Ink warsI have incidents with ink.At the end of the day I appear to be not so much a writer as one who wrestles with pens in darkened rooms; one who blindly fights back and one who almost always loses.My skin maps the course of the battle and it is held across the most improbable of terrains: hands, arms, thighs, stomach, neck, face and knees have all been ravaged by this inky war.But I am glad that I write by hand. For those who fight at keyboards, the only scars they leave with are red-rimmed eyes and aching backs. Even when I lose the battle, I at least have a bruised, blackened body that tells me that I fought back.
WebbedMildredHer name was Mildred. This was unusual. Mildred had never met another bird named Mildred. Come to think of it, Mildred had never met another bird named anything so perhaps the surprising thing here was that Mildred had a name at all. As a general rule, all other birds were called 'That One Over There' or variations on this theme: 'That Big One Over There', 'That One On Her Nest Over There', 'That Bat-Shit Crazy One Over There', 'That One I Want To Fuck Over There' but Mildred had always been just 'Mildred', no locational clause required. This was because Mildred had been born in a cage and, as a chick, had regularly been picked
On death, children and dragonsAlba: Hey, Kit?Kit:Alba: Kit. Hey, Kit?Kit:Alba: Kit!Kit: What?Alba: You know you're sitting on a dead person, right?Kit: Alba!Alba: What?Kit: Don't! / Don't – I know, alright, I know!Alba: It's true!Kit: I know it's true!Alba: We're in a cemetery, Kit!Kit: I know!Alba: We're surrounded by dead people!Kit: I know!Alba: Hundreds and hundreds of them! Dead and rotting –Kit: I know!Alba: Rotting or rotted! Some of them have nothing left to rot.Kit: Yeah – yeah! – I know!Alba: Well I know you know!Silence.Alba: There's hundreds and hundreds of us here and we're the only two alive
November to JanuaryNovember 19th, 2012 to January 21st, 2013-Unicorn, driving to Kit’s father’s funeral (a bit that was cut)KIT We paused for three hours for mum to nap with her head lolling back against the seat. Without the car engine, the landscape was filled with the loudest silence I’d ever heard. Insects and tiny creatures, seduced each other with chirrups and pheromones. It was a sex-filled night. A virile night. Two dark little rodent things chased each other across the car bonnet, their rice-grain claws sounded like the world’s tiniest rainfall on a tiny tin roof. They fell off the edge in a bundle of fur and squeaking
MeatShe is tenderising meat. Striking it again and again.What started as a smooth arch, a regular pulse of her hand, has become jagged.Desperate.Staccato.She has tenderised the meat. Now she is pulverising it. Smoshing it into the marble bench top on which she is working. Flecks of blood, specks of meatfly with each thwack of the mallet.It decorates the walls.Textures the ceilings.A sliver of it hangs from her haggard lip.Another from her eyelash.Now the implement is striking bare stone. The flesh has disintegrated beneath her violence. Outside the speckled window, the ocean is as blue as her eyes. - I’ll spell
LawsAnnie feels as if she is floating. Levitating. Suspended. But she knows physics. What goes up must come down. For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. She knows.---Harvey feels as if the soles of his feet are turning to stone. His legs, his buttocks, every part of him in contact with the floor or the bed is becoming weightier and weightier. His hand is so dense. Packed with so much matter. It is the universe before the Big Bang. All that magnitude and matter compressed and compressed into the smallest of spaces. That is Harvey’s hand. He cannot lift it.‘I’m not breathing properly.’&l
The camera loves you, baby.So I turn to him like real / like a real snap of de head an I look im straight like an sayI read dis story / dis article in some magazine oncewas an interview wid a photographer / a guy I work with / an I was reading it cos my pic was used an dat was my first feature / first spread all printed up on paper an stuff I had dat mag for months bfor I read it / juss keeped on flickin it open an starin at me / at me own face an touchin da glossy paper like I couldn’t believe it were me / Emmy looking like some star / some big famous fuckin star but one day I sit down an read it / took me / took me took a long timeAn he was sayin ho
Sta.sh
