From the novella in verse, Deliverance, 1961: A Novella in Thirty-Two Cantos, forthcoming from Pooka Press in late 2023:

…Ashe is holding court in the bar car. By covering a third round of double
     rye-and-sevens
For the three other chancers present, he has gained himself a laugh for every joke
     and ersatz gasps of admiration
For each new, self-congratulatory anecdote. Slim, Scotty and Ben eye the fat roll
     of twenties he pulls from his pants
Every time the bartender shuffles by to collect. “Tell us another,” pleads Slim
     (who travels in furs). The station

At Calgary is only 30 minutes away and he desperately hopes Ashe will
     spot them one last drink—
A double Tom Collins in his case—although, when he disembarks there,
     he knows he’ll catch hell from the wife
For smelling strongly of booze and having one paltry sale of chinchilla pelts
     to show
For a whole week away in Vancouver and Seattle. Scotty joins in: “Yeah, tell us
     that one about the buck knife.

We wanna hear it again.” Ben patiently drums his fingers, keeping time with a
     tinny overhead speaker: the Tommy Dorsey Band.
Ashe, flattered, weakly feigns reluctance, then agrees: “Alright, alright.
     But first, one more round of the elixir of life!”
He is too self-absorbed to catch the subtle nods of affirmation, the eyes meeting
     fleetingly, the false ring of the guffaws.
They play him like a chorus of snake charmers. Right on cue, the roll of twenties
     —a greasy cobra—climbs back into his hand…

From the flash fiction story, “Unilateral Declaration”, one of six finalists in the flash fiction competition that ran in conjunction with the 2020 Bray Literary Festival, Co. Wicklow. “Unilateral Declaration” was subsequently published in The Four-Faced Liar.

          …Facing northwest from Elver Avenue, our parlour window offered the most paltry of views. Red roof tiles luminous in the faint distance. A wee sliver of a glimpse really, nothing more. Roof tiles in the McCorley Road, Toomebridge, barely noticeable one street over, but enough still to register on my pulses. Red tiles keeping the rain away, holding the heat of the turf fire in, capping the small slap-brick house that wrapped its walls around Molly Mackeen in a warm, protective embrace.

I turned my young hand to poetry because there was nothing else for it.

          Every week at Mass, a press of coats, scarves and boots carried us over the threshold of Our Lady of Lourdes, Moneyglass, both of us swept in on the same lumpen tide of simple faith. With good timing, I could join the surge and land up near enough to her to cough out a weak “Hullo, Molly Mackeen.” Near enough, yes. But every time I started to open my mouth, my pummelling heart would knock the voice right out of me. Just as it did when I passed her, vertiginous, in the corridors at St. Olcán’s High School in Randalstown…

From the poem, “An Abecedary of Love”, first published in Idiolect:

A moment is reached when the
Banbury cake that is fondness at last
catches fire. Admiration remains, as
does respect, as does high regard, as does the fine
embroidery of mannered speech. But this
febrile thing—a slow burn—glows and
grows, taking hold tentatively by quarter- and
half-inches, nurtured by small intimations, inching, inching,
igniting at last in mutuality…

From the poem, “Musha-Ring, Dumb-a Do, Dumb-a Da”, first published in Idiolect:

…One’s lying dead in the Cullingtree Road.
Another’s lying softly into a telephone receiver.
Still another—X—is lying in a different confessional,
a crumbling host in his sweaty hand,
for he were a bold deceiver.

Given gaunt ones, stout ones, blood ties, marriage ties, Fathers,
daddies, His Grace, the push, the fall, the hole in the ground, a feral
corruption of the mystery of faith:
Solve for X (if you must) but, in ainm Dé, do not
send for Captain Farrell.

From the short story, “No Writers Were Harmed in the Making of this Whiskey”, first published in the Glasgow Review of Books in 2016 and subsequently in The Four-Faced Liar:

…Losing interest in his cartoon, Téadóir sets off for a wander, a red plastic ball clutched in his hand. The telephone rings. Looking up, startled by the sound, he remembers what must be done. The boy runs unsteadily to the kitchen, points to the telephone on the wall and pulls on Granda Jack’s shirtsleeve: “Ello! Ello! Ello!”

         Pointing earnestly at the “ello”—his word—he keeps on, more loudly: “Ello! Ello!” But there is no waking Granda Jack—or Uncle Art, whose cigarette has burned a glowing red hollow into the kitchen table. The smoke from it joins the greasy fug that is beginning to rise up from the blackening bacon in the pan on the cooker.

         The ringing finally stops, as does Téadóir in his effort to wake Granda Jack. He looks up at the smoke furls beginning to obscure the ceiling, then back at Granda Jack, and points again: “Uh-oh? Uh-oh?” Unheeded, his little brow knit with worry and incomprehension, the boy resumes his travels…

From the flash fiction story, “Shotgun Wedding: 1960”, first published in Litro (NY) in 2016 and subsequently in The Four-Faced Liar:

…Ed and Giovanna should have paid Mrs. Pinsky’s fee.

          The postcards reached their parents the same day the couple set sail on a cargo ship bound for Hong Kong, their bodies stuffed into a refrigerated container in a lower hold labelled “salt pork” in both Mandarin and English.

          Norman watched the Empire Peiping slip its lines just as his shift on the docks was ending. A tugboat nosed the vessel slowly out into Vancouver Harbour. It was a Wednesday and, as was their habit, Norman and Mrs. Pinsky would soon be nestled comfortably beside each other on her faded green sofa with their TV dinners balanced on their knees, waiting for The Honeymooners to come on.

          “That Ralph Kramden—he’s such a card,” Mrs. Pinsky would say the minute the laugh track kicked in after the first gag.

          “Isn’t he just, Ma,” Norman would almost always reply, never exactly sure of what “card” signified in this context but reflecting, this one time, that—like “honeymooners”—the word must carry more than one meaning.

From the poem, “Jim Begins to Consider Himself: A Performance in Ten Degrees”, first published in A Lamb:

…I’ll have another Caesar, ma’am. Thanks!
So Ed, how does MacLarty do it?
“What do you mean, how does he do it?
He works his ass off.”
Like I don’t.
“He never has a free weekend.
And he has a great Rolodex.”
There’s got to be more to it than that.
“He’s organized. He’s got a plan.
He’s always working the room. Every room.”
I’m always working the room too.
“Have you ever considered asking him?”
I don’t think Triple Platinums even talk to Double Sapphires.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even he had to start somewhere.”
I guess.
“But, hear me. Before you go over to talk to him…”
Yeah?
“Before you talk to him, get rid of that tie.”
What the…
“Trust me. Just get rid of it.”…

From the short story entitled “Our Secret”, first published in Standing at an Angle to My Age:

… “Stop squirming and sit up straight.”

          Ron Downie was obsessed with posture. He loathed Bea’s sloping shoulders and the way she leaned over her plate (“like a squirrel with a nut”); he could see that Astrid was well on her way to developing the same habit.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

          Astrid could not make herself comfortable on the shiny plastic seats of the hospital waiting room. She flipped the curled pages of a year-old Time magazine, half-reading an article about Duane Eddy and his favourite guitar. She wanted just to go somewhere and apologise to somebody for something.

          With his thick, lumberman’s fingers Ron Downie turned the flimsy pages of his Bible slowly, a page every two or three minutes. He sat in his seat, his spine arrow-straight, the habitual set of his jaw grim.

          Astrid could tell by the way the pages were piled higher on the right side than on the left that her father had sought refuge, as he so often did, in favourite passages from the Old Testament. More at home with swarms of locusts, floods and hellfire than with miracles of redemption, Ron Downie seldom consulted the pages of the New Testament in the supple King James that, through long years of travelling to and from the woodlot in his black lunch box, had gradually been moulded by his thermos into a crescent shape.

          Astrid looked up again at the clock. Like the clocks at school, it lacked a second hand but when she watched it closely she could detect barely perceptible movements in the minute hand that traced the impossibly slow, forward march of time and with it the endless wait for news. She tried to will the hand to move more quickly until it occurred to her that these minutes could be her mother’s last. She shifted in her seat and turned her head so that her father could not see her crumpling face…

From the short story, “This Long Outing”, first published in the anthology Story.Book (Glasgow: Unbound Press, 2011) and subsequently in Standing at an Angle to My Age:

…So hard I prayed. Every night, for monthsandmonthsandmonths. Every morning’s expectant run to the mirror brought crippling disappointment. A God who was so very good but made “little mistakes” was difficult to grasp, let alone accept. A pater omnipotens who declined to fix them could not be abided.

Then I made a final offer, an ultimatum: I’ll speak again if you fix it.

Still nothing.

          So I shut God out. Or, perhaps more accurately, I gently but firmly closed the door through which He had refused to come (though bidden so earnestly), first to fix His little mistake and then to apologise.

          In my bed I tried to whisper an imprecation at Him. There was no sound. I tried again. Again, there came no sound. My silence had become larger than me; it was no longer a matter of my own will. In my mind it was the tangible reproof of a spurned deity…