Category: prose
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2209: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #7 (catch-up with all episodes here) Dead Men Don’t Drown When I tell the volunteer that Jacob Macleod was my grandfather, her face changes by the smallest degree, not surprise exactly, but the expression of a woman who has just heard a floorboard answer back. She does not ask whether I…
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1609: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #6 (catch-up with all episodes here) The next morning I take the spaniels’ silence in hand to the local history room above the museum, not because I have never heard of Love Dogs, but because family knowledge is a slippery thing and I want paper beneath it. A volunteer with hair…
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1409: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
The Alcove #3 Strikethrough Salisbury District Hospital; Wednesday; rain crawls streaks down the sky window; TV on mute the TV mutters silently; the medicine trolley rattles in the hallway beyond the door; my tea cools beside his cloudy juice; he says everything the air tastes metallic of foil; the oximeter pops slips from his finger; alarms set the room complaining, and oh how we laugh. He…
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0909: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
The Alcove: Strikethrough two on the fence, one grey squirrel motionless, an the other — its tail a rudder steering through speed, crimped and flagging semaphores messages; a spiderweb at the window, delicate as Brugge lace, a breeze inflicting coaxing teasing a minute tremor through its lattices; autumn arrived two months early, as though woollen socks had some private grievance against summer the world had grown impatient with…
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0809: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #5 (catch-up with all episodes here) “Hi Mum, it’s me — ay’okay, well, sort of, because I popped up the shops for milk, bread, and a few bits, and saw two pottery Staffordshire dogs like Gran’s in the antique shop, so I went in to see whether they were worth anything.”…
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0409: Six Sentence Story
The Alcove: Afters Last week’s Poetry Slam has ended, the scent of cigars lingering hungry for fire to catch from a match. The proprietors gather at the end of the bar, hugs and laughter — how little separates laughter from crying, I think. Denise looks up from polishing water marks from a wine glass; “Hi…
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0409: Stick of Butter
Stick of Butter when I was ten, maybe nine, but certainly no younger because we were living in the house where we lived the longest, and my bedroom window emptied its view straight into the yew tree and the park beyond, so I must’ve been ten … or nine … anyway, I spent the night…
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0109: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: Episode #4 (catch-up with all episodes here) No. 4, Dead Men Don’t Drown: The Antique Shop on Rope Walk I walk into town for bread, milk and a box of wooden matches for the coal fire; inheriting a cottage means inheriting an endless list of small errands. Halfway home, a fleck…
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2508: Protesting Quadrilles
Two Protesting Quadrilles I.she is one among a hundredsandaled feet,leather slappinglate-August streets. heat risesto regimented metre,chanting voices,summer-tanned skin. the street becomesa wilderness of protest,placards ticking,senses wiredto explosion. police draw a line.skin presses skin. paniccrosses it. II.she came with sandals,August skin,a placard.nothing more. then protest foundits marching metre: slap of leather,chant and answer,heat risingfrom a hundred…
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A Six: The Law of Finders
This “Framed Poem” is written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story, Poetry Slam on 27 August I had been content to sit and listen as one poet after another stepped into the small pool of light, when the woman at the microphone looked directly at me, smiled as though we had already shared some confidence, and…
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