Sixteen is a free online magazine that aims to use the 1916 centenary to help emerging and professional writers craft new work based on the 1916 Easter Rising. We are deeply interested in how Ireland has changed in the last 100 years since and want to explore how the events of that week in 1916 have shaped us as a nation today or if they did at all.

1. A collection of short stories and poems inspired by the themes
of the 1916 Easter Rising.

3. About Sixteen
Sixteen is an online literary magazine that used the 1916 centenary to help emerging and
professional writers craft new work based on the 1916 Easter Rising. We are deeply
interested in how Ireland has changed in the last 100 years since and want to explore
how the events of that week in 1916 have shaped us as a nation today or if they did at all.
Over a period of sixteen months, submissions based on sixteen different themes were
sought. Each month, a featured writer was chosen by the editors. The following pieces of
writing are from the featured writers each month.
We hope you enjoy reading these wonderful poems and stories.
Simon and Rozz Lewis

4. Erin’s Story – Clifton Redmond
I used to see her face, natural
beauty, her lonely portrait
in geography books, on the cover
of history books, staunch
complexion, standing out
from the crowd; wearing
a gown of clove green,
honest, unique, innocent,
now I see her on the cover
of glossy magazines, photo-
shopped, fake, ravaged. Her
grayed threads hanging, under
headlines of corruption, lies,
manipulation. She sells herself
to the highest bidder,
a tarnished whore,
dragging herself, begging,
through the open market streets.

5. A Terrible Beauty’s Birth - Hugh A Tague
Walking up and down the cobblestone way
with no sign of change in their expression
I know now, what their lives are worth
with death has come a terrible beauty’s birth.
I just couldn’t see what the others held dear
the teacher and his friends knew their destiny
though I share the light of who we are now
their children sleep in the cradle of their vow.
Most gave up everything for the cause
when is it all enough? when may it suffice?
as they walk up the street, in their faces I see
the sacrifice of Life’s waters that run so deep.
All that is lost in the Living Stream
has come back to us solid and strong
the breeze is free to come and go
but it must blow around a pillar of stone.
Walking up and down the cobblestone way
with no sign of change in their expression
I know now, what their lives are worth
with death has come a terrible beauty’s birth.

6. The Leading Lady and the Rebel Leader – EM Reapy
The big band swung. A singer in a pin striped suit jazzed his way through the number.
The music filled the room and imaginations of the guests. They forgot about the bleak
Depression outside. They drank hooch and ate deviled eggs, salmon loaf and Waldorf
salad.
He noticed her. It looked like she noticed him too but he couldn’t be sure. He checked
behind him, but no, her eyes were on him. Her sultry eyes. One of the most famous
actresses in the whole goddamned town. Her blonde curls set tight, her green silk dress
clinging to her curves, her mouth full and inviting.
He placed his fedora by the chocolate fondue fountain, took her hand and spun the
leading lady around.
*
The boy, well over six foot and strapping, having already spent a term in Gallipoli, stood
beside his father. He was fearful of a ploy as the leader approached, injured, beside a
caped nurse.
‘Father, what if we’re being ambushed?’ he said in an almost whisper.
‘We’re not. He’s done. He seems to be a fellow with a deep conscience. Terrible qualities
for a soldier. There’s too much blood on his hands. I would be rather confident that he
is done.’
The Dublin air was still and quiet except for a far off fire consuming a building. The
crackled breezy sound of burning.
*
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ she shouted over the music.
He shrugged. ‘Possibly?’ His British accent was distinct and debonair.
‘You starred in some pictures?’ she asked.
‘Some European, some talkies. Waiting for my break.’
‘Ain’t we all.’
She smiled. He smiled. He couldn’t believe his luck.
*
‘I lay down my sword,’ the rebel leader said.
The boy kept his hand on his pistol, sweat glistened on his back.

7. ‘Surrender accepted,’ his father said.
‘Shall I bring word around?’ the nurse asked.
The rebel nodded mournfully at her.
‘Don’t despair, Commandant. Don’t. This will come to something.’
‘It’s over, Elizabeth.’
‘Or maybe, Padraig, it’s only beginning.’
‘Silence,’ the boy’s father said. ‘We are arresting you on her majesty’s honour and under
martial law shall imprison you. Do you understand?’
‘I do,’ the rebel said. His face was paler.
‘William, take his arm.’
‘Yes, father.’
The rebel gave it willingly. He was calm, morose. They walked in a near silence towards
Kilmainham.
*
‘I’ve seen a couple of your flicks. I used to act in Germany too, Berlin. Tremendous fun
but seems to be veering too far right. I’m no Communist. I do, however, know when a
situation is boiling up.’
‘How’s that?’ she asked. Her eyebrows drawn in a surprise.
‘I’ve been in situations.’
The band played on. He could smell a faint sweet sweat from her, under the lavender.
His fingers traced her back as they danced. She was soft except for a small bump of a
mole, which he was drawn back to touch, to circle, the way it lifted off her skin.
‘You can’t say something like that without giving me an example?’ she asked.
‘Very well, but only because, madam, you requested.’
*
‘There are many casualties,’ the boy said.
The rebel grimaced. He muttered a prayer. Looked around at the destruction of the city.
Buildings crumbling. Glass shattered on the roads. Bullet holes. Black smoke darkening
the grey skies.
A misty rain began to spray.

8. ‘It is like being cleansed,’ he said and turned his palms outwards.
The boy sighed and wished he had spent his leave in his mother’s place. A large house in
the countryside. He could have hunted deer or played cricket and read some
Shakespeare. Caught some new shows in London. Snuck some alcohol and opium with
the troupes.
Instead, he was a skivvy to his father in this dirty town.
*
‘You were there for that?’ she asked. Her eyes wide. ‘In Ireland?’
He nodded.
‘And why did you come to Hollywood?’
‘When I was a boy, my father was my hero. The way I saw it, he used his strength and
tact to protect people. But I wanted to help them in a different way. War changed
everyone. It changed me. We need escape from the misery of life. The pain of it. The
pictures help do that. Get one or two hours out of the world, out of our minds. You
know?’
‘So you’re saying I’m a hero, Mr. Loder?’ she asked, a glint in her eyes.
‘Exactly,’ he replied. He looked around the room, felt the whole place watching them as
he leaned in to kiss her.
*
The boy’s father was stopped by some officers. He explained the situation. Word from
General Maxwell was that execution would be imminent for the rebel and indeed for all
his aides.
‘Brutal, perhaps. But swift and the only way to show that treason to the Crown will not
be tolerated.’
The rebel was calm. ‘So it will come to something.’
The boy thought he saw the rebel smile, the corners of his mouth raised a fraction. He
kept his grip on him.
‘You are very young,’ the rebel said.
‘I have already served in the Great War and shall return to Europe in the Autumn,’ the
boy said. He held his head up.
‘Is that your dream?’ the rebel asked.
‘Is this your dream?’ the boy replied, feeling insulted.

9. ‘It is a version of it.’
‘This will only ever be a story to me.’

10. Eulogy – Maria Keenan
The drones of your grandfather when chewed
by time – the same bites that curl his only picture –
are waked in crying more blood than water
and are still labelled miracles by the keen
The face of his father is emblazoned on flags,
his mouth curdled by eccentric blood
that he laughed through,
spitting a red scare during difficult, liquid prosecution
All this and yet more and I am the mother
favouring this funeral over a school day
found bunker-deep in berated naivety,
in my stooped nostalgia for our second- and third-edition history
It is the new age and I its milestone
kept warm by parted, quilted envelopes
and boiled, lured eyes:
the viral technology of justice’s scale
keeps its criminals in sharp protection
The grave already has a flesh-tint rust
and epitaph lines from the beer-strewn
passport identity he never kept pocketed
always nose to tail in the
delicious victory of nepotistic flatulence
snorting a bubbling
yaw, pitch and roll of gravitas
He found a centre of gravity in
the three leaves of a shamrock god
I am the mother on its right hand
yet he wilts first for
he was the human, the light and the
fragile ogham work of three crooked dashes
I sat, I stood, I kneeled and fell all to learn:
it is sweet and fitting to die for your father’s heart
it is bitter and crushed when obliged by land
Wrap your body’s thirst around the safest soul
and keep it quenched before all is spilled.

11. Quarters – Safi Strand
Did you see that house that they cut into four?
Like the way they built us up till
we divided.
The way you moved through me,
like hot steel through softened cement.
Do you remember that night when we danced?
Like a dance with a building that was never quite home,
but it creaked as our hearts jumped up stairs;
and even when they pulled us apart,
we still looked like one.
Hand in hand, brick on brick,
like another fearless dance concert.
Will you think of me when our quarters crumble?
When the tiles slide off and the rain
drips through and the wind blows in and
cracks our open sides?
When the earthquake comes
to shake our foundations
and we’re only rubble and memories?
Because the wind vane in spinning
and they say a storm is building
and they’ve cut our roof in four.
Maybe the water can make us whole.

12. Maude Gonne – Colm Scully
The middle classes are moaning again,
not blood this time but water.
Frothing at the mouth
with the thought of paying.
You knew the men who paid with their lives,
the four terrible fathers;
MacDonagh, Connolly, Ceannt and MacBride.
Did they consider the education of their sons,
their daughters dowries?
No, they were revolutionaries,
Mad Markievicz and you, hobnobbing with them,
upper class girls off to a ball.
But, you were organising long before that;
marching after the Empires coffin
with Connolly and Yeats,
casting eviction scenes onto city walls,
de-commemorating Victoria’s jubilee.
Do you think Maude that there’s a God,
who walks among the dead,
among those heroes who gave their lives?
And you, you their beautiful muse,
but a terrible mother.

13. Sean Connolly – Peter Goulding
The week before, he’d played a valiant role
upon the stage, to deafening applause,
hoisting the flag up the bloodied pole,
inspiring men of culture to the cause.
He died upon the roof of City Hall,
raising that same flag, some later said,
a cracking yarn that bore no truth at all,
save for the fact a sniper shot him dead.
He fluffed his lines upon the greatest stage,
not stooping as he crossed the parapet,
a death most unbecoming of the age,
disrespectful of the bullet’s threat.
He raised no flag. That cannot be denied.
Yet in a deeper way, that’s how he died.

14. These Children Walk Within The City Still – Geraldine
Moorkens Byrne
I’ve thought a lot of you recently
My brave fine fellows, in ragged forms.
The tattered group emerging from the dust,
trusting that their ruins were destined
to be the foundations of the state.
Gallant lies you told, each other and yourselves –
and some came true, despite it all.
It’s almost a century, it’s a pile of progress.
One hundred years a-coming, from your day.
It’s upon us, my dears, the parades and the solemn
state-sanctioned pomp. You’ll be toasted in style.
You’ll be the belles of the ball. And all that
fun and frolic, what you’ll make of it all.
Still – one question, if you would be so kind?
I wonder if beside you walks, Brigid Allen?
Or little Christina (she was only two, do one
Of the others carry her?) or William Mullen
Or that brave wee boy of Na Fianna, John Healy?
The romantically named Walter, surname Scott.
The unidentified infant or the victims of Taylor –
Butchered butcher boy, Christopher? And the rest?
Who will mourn them, poor children of the city
murdered, massacred, or shot by accident,
collateral damage of a new-born State?
The fuel that turned the Dublin crowds
from outraged loyalty to rebel force –
a wave of sorrow as the dust cleared
The British brought the worst they’d feared.
I hope in some corner of our hearts
We hold them still, their shades upon
our streets, our parks, our avenues and hills.
The Dublin they knew long gone, ours evolving.
The revolution of the poets may be over;
the poor still suffer and rich still feast.
Remember these, our wee fallen, at the least.

15. Muirchú: The Sea Hound – Hugh A Tague
Atop a yard, on Life’s river, she grew
Irish sweat and blood filled her berth with steel
In Nature’s name, she patrolled Eire’s shores
Fish-poaching trawlers were to be her wars.
The world’s skies turned a sinister pitch black
Sailor’s blood streaks the coke-laden sea swells
Seized by the crown, and dressed with his arms
Helga thunders into Dublin killing her sons.
Otherwhere, agents dance cloaked in darkness
Ebon waters chase the blue from the North Sea
Sir Rodger Casement’s crusade disallowed
A rendezvous lost, scuttled the Libau
Independence, the means to Helga’s end
Thus freeing her spirit: The Hound of the Sea
Countless leagues passed beneath her weathered bow
Near the Isles of Saltee, she’s laid her head down.
Atop a yard, on life’s river, she grew
Irish sweat and blood filled her berth with steel
Seized by the crown, and dressed with his arms
Helga thunders into Dublin killing her sons.

16. Casement – Aoife Hynes
The teacher glanced off him
Her catchphrase “Moving on!” accompanied by a hand wave
Waving Casement away
In the student’s notebook he had one line
No backstory, no prologue
He didn’t have a life before or after
He was one line of truth
“Casement was caught bringing arms for the rebellion from Germany”
He wasn’t wreathed in laurel and placed on a pedestal
At the height of the heavenly martyrs
Pearse, McDonagh, Mac Bride, Connolly and all the rest
Those whose names adorned the Proclamation of our independence
Whose voices rang outside the G.P.O.
Whose ears heard the whistle of the bullets
They sacrificed all for independence
Became terrorists, breakers of peace
Revolutionaries, patriots, warriors
Nobility to some, problems to others
Casement, who sacrificed all, could not be placed on that pedestal
The sinful creature that he was
His natural inclinations enwrapped his reputation, visible to history
And reduced him to “sodomist”, freak, unnatural
He lost as the others did, but he was born to lose
Ireland has not forgotten his name
Ireland has forgotten his life beyond that one line

17. Blue in the Face – Aifric McGlinchey
My mama was like a vampire squid
who uses fine-haired filaments
to browse on marine snow,
tiny crustaceans
Breakfast lit on by long fingers
and scooped onto her tongue.
She always stood. She had no plate of her own.
I’d leave her some phytoplankton,
bite-sized, briny, crunchy.
Each morning, my arms were rivers running toward her.
Her arms were a cat’s cradle I’d have put to sea in.
When she smiled, I smiled,
then the whole house pulsed
with our skip-to-the-kitchen laughter.
One day he knocked
and she became a parcel of tendon and spewing ink,
whiplash collision. I screamed and banged my spoon.
Saw through the door a man as blue
as Picasso’s old guitarist on the wall.
Felt her voice body to my limbs.
Stared at the snow wasteland of the ceiling,
until she whirled back through the door,
heaving roomfuls of air, and lifted me.
‘He thought he could cock his ears and whisk his tail
and I’d come running.
Well, I wrung that thought right out of him.’
I gave her the full loaf of my love, stroked tendrils, crooned.
Fingers in my mouth, and every breakfast, the blue guitarist.

18. Irish Declamation – Mary Madec
We have divided a majority from a minority
to make a nation,
declared possession of land, occupation
of houses to qualify for equal rights
The last examples of our heritage, Irish Travellers
up against the vilest prejudice,
differences carefully fostered by our own government
without any help from the aliens.
On the side of the road two families in flames.
Sedentaries looking on at how
Irish society has gone to blazes,
for one moment wishing
there was a hell to go to,
where justice might be done,
a God still in heaven we might invoke
upon our arms
to embrace those who stand and wait
on dental records. Ash scattered
to bitter easterlies.
Not screened off as in St. Jerome’s
No, not even bones and no home.

19. O’Leary’s Grace – Nessa O’Mahony
They’re reshooting the Rising
up at Collins Barracks.
White winnebagos line up,
Volunteers form an orderly queue
for the catering, Asgard safely
moored behind cordons.
They’ll get it in higher definition
this time, take all the takes
they need, apply the make-up
to Pearse’s squint expertly,
photoshop Dev in
if the director requires.
Extras lounge about,
drift in and out of collonades,
wander further afield,
tall skinnies in hand.
But Croppy’s Acre is padlocked.
The Corpo turned the key
when the citizens started
bedding down there, sharing
sleeping bags and needles,
messing up the view.
Right now, two of them frisk a third
who hasn’t moved for hours:
still-life, ready
for his close-up.
Cut in to Romantic Ireland
blue-inked on his wrist.

20. New Republic Plaza – Gerard Hanberry
I come here from time to time,
my head full of puzzles
to read the graffiti and mingle
with the flag-wavers,
the fanatics, light in their eyes
unfurling like pennons
as they glare on those of us
who prefer a quiet life.
If questioned, I retreat with shrugged shoulders,
slipping away into the befuddlement of side streets
where my suspicions can go undetected
among those busy feathering their own nests.
Here in the shadows, bundled in doorways,
the children of the nation sing the old ballads
their hum of despair rising like balloons,
above the entire city.

21. Light – Anatoly Kudryavitsky
In memory: Thomas Kitterick (1899–1977)
Towards the end of his life he confined himself
to a box-room in the house of memories.
The blackness from inside his eyes
splashed the walls with all the hues
of the dark…
Watch over us, Creator of Dreams,
don’t let us acquire more than we’ve lost,
for bags of illusions are heavier than stones.
In 1916, he and his friends were 17;
every road led to the horizon. Soon after
the Rising, they paraded through Westport
having but one gun among them. He thought:
The game, as real as life itself, is precisely that: life.
The future quartermaster of the West Mayo Brigade,
the future prisoner of Kilmainham Gaol,
he wanted to play that game properly.
When the hills of Mayo issued a call to arms,
he saw to it that ammunition was aplenty.
Shrieks of the unspoken and the unspeakable
were piercing the clouds day after day
until the moment a bagpipe tune
flooded all around
and the argent key of freedom began to twinkle
among the constellations of shiny eyes.
Was he more alive than dead as an old man,
or the other way around?
When the century was young,
the world seemed brighter…
Up aloft, the keepers of timeless order
store up used bodily casings.
Every so often they forget to elicit
the inner light.

22. A Patriot – Mike Gallagher
In Memory of Paddy Bond
Of a sudden, he was there, among us,
weaving his way through crowds engrossed
in other things, the booze, the craic, the dance.
His practised eye homed in, found familiar
faces, his regular clientele, cultivated over
decades, forty years of trudging through
the scoffing hordes, a stranger among his own,
his message spurned by those it sought to salve.
‘Irish Democrat, Irish Democrat,’ his soft voice
bounced off dancehall’s din, the memory
of his idol crushed beneath our waltzing feet:
When they murdered James Connolly
the Irish rebel.
Scarce the few who knew
the man, a son of landed gentry stock,
proud offspring of a hero of ’98, Cambridge
scholar; no reason there to traipse hard, Marxist
roads, only a love of justice and humanity, a passion
for his native soil.
Gone now as quietly as he came;
and the Saturday night patriots
still call for one last fling:
let’s raise our fists, lets shimmy to
Sean South of Garryowen.
(From Stick on Stone)

24. Sixteen Magazine
Volume 1
What a Difference 100 Years Make
"Birth of the Irish Republic" by Walter Paget, depicting the GPO during the shelling