Her Boots
Her boots and her laces tethered, and her shawl, sloppy around weary shoulders. In the distance, a frozen lake, her absolution. Arctic crystals float by like twinkling droplets, cold on her eyelids settling. She thinks of the Sistine chapel and her sins, her history documented in a small scrapbook. She folds the shawl, removes the
Hyde Park
Children on scooters on hot concrete scootering. And bicycles with stabilisers squeak through a mass of mums and dads, eager to sit down before ice cream becomes a sludge. Black birds in regimental droves, with black beaks and shiny black tunics of feather wait for discarded crusts from toddlers in oversized hats and drooping nappies.
The Hi-Hat Solo
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, and the hi-hat solo. The audience watch her deliver from the shadows. “Hello Mr Jackson, your table is ready.” Last minute folly, the table reserved from the back of a deadbeat bus, a late-night jazz-hall at the end of a downtown boulevard. The sound terrific, the saxophone, the beating
My waitress Mary
Johnny Cash on the Jukebox, Walk the Line. In a truck stop with bloodshot eyes, all-night drivers, and builders in blue jeans with arms as thick as legs. Also travelling salesmen, in cheap suits with frozen faces. I wait for Mary. And on a menu, on a chalkboard, white chalk, blue chalk shadows, powder on
The Recital
I met you just twenty minutes ago, in the coffee bar, when we were introduced. And we took our seats as strangers, the recital about to begin, hushed whispers. And then Marion starts the Capriccio, and we agree under soft tones that her passion is overwhelming, her hands strong, but gentle, fingers on white ivory
Atop Craigendarroch
I stitched and capered a sinuous ascent through the ferns and treacherous granite traps sharp as you like Knavish roots and vines snatching all the way at my toecaps and reached the summit wheezing like a holed bandoneon The green and ochre scabbed shield chaffed by ancient ice delivering to me the stage upon which
The Evening Dress
Untouched, a beautiful size 12 pressed up hard against teeth in a cold vice gripping. Naked in isolation, she waits for a strand of cotton and a dub from a Jack Rabbit pelt, thumb and forefinger, wax on felt. Slow concentric movement across taut yarn, fraying on rough skin, the evening dress of Marabou and
St Augustine’s
Marked cards and letters, filling the top drawer in a gleaming butler’s desk. Two long years, correspondence and poems and notes of love and want. He remembered the gate to her front door, through the garden, through the lavender, rosemary and basil, the scent immaculate, just like the scent in the top drawer, tainted letters
The Hosepipe
I needed petrol, 5 litres to get me there, and the rest for the process. A small price to pay, running on empty, the urine, already cold on my winter jeans, stinking on my frozen legs, a trembling fear. The hard stench of black tobacco fills my nostrils, my last few cigarettes, another dirty inhale,
The Paisley Dress
Cold sores coming into flower, more than one, but less than four. A shiny pointy chin and white teeth beautiful. In a three-piece suit, he stands in that classic brown, with a comb in his pocket, and a mullet of hair, parted sideways. He smiles at his lover wearing a dress that looks like a
Rachel Kadinsky
Soft fingers on rolled paper, red lips waiting. I flip the lid of my old brass Zippo from ’86, the hinge sticking in the same old place, and I grind the wheel. A sooty flame whooshes up and bursts into life, a clichéd dance of orange and blue, the sting of the kerosene hitting the
Your Last Orbit
Hold on a minute, did you just die, I can’t hear you anymore. Frantic, out of control, you buzzed your last while trying to escape the blinding light that tempts you to your doom. I listened to you while I wrote, how you battled on relentlessly, stopping only once to sit on a piece of
