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Daragh Fleming
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the poet
Daragh Fleming, a writer from Cork, Ireland, has work appearing in several literary magazines – from The Ogham Stone to Gutter Magazine. He's also read his poems for the Eat The Storms poetry podcast. His pamphlet, The Hole, was highly commended in both the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. Daragh was shortlisted for the prestigious Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize.
the poems
The Hole
For Max Porter
This is fine, there’s a hole here, did you make it? Did you? Better fill it up, fill it up quick, anything will do, what do you like? Do you like anything? Just fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Oh you like girls? You like them enough, go-on-dates-go-on-dates-go-on-dates, this is fine, everybody does this, three different women, four nights a week, five weeks a month, more months than you can count, just go-on-dates, this is how it’s done, never settle in, fill that hole with sex, sex with everyone, everything’s okay, you’re just having fun. The hole is getting bigger. Time to put the shovel down. Thick nights, empty texts, wet sheets, wits end, this isn’t enough, this is getting worse, oh you like to drink, better drink it up, fill that hole with beer, maybe that’ll help, now you’re doing both, whiskey with a fuck, you can’t get it up, no you can’t get it up. The hole is getting bigger, the hole is getting bigger, time to put the shovel down, enough is enough, flirt online with strangers, kiss her like you mean it, hope to catch a feeling, everything’s gone numb, the hole is now inside you, maybe always was, the hole is everything now, eating it all up, edges are collapsing, emptiness engulfs, this isn’t a good thing, why can’t you fucking stop? There’s an empty person here – did you make him up? Better fill it up, better fill it up, anything will do, enough is enough.
Prescience
My mind is the radio you forgot to turn off –
broadcasting noise throughout the dark
silent house we no longer occupy.
I dream in sentences I’m afraid to
whisper. I write them down
and tell the world I came up with them on
my own. But they were delivered in
the night – hungover takeaway bags glazed
with grease. They cure me for a while but
I always text you back. I always rise from another
nap taken in a half-baked, half-attempted afternoon.
I turn myself off so the cosmos can send me phrases
that sound like temporary comfort.
Stockpiling words, selecting the shiniest ones
to build my nest.
birthday poem
At some point, maybe around the age of fourteen, they stop putting the exact number of candles in your cake and replace them with a couple that just signify the number. I suppose it makes sense because the idea of placing fifteen or more individual candles into a cake and lighting them feels tedious. And as the years pass you’ll reflect on all the ground you covered yourself, how you spread your life out, each year a single candle on the surface of your time spent here. You’ll remember all the times you ate cake, all the times you allowed your heart to break. You’ll struggle to remember each and every one of the faces that have made you smile, but you’ll try. You’ll grow older and more grey and more grateful. Your circle will get smaller but it will feel more full. You’ll wonder where the time went, and you’ll cautiously consider how much of it you've left. You’ll think about all the things you’ve done, and all the things still left to do. It could be any day, it’s just a day after all. But on this day you’ll feel it all, reflect upon what you’ve become, what you’re inevitably becoming. Adding a candle each year, your light growing a little bit more each time, because although you may mourn the loss of your youth with every birthday that comes, growing older isn’t a privilege everyone gets to experience.
Publishing credits
The Hole: ROPES Literary Journal 2024 (Issue 32)
Prescience / birthday poem: exclusive first publication by iamb