Rose parades me to the bar like a prize,a wild American with her first passportand appetite for the angles of discovery,huddling at a dusty corner table on wobbly chairsto meet Irish women at Ryan’s Pub where,most nights and afternoons, a sparse clump of mengrayed in their sameness spit anger at their lives,leave wages on the counter,go home to rage some more.On Sunday nights at Ryan’s Pubqueer women struggle to utterwords that resemble lovelike so much else unsaid in Ireland.There is distance here—as if desire hasn’t been born yet.Clinks of glass on wood andsuspended hum of female inflection,tables are fullbut weight is lacking.No music and no dancing,faces framed in a halo of dirtpainted on a pale wall,posed in their doubt.And these women in their curious attentivenessexpect me, an American with a mind and bodybut without a soul, to radiatethe sex of languageso they might connectbeyond the bitter beer, sticky tables, andcold dampness of a cellar barin the shadow of St. Colum’s Church,so that someday they might dance away from shameto the turning of a naked womanCeltic cross tattooed on her breast,skin dusted with smoky peat,sweet grass, and crackling air.