James Fleming 13 posts 0 comments

There was snow on Yellowstone Park that day. Bushes reached out of the ground like clumps of tangled fingers and yellow winter-flowers bloomed in the grass. A grey sky hung low as if it were weighed down by the clouds, so that it blended…

Two of the most famous photographs of Elvis are the cover of his debut album and a shot of him onstage, where he leans into the microphone, doused in sweat, his face white against the blackness of the background. On the cover of that first…

I stand above the ocean at Sky Road’s summit and look out over the islands, where folktales say mermaids sit and sing and comb their hair. A group of French tourists laugh amongst themselves. There’s the smell of saltwater and faraway…

All sound is amplified in Galway City Library. As if the quiet italicises every small noise: The growl of my stomach, someone’s soft footfalls, the rustle of pages and scratch of pens. Outside the world turns. Its freeways are jammed, its…

Sunlight danced on the waves as they dashed themselves against the shores of Dog’s Bay. I sat on a hill looking out to sea. The Atlantic stretched away from me unbroken and smooth like black glass until it touched the sky at the horizon.…

St. Mary’s Church stands at the edge of a forest. A path goes from the wrought iron gate through the old graveyard of leaning headstones and into the pines. Sunlight glitters on the surface of the lake that lies behind the trees; a lake…

I look out the Luan Gallery’s tall windows at the river Shannon. It moves westwards through Athlone like a slow, black brushstroke. Sunlight dances on the water, boats rock with its flow, swans glide downriver. I turn away and back to the…

Drive down the L3210 and you roll through bog and woodlands and crossroads. Crucifixes and flowers mark the accident-sites where people were killed. And one-lane roads jut from its course into the country. Where they disappear around bends…

Stones crunch under my feet as I step off the main road onto the track that jackknifes into the bog. The land is flat. And the wind has swept the clouds from the sky so that the horizon is a clear blue. It comes to rest on the distant…

Once the market would have packed the square of this small town in East Galway. And its patrons would have spilled out of the pubs, spouting cigarette-smoke and shit-talk to the sky. Then this was a big town. Now the market is a man selling…