EireneGentle.com

Flower tongue

https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/eirene-gentle Daffodils hate being shoved in corners. When forced they emit a peculiar scent, part butter, part ulcer. I wear yellow shoes because I don’t like corners either but I am frequently left in them, and so I exude a peculiar smell. You sense it even from outside and I feel you hesitate and turn… Continue reading Flower tongue

How do they Sing and Tornado has the last dance

The calls of their last days and hours reverberate endlessly through the buildings and trees, carried on the wings of any buzzing thing that survives the heat. I am sometimes beak and sometimes claw, sometimes two legs like the fallen

Violet

No one warned me of this thirst. Your throat bulges like a baby bird, my chin is streaked red and there’s no one to feed us. https://www.roifaineantpress.com/post/because-we-don-t-know-how-to-lose-violet-by-eirene-gentle

Because we don’t know how to lose

https://www.roifaineantpress.com/post/because-we-don-t-know-how-to-lose-violet-by-eirene-gentle

Happy endings

Did you ache to bear sorrow for me? You should have taken it with you then. I never asked you to carry me, I break enough things. Just a place to crawl into, like the space between breaths. The luxury of quiet outside contusion. The tang of pine in the sound after thunder.

On grief

https://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/grief-unpeopled-spaces-by-irene-gentle I read up on grief long before anyone close to me died. I wanted to prepare. Then they died and I was not prepared. I was lucky to live quite a while before death came knocking. When it did, it came in packs. My father-in-law, who I was close to. My dog. My brother.… Continue reading On grief

About writing, with The Hooghly Review

https://www.thehooghlyreview.com/nominations/2024/conversations-with-nominees/irene-gentle

That stupid song

Happy to see this out in the world, thank you, @publishedbyjake

Where all the broken things go

Crash

He drives away again, always again. Me at the window, waving. Good girls wave at windows to show love. Words streak like tears, like ache, like why. Why does he go? Work, she says. To buy you shoes, she says, and complains he doesn’t give her enough to pay for them. Soon she’ll fade into… Continue reading Crash

The Ambassador

The Ambassador They recalled the ambassador last night.By the time it hit the news, he was gone.It’s still always a ‘he’ when it comes to ambassadors here. They don’t trust ‘shes’ yet. They don’t trust him either, now.The ambassador was recalled last night and has not been seen since.Probably a spy, someone says.Probably a poet:… Continue reading The Ambassador

Behind the story is another story

https://buttondown.com/EireneEleni/archive/a-writers-dream-is-to-publish Witnessing descent into suffering is one thing, seeing the joy of those unleashing it, wittingly or unwittingly, is another level of dystopia. I originally called this first story Lamentation because that’s how it felt to me. But I couldn’t get the question out of my mind. How do they sing?