The Orford Ghoul
I was hunkered in my usual booth at the Orford, the one they used for Tina and Bobby, deep in the dim corner where the light never quite arrives. tonight I skipped the usual cheap shandy and ordered a few large dirty vodkas, straight, no ice to soften the truth. it went down like a
The Night Veld
outside, on a spread of lawn behind the fishpond, the heat of the day finally lifting. dinner with grandfather. tender pepper chicken, a splash of water, the old man talking — a table of remembered wisdom, the same stories I’ve heard all my life and only now begin to understand. pockets of cropped moonlight break
Another Journey
two days of nothing in this little bedroom cell, tins of super-strength lager stacked like golden buddhas on the nightstand, lucky strikes burning one after another till the air’s a thick blue smoke, and me pounding the keys or staring at the ceiling where the cracks look like roads I’ll never take. headache again, that