really somebody that was in my circle of friends or people who were coming to the social nights. I never kind of really felt ‘oh hang on, I want to go see him!’ It took years to build my confidence. It literally took me ten years to build up a confidence in who I was, and in myself, to actually seriously start looking for somebody. To start looking for a serious relationship. So that’s only eight years ago. So I was basically 40 before I figured my shit out… What did it was campaigning for the marriage equality referendum. That’s what really gave me the confidence. That really only happened in 2015 when I really came out of my shell and was like ‘yeah, bring it on bitch.’”
I’m always very aware, when I read these types of pieces, about roseating the past. In case anything that’s been said sounds like paradise, of course it wasn’t, and hate crimes were rife in the country. However, similar to issues like suicide, taboo and shame kept it from being spoken about openly and honestly. “I know about a couple of people who were in their early teens - 14 or 15 - would have been very badly beaten and they just left. They left and moved to London, they just left Ireland, and their friends and family wouldn’t have talked about the beating or why they left. [So,] yes, it was happening, but it wasn’t discussed, and it wasn’t investigated by the police either.”
What’s always amazing about our community is that we survive, even in the face of a world who would much rather we simply didn’t. John exemplifies the endurance, strength, and hard-headed optimism that it takes to face two decades of “dog licence bills” as he puts it, referring to the insultingly basic ‘rights’ we have to fight and beg for. And he hasn’t finished yet. John continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with his LGBT+ brethren in the fight. In the short time we have known each other I have seen him expand his understanding to encompass ideas and realities new to himself, in a constant quest to not leave anyone behind.
Our conversation went on for over an hour, and this is just a small bit of what we discussed. Perhaps the rest will find its way onto the page when the time is right. For now take the wisdom and history here as a lesson that you never truly know who you are sitting across from. The list of those we owe thanks to is longer than we could ever realise.
list of those we owe thanks to is longer than we could ever realise.
– Veronica Victor
Parenting as an enby
CC Darlington
Each person’s journey through parenthood is different, with their own unique blend of joys, excitement and challenges. In today’s world, navigating societal expectations and gender norms are experiences faced by most families. As a non-binary person, I have been attuned to many of these expectations since I was a child. Yet, the moment I saw those pink lines on that pee-covered stick, there was no way I could have grasped quite how my sense of identity and place in the world were about to be challenged.
One of the first things I asked myself was, what will my child call me? A seemingly simple question but one deeply loaded with societal gender norms. As someone assigned female at birth (AFAB), terms like mum, mommy and mama seemed like the most straight-forward choices. Yet, the idea of someone using these names to describe me felt akin to jamming together two pieces of a puzzle that just aren’t meant to fit.
More as a mental exercise than with any real expectations of finding the perfect parental term, I swung the pendulum towards dad, papa and father. These just felt plain wrong.
In desperation I turned to Google. A quick search brought up the most imaginative amalgamations of my two previous considerations, but none felt right. Mapa had vague connotations of cleaning equipment and dommy felt like it belonged more in a BDSM novel than between parent and child. Some more “traditional” non-binary parental names also appeared. Terms such as nommy and nini felt somewhat more appropriate but still didn’t hit the mark.
What had seemed like a straight-forward first challenge to tackle had me feeling completely stumped. And I felt this way for most of my pregnancy. In darker moments, I echoed years of internalised transphobia in dismissive, dehumanising self-talk.
Don’t make a big deal of this. Just use mum and stop asking for special treatment!
But finding a term to describe your identity is not special treatment. It’s what cis-gender people have and often take for granted their entire lives. It’s worth making a big deal about.
In the end, I settled on my chosen name. It felt appropriate and natural – I had chosen it after all. And yes, people still call me mammy (a topic for another article). And no, my son is not old enough to call me anything yet. And perhaps my choice will change in time but, for now, I’ve found something that works for me.
This column is a platform for sharing my journey through parenthood while, hopefully, offering a unique perspective and a gentle reminder that we all make mistakes and have space to change and grow. At just under a year, my time up to this point as a parent has certainly been short. However, what I lack in sage wisdom, I make up for in experiences that are recent, honest and relevant to parents far and wide, queer and straight.
Thank you for being with me on this journey.
– CC Darlington
My story
Oliver Bent Grace
Hi, I’m Oliver, I’m 15 years old and I’m a third-year student in presentation Wexford. I am a member of Orbit which is an LGBTQIA+ group ran by the FDYS. I have been going to Pride in the Park for the last 2 years and at each I have spoken. Both years I have written and read 2 original poems and sang a song. Writing is one of my biggest passions, and I hope to this year release my own poetry book.
Now that you know me a bit on to ‘My Story’.
I first came out at age 11, I came out as bisexual. I came out to both my family and friends. Once I did come out, I did experience bullying it was the usual. “Do you like me?” “So, are you a Lesbian?” “Omg I bet you fancy everyone in the class.” In the beginning it did bother me because I didn’t really understand it.
Then once I was 14, which was last year, I came out to all my friends and family as a transgender man. I was born Isobel and later changed it to Oliver. The whole transition thing can be weird, when I changed my name, it was weird having people call me Oliver because I was Isobel for 14 years.
Last march I was also diagnosed with body dysphoria and body dysmorphia. I struggle a lot, most days I can’t look at my body. My step mam who was my biggest supporter bought me a binder and I couldn’t have been happier. I do struggle with mental health issues and try to advocate for it. I have Anxiety and Borderline personality disorder (BPD). All my friends & family have been so supportive. I try to help show people the way I see the world as BPD has a lot of bad stigmas.
I’m so proud with the achievements and progress I’ve been making in the last year and a half. And I hope to continue to try to teach people about being transgender and how it can sometimes be scary but also so amazing and teach people about mental health disorders like my own.
All in all, being part of a community is a great feeling. I do hate the ostracization, but the feeling of love and home I get when I’m in Orbit or when I’m at Pride in the Park is irreplaceable. I couldn’t be more grateful for my community and family I have found.
I love being who I am, I love being proud and showing the world that I’m not scared. Even though sometimes it can be
No table of contents entries found
howing people its ok to be whoever you want to be. I believe in the saying “You pave your own path” because you really do.
Thank you for reading this short snippet on who I am and what my passions and goals are.
– Oliver Bent Grace
3 East ways to improve your nutrition habits
Declan Flynn
When you are starting out to explore a new health and fitness journey, it can be very overwhelming, trying to understand what's the best approach to take, what will work best for you and how to I get started.
Many people will go straight into the deep end and cut out every bit of perceived ' bad foods' and it has to be all salads and bland food. The truth is you don't need to do this at all, the opposite is what you can do, keep including the foods you enjoy, but it's just making slight modifications to quantities of them or finding healthier versions of what you enjoy. This makes the process easier to stay on track with. It is also important to remember there is no bad foods, but not all foods are equal if you look at the nutritional content to them.
You also don't need to do a complete overhaul on your eating habits straight away, do it gradually and its more manageable to implement.
So here are 3 easy ways that you can start with to try make some initial stages of changing your habits to get on track to a healthier you.
1) Pick one meal breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks that can be modified first. I suggest picking the one you find more challenging first.
Try including a protein source in each meal that would give you about 25g of protein be it meats, fish, cheeses etc, or a smoothie with whey or pea protein powders with fruits.
Increasing protein level intake will help you feel fuller for longer and help repair muscles after workout and give the building blocks that are needed for a healthy immune system.
2) Who loves pizza , I certainly do and I certainly include it in my dinners. There will always be many options to choose from but minor change like going from deep pan to thin crust will make a world of difference and you still don't lose out on the pizza goodness.
3) Make your food as colourful as possible and eat a rainbow of food if not every day, certainly over the week. What mean by this is to eat different colourful veggies and fruits over the week as this is one way to get a great mixture of vitamins and minerals into your system from natural sources.
– Declan Flynn
Neither queer nor spiritual
Andrei Boyd
Sitting down to write this column has been a very interesting and informative experience. I find myself trying to emulate experienced and accomplished columnists in the way I write and the words I use. I deny myself by seeking to imitate another, fearing that I might be seen as an imposter and that what I have to say doesn’t hold enough weight to be taken seriously by those with more intelligence and greater education than my own. I see myself giving in to the pressure of being what I think I should be instead of listening to my spirit and being what feels true. This revelation speaks to my ongoing journey of identity. For me, like so many, this has been a constant in life, showing itself through many different facets. In my queerness, my spirituality and everything in between. It’s only now at 33 that I’m starting to really see it. And this is thanks, in a huge way, to my journey of spirituality.
The intersection of humanness, queerness and spirituality hasn’t always been the simplest place to navigate. You might think that a community in which “love and light” and “oneness” are the fundamental teachings I would feel wanted and accepted. But I have known this community to be just as unconscious as those it seeks to reform. Riddled with conspiracy theories and saviour programming, many in the “spiritual” community unknowingly perpetuate separation and exclusion and can very often do more harm than good. The fundamental teaching in most religions and spiritual practices is that we are all aspects of one being which is creation itself. When I judge you I judge an aspect of myself. When I love you I love myself. Separation is the denial of oneness and has been humanity’s teacher for thousands of years. We learn about who we are by facing what we are not. And if we can use reality as that which shows us instead of that which is against us we can better use it to our advantage by understanding our contribution to what we see. That person doesn’t believe in me, perhaps they are reflecting back to me a lack of belief in myself.
The practice of seeing the outside world as a reflection of my inner world, and thus, a reflection of the collective heart has been extremely beneficial to my healing and acceptance of life and the self. And so, in seeing the division and separation within and without the spiritual community I have come to learn where I deny myself and see myself as separate to the whole. I am this, you are that. I am over here, you are over there. I see this in my relationship with the queer community too. At times I feel I’m not queer enough; that simply identifying as gay is not enough. And yet, I feel too queer for rest of the world. In trying to find which box I fit into I have lost who I am in my uniqueness. I am neither queer nor spiritual, and yet, I am both of those things.
I have been looking to different groups to provide me with safety, fearing the dangers of walking my path alone and being eaten by wolves. If I’ve learned anything it’s that the wolves live inside me. No matter where I am or who I’m with I’m always in danger of getting too close. I see now that the identity by which I live has been formed in response to that fear. Learning who I am, void of what I have become, is an ongoing journey and one that I will never give up on.
– Andrei Boyd
Art
Nathaniel Berry
Nathaniel’s artwork is a series of four abstract paintings named Release, Stagnation, Cataclysm, and Memory.
Book review: Wolfsong by TJ Klune
John Cunningham-Ryan
I came across this amazing author when reading the Extraordinaries Trilogy aimed at Young Adults (a story of a fanboy who is obsessed with a teen superhero) so knew I wanted to get my hands on this latest publication.
“It’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome!”
This was a line early on and it just sums up the whole thing. With beautiful prose, delightful descriptions and an expansive story this is Klune really spreading his wings and moving on from the forulaic style, simplicity and book length you normally find in YA work (Wolfsong is 568 pages). It's so hard to move up in your target audience; to give more substance and grit and Klune doesn't disappoint.
So let's get down to the nitty gritty. If you love gay romance, fantasy & werewolves this is the book for you. Think Twilight but much better written, I have no doubt this book would make for a fantastic movie (or streaming series).
I loved it so much that when I returned the copy to Wexford Library I went straight down to the book shop and bought my own. I really liked the urgency in the style & pace that just keeps you turning those pages but it's not a complicated heavy read (as some epic fantasies can be). Even with a gay romance at the heart of the story it's, for me, still a beautiful exploration about your chosen family, pack, love and an amazing World of werewolves and magic. It's a refresing look at a sometimes boring clichéd genre.
Basically, dump the Harry Potter books (if you haven't already), relegate Twilight to that topshelf that's really awkward to reach and fill the space with TJ Klune books (unless you just borrow them all from the library)
I was even more delighted when I got to the end and realised it's the first of a trilogy! It has been my fave book this year, by far, and I've no problem giving it a 10 out of 10 planets.
This title is available for FREE in all Irish Libraries.
– John Cunningham-Ryan
Poetry
Mx Adam Khan
Trans
My euphoria is my transness
Don’t digress
And assume my expression
Is my identity
Why do you question
What brings me serenity
Is it your -phobia or -ism
Or you thinking binary
Is it my mysticism
And non-binary finery
Your stereotypes
Outdated like the patriarchy
Churning out them gripes
My genderbending fluidity
My euphoria is my transness
Don’t digress
– Mx Adam Khan
Réabhlóid Aiteach
Tá mé aiteach
Andraigíneach gan leithscéal
Agus ag glacadh le speictream an neamh-dhénártha
Níl mo chuid forainmneacha mar rogha
Níl mo inscne fisiciúil
Ní céim é mo chlaonadh gnéasach
Agus níl mo chlaonadh rómánsúil briste
Mo bheith ann
An heitrea-normatacht agus cis-ghnáthach a dhí-chruthú
Agus an status quo á bhriseadh
Tá an réabhlóid aiteach anois
Cur in aghaidh leithcheala institiúideach
Agus is é an réabhlóid seo mise
Mar is mise an t-athrú ba mhaith liom a fheiceáil
– Mx Adam Khan
Poetry
Thomas Fitzpatrick
There are no homosexuals in Chechnya
As Nero fiddled while Catholics burned as torches,
To light the pavements that did not exist,
Now the Kremlin lies to hide its lust for blood,
How dare the western world yield and resist.
How can we detain those that do not live?
Those people have no home in Russia’s breast,
Dear Ramzan, you insane little man of no colour,
Wear that badge of evil with failure your crest.
Taboo they cringe in this conservative Chechnya,
Men do not love men as the book has told over,
Sheer torture and capture is the only medicine,
Electric shock, no blunt force, stamp boot marks in clover.
Putin that friend of those in power and tall tales,
Leave people to their own happenings and guile,
Flee fellows as this will not end well for you, I know,
A story that lurks as many in hidden government file!
– Thomas Fitzpatrick
Cotton Fish
Cotton fish float upon a wooden sea,
Swimming round an island square and plastic,
Warm liquid caught within ceramic boats,
Coughing thunder floats down so caustic.
A crying god looking down at creation,
Flat and solid but stained with coffee,
Tears hit the cloth for the unknown time,
Tins of chocolate strewn like toffee.
A letter open on the dry land of books,
Blue and green symbols of misery read,
The God looks up to a sky of white,
Her Mother, in words, is now dead
– Thomas Fitzpatrick
POETRY
Sióg
anemochory
I’m mid spring and faded aureate
a pale lustre catching the sun
I find a way to grow through cracks and grey blocks
and happily sprawl on your lawn
not always favoured in a formal space
but we keep it together
a sail on the sally can go a long way
make wishes
in blowzy meadows
and come back golden
to a buzz
– Sióg
Events
County Wexford LGBTQIA+ Community Support Group
Fortnightly meetings
May 1
May 15
May 29
IFA Centre Enniscorthy
7pm
A place for members of the LGBTQIA+ community to find and provide peer support.
Every segment of the LGBTQIA+ community is welcome. This includes BIPOC, Traveller & Roma, and immigrant groups.
Founded in partnership with Wexford Pride and Be Pierced.
Wexford Pride Monthly Bookclub
Contact wexfordpride@gmail.com
Last month: Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
This month: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
Tea on the Quay
at the Trough on Cressent quay
Fortnightly Sundays 2pm
Funds available for those in need of a cuppa.
Proudly LGBT+
Free LGBT+ advertising: Aiteach.wexford.pride@gmail.com
Ads:
Andrei Boyd
Psychic medium, queer spiritualist
Psychic readings, energy healing, development circles.
Want to know your future?
I offer a safe and confidential space for LGBTQIA+ people looking for spiritual guidance and healing.
Call or text 089 246 7128
Email Andrei.boyd@icloud.com
Yoga with Sióg
Inclusive yoga with CC
Only Natural
1 Church Lane, Wexford
onlynatural.ie
Proudly supporting diversity in Wexford since 1985
Declan Flynn Fitness
Personal training boot camp online coaching
Start training today.
WhatsApp 083 002 1514
Kilmore
QUOTE:
Quentin Crisp
1908 - 1999
The Naked Civil Servant, 1968
“Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense”
SAVE THE DATE
May 27 2023
Pride in the Park
Min Ryan Park
Wexford Town
