Gooseen Joycean Erotica
(A Story by Nuala O Connor about James Joyce and his lover Nora Barnacle) We walk along by the Liffey as far as Ringsend. The river smells like a pisspot spilling its muck into the sea. We stop by a wall, Jim in his sailor’s cap, looking like a Swede. Me in my wide-brim straw, trying to throw the provinces off me.‘Out there are the Muglin Rocks,’ Jim says. ‘They have the shape of a woman lying on her back.’His look to me is sly, to see if I’ve taken his meaning. I have, and our two mouths crash...