Neil Slevin is a 26 year-old writer from Co. Leitrim, Ireland.
 
A former English teacher in the U.K., having graduated with a B.Sc. in Physical Education with English from the University of Limerick in 2011, he has returned to university to complete an M.A. in Writing at N.U.I. Galway and to pursue a writing-based career. 

His work has been published by The Galway Review and various American journals.

                 When My Colours Run… 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; 
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
                                                                    W.H. Auden 

Learned old men tell the story of Cathay’s emperor, 
a man who avoided the future
like the plague;
 
who, in his divine wisdom – and facing death –
forbade his people from using the future tense, 
because without him they could have no future. 

And they muse about time and how we tell it, 
highlighting that before Christ we had no such thing,
and that after His birth we had options… 
 
Did you ever make that mistake at school (you know the one),
believing that if B.C. stood for ‘Before Christ’,
then surely A.D. meant ‘After Death’? 

And later, did you read of Macbeth’s raging against tomorrow, 
of Othello’s beseeching kind-hearted words 
written in hindsight-parted letters?
 
Wiser now, I wonder if old Cathay and Christ,
Macbeth and Othello were one and the same,
perhaps not in face or nature, but in outlook:
 
all believing that Time would wait for them 
to find their way back from the ether, 
as if men could forbid the wind from breath and stars from smile,

their fellow man from a life
of dreams and death,
while they packed up the moon and dismantled the Sun.
 
And I wonder who will care when my life-clock stops ticking,
whose day will speed up
and whose night will slow down…
 
Who will remember me not as I was –
but as I am and always will be – 
when my dreams die and my colours run?


                        Unforgettable Fire
 
“Have you ever
tried to remember
something
that you’ve never remembered before?”
 
his face asked
curling into a mischievous grin,
like a magician’s goatee laughing
at its master’s double chin.
 
Incredulous I thought he was joking,
but soon realised he was not;
he wanted me to summon something I couldn’t remember –
something that I’d a long time ago forgot’…
 
So with my mind unleashed
(like the good Catholic boy that I am),
I looked away from him into the distance,
in hot pursuit of the bait thrown from his hand;
 
I wandered off, all alone in my dark,
scratching at the lower backdoors
of unvisited memoirs,
resisting the soul-consuming urge to bark.
 
Before pawing at the contents
of my mind’s toilet-bowl mixture,
as around they swirled,
all refusing to unfurl,
 
and resorting to gnawing at my still-beating heart.
 
Up all night I played with the frayed edges
of images long before torn apart,
chasing the cars speeding away from me
with far too much of a head start.
 
All this before, finally,
I stopped,
exhausted,
and slowly made my way home:
 
no longer was I
a foolish dog of the night,
seeking the bitter reward
of a juicy bone.
 
Memory-chasing I remembered
that I accept what I can remember;
that I want to forget
what I’ve come to regret;
 
that my memory is a fire
full of burning embers,
some aflame, some smoking,
some dying:
 
it’s one I can’t relight or re-set…
 
So after a long pause I met his unsmiling eye,
his star-twinkle now buried deep and within,
“No,” I said, forgetting myself –
wishing I could forget him.

Neil Slevin is a 26 year-old writer from Co. Leitrim, Ireland.
 A former English teacher in the U.K., having graduated with a B.Sc. in Physical Education with English from the University of Limerick in 2011, he has returned to university to complete an M.A. in Writing at N.U.I. Galway and to pursue a writing-based career. 
His work has been published by The Galway Review and various American journals.

​SEWING THE SEA by Neil Slevin
 
Fishing for water,
sewing the sea,
you sit on your wood
by water swept and beaten quay,
passing no heed
to ticking time nor tide,
nor in the distance, me.
 
And shimmering
on the water
is your joy;
the sunlight’s speckle
bobbing your face,
settling like stardust
in your golden hair’s embrace.
 
All happening
in this moment –
not that you seem to notice,
and not that you seem to care;
for you are at labour,
lost within your working world,
just another day’s laissez-faire:
 
your legs swaying
to the freedom
of the water’s flow and flair,
its splashes freckling
the day’s outlook,
your life (at least right now)
all moderate to fair.
 
Because for now
you are free to stitch
your own ties,
ones that will exert
their own force,
but – not now –
later, in due course.
 
And so,
not having moved,
you return to your post,
sewing the sea,
fishing for water almost.        

​FOOD FOR THOUGHT by Neil Slevin

 
“What’s eating you?” they ask
when I push the food around my plate.
 
“Nothing,” I say rawly, not pausing,
nor stealing a moment to hesitate.
 
I lie to them, but not myself
(no, not to me, I see my fate),
 
knowing what’s eating me:
eating is, all-too-figuratively.
 
And so, eschewing truth,
I respond with nothing, quite literally…
 
I eat myself bite by bite, bone-by-bone –
body, brain, and soul.
 
Why?
Because I can. And I can’t stop me.
 
And why should I want to stop,
when this is a game that only I can win and lose –
 
and see me, raise me, or fold?
I will have to stop, in the end, but not for me:
 
I live a life divided into selves,
and each and every one of us is no longer whole.
 
I hate my body;
know that he hates me.
 
Like a loveless marriage,
we are stuck together, indefinitely.
 
Not because we want to, need to, must,
but because we have to be:
 
I’ll eat away at him while he eats away at me.
 

​MY CURTAIN by Neil Slevin
 
“Ich bin ein Berliner.”
         John F. Kennedy
 
A sweltering summer’s day.
A wall rises as if by itself,
partitioning our rented flat
from east to west.
 
A stranger greets my arrival home,
plays the role of builder,
waves the trowel in his hand – like a flag –
plastering out the light.
 
I escape to my confinement.
 
His grunts and sweat and sighs
are the seasons changing,
but I still sense the sun’s shine
somewhere outside. Beyond the walls.
 
Beyond my feeling, walls
that cry out for my release,
but keep me locked inside
my cell – myself.
 
Later, my communist landlord greets me.
 
He shakes my hand,
startled I shake back.
He cuffs the wrist I still have,
my wrist still free of state,
 
leaves me to my divided city;
I laugh, jeer in the wake of
what I see as
his mistake.
 
“Tear down this wall!” Reagan declared.
 
His command I roar
each time I tread my own.
Under cover of darkness, always,
I make it to the other side.
 
Years late.