The Belfast Review Team | 5 March, 2024
Welcome to Week 3 of our Spring Blog. Each week we will feature a handful of new creative works by artists, photographers, writers, poets, and song writers. Different days of the week highlight different creative forms: Feast Your Eyes Sundays (art, photography), Wordy Tuesday (fiction, flash, nonfiction), and Rhythm-Verse Thursday (poetry, song lyrics).
This week we're exploring the theme of 'Inspiration.' As in, the spark that takes our creativity in a new direction, opens up a new way of looking at the world, gives us the permission we need to bring something new into being.
In other words – it's what lights your fire.
Featured writer: Marie O'Shea
This writer's flash fiction takes her inspiration from Celtic folklore, specifically the mythology of the Cailleach Bhearra, also known as The Old Hag of Bearra, the creator goddess of winter, weather, and landscape. She is associated with the Bearra Penninsula in County Cork, and the many clans originating there. Celtic mythology is known for its shapeshifting tropes, and its gods, goddesses, heroes, kings, and queens seem adept at changing their names, ages, and appearances to suit the story.
The reinvention and reimagining of myths is an ever popular artistic form, and this writer invites us to imagine the old hag and her lover (the sea god in the form of an otter) rekindling their age-old shapeshifting affair right under the eyes of pedestrians on St Patrick's Bridge.
My love appears as an otter under Patrick’s Bridge
MARIE O'SHEA
The air is thick with traffic fumes, the passing whiff of take away coffee. A bus turns left onto Patrick’s Bridge, negotiating the narrow lane with practiced ease. When the light flashes green, a throng of Spanish students cross the road, full voiced and raucous in the summer sun. Laden with shopping bags, a woman trundles her buggy around a section of cordoned off paving. Her young daughter stops to rifle through a gaudy purse. Biting her lips, she approaches a man who has slept the night in a doorway. Next to him a cardboard sign says he has no money for food. Their eyes meet as she tosses him a coin then skips back to her mother. Over the thrum and pulse of the Saturday shop, a creature screeches. Scanning the rooftops, I search in vain for a perching sea bird. The next screech pulls my gaze down to the river. Swimming mid channel in the murky water, an otter raises its head and whistles. A small crowd gathers to witness the spectacle. Someone unwraps a sandwich and tosses a piece over the bridge. There is speculation about the sighting, whether it should be reported and to whom. I feel the whoosh of blood in my ears, the agitation of my breath. The otter swims a tight circle and calls again, his voice shrill in the rush of the current. Clutching hold of the parapet, I let out a bellow of delight. He cannot fool me with this wild card trick. I have kissed those whiskered lips too many times. There is a madness in me that makes me want to jump. Cast off my skirts and glide with him past sunken trolleys, tangled hose pipe, sodden trainers. Trailing tendrils of velvet weed, I’ll sing my otter love a song. Make him chase me upstream to the Sheehy Mountains. Transform into a salmon to leap the Muskerry Rapids, vault the Inniscara Dam. Thrash the gravel with my tail and raise a shower of golden sand to dazzle him. Then peeping out between the rocks, I’ll marvel at the sleekness of his form, those bright brown eyes. And when, if ever, we tire of this magnificent game, I’ll yield my slippery body to the ecstasy of his jaw.
ARTIST BIO
Marie O'Shea is a writer living on the Beara Peninsula in the South West of Ireland. Her work has been published in A New Ulster, Popshot, The Blue Nib, The Galway Review, and more.
Special thanks to the writer for trusting us with her work.
Thanks to all of you readers for reading! Be sure to like, follow, and share.
Check out our other posts this week:
Feast Your Eyes Sunday (3 Mar) with Art by Nina Staack
Wordy Tuesday (5 Mar) with Nonfiction by Sarah d'Episcopo
Rhythm-Verse Thursday (7 Mar) with Poetry by PS Conway and Shannon Carlin.
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