The Night Veld
outside, on a spread of lawn behind the fishpond, the thick heat of the day finally lifting. tender pepper chicken, a splash of water, the old man talking in his low, gravelly drone. the same stories I’ve heard all my life, looping in the quiet air. dinner with grandfather. pockets of cropped moonlight break along
The Mainstay
I’m sunk deep in this old armchair, the one with the springs poking through like bad memories, and the room’s half-lit, half-dead, snow still spitting at the window. the clock’s oak pendulum swings back and forth, steady as a slow heartbeat, counting me out. I’m just letting go, sliding down easy into the booze and
Another Journey
two days of nothing in this little bedroom cell, tins of super-strength lager stacked like golden buddhas on the desktop, lucky strikes burning, one after another, till the air’s a thick blue smoke. and me, I’m just pounding the keys and staring at the ceiling where the cracks look like an x-ray of something broken
University Braille
sitting in the stale heat of the carriage, watching the blind girl across the aisle. her fingers crawl over the pages of a plastic textbook, slick under the buzzing tubes. little white bumps raised up just enough for her to map the dark. diagrams, hydrocarbons, chemistry. her eyes are wide, blank, red-rimmed. the lids twitch
The Paisley Dress
he stands there in a brown three-piece suit. it smells like dry cleaner fluid. his chin points straight down the platform. teeth too white for the light. a plastic comb sits in his top pocket. hair slicked flat with heavy pomade. cold sores are blooming, three little bastards that decided to grow overnight. red. wet.