After Clayton Eshleman

There is something behind my mind, circling the ears of my head.

Something is festering in my long swanny neck, where it existed ever before my throat got cancered.

I am the bastard son of a Druid, although the sex work that begot me was neither beautiful nor ugly enough for art, and instead we can blame it on the Arch Deceiver.

That being has always been especially ill-diagnosed towards me. I can only feel forlorn and yet chosen as a result.

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Jones Irwin teaches Philosophy and Education in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. He has published original monographs on philosophy and aesthetics, including texts on Jacques Derrida’s Deconstruction and Slavoj Žižek’s Psychoanalysis. He has published poetry most recently in Poetry London, Showbear Family Circus, Passengers Journal, Plainsongs, The Dewdrop, Cathexis NorthWest, Hare’s Paw, In Parentheses and with Wingless Dreamer, Moonstone Press and Tofu Ink Press. “The Female Rimbaud” was nominated by Tofu Ink Press for a Pushcart Award in Autumn 2021. His creative fiction was also recently published in Kairos Magazine, The Decadent Review, The Festival Review, Into the Void, Mignolo Arts, Wild Roof Journal and Critical Read and his flash fiction was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. His vision is of a postmodern existentialist, with a dash of noir mixed in with a progressivist ethic. He is also currently preparing a book on existential themes, to be published with Routledge, London in Winter 2021/22.