Category: prose
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19.10: dVerse Quadrille
A Man with Moonlight she hums sounds of sleep,soothes her child as she observes — behind screened windows,blotched yellowed-whiteby the moonon the gated garden wall, a manwalking in the moonlight. alone. and in her loneliness,she wonders whatthoughts and hungercross his mind. Written for dVerse Poets, a quadrille of 44-words including the word ‘screen’. Some images…
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19.10: A Six – The Alcove
The Heist (episode 4) (a letter from the Soup Gobble) The postman arrives carrying an envelope addressed, with admirable confidence, to The Gargoyle Sitting on the Right. “That’s me,” shouts the gargoyle who appears to every mortal eye to be sitting on the left, but perspective has always been a treacherous little beast and gargoyles…
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17.10: Stream of Consciousness
Pitch the mountains at my back, lace-up waterproof boots crunching through the ice-crust on yesterday’s snow, and the air flying white as fine gauze, the sort of weather that flattens curves and rubs out distance, where light makes no shadow and you can’t quite tell where the ground stops and the sky begins, except there…
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14.10: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
The Heist episode #3 Aurelia has three sets of plans open now, her latest computer-science coursework having taught her to distrust anything that pretends to be simple, and she works across the pages with the same excitement she brings to kernels, processes, and hidden structures, pausing only once to curse when two boundary lines refuse…
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13.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #10 (catch-up with all episodes here) The next morning I sit at the kitchen table eating strawberries and cream for breakfast while the neighbour’s cat stares through the screen door with the patient outrage of a creature expecting staff. It knows this house better than I do, hooks one claw beneath…
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10.10: Stream of Consciousness
A Stream of Consciousness about Familiar I’m sitting on a cold bench beneath an umbrella and a tree half-stripped by the autumn wind off Pevensey Bay, while the world runs silver at the edges — it’s like listening to a familiar voice; I was born where it rains, though people born to it rarely bother…
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08.10: Memory of a Spare Key
The Memory of a Spare Key I am eight, which is very grown up, old enough for my own front-door key. Happy birthday, Mum says, dropping itinto my palm. Keys are power. I know this from the way they danceheavy on chains, keeping time against my father’s belt, from the way grown-ups wear them like…
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07.10: A Six – SSC&B Alcove
The Heist: episode 2 “Here, let me.” Aurelia, the nervous poet, unfolds the oldest of the building plan, its paper brittle weak at the creases, enlarged until the lines blur into something between architecture and confession, then taps one narrow rectangle behind the rear rooms.
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06.10: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #9 (catch-up with all episodes here) Episode 9 Dead Men Don’t Drown Clive receives me in the basement office beneath his terraced house, one hand resting on the walking stick beside his chair and the other holding a book against his chest as though it has weight enough to steady him.…
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04.10: The Distance Back
The Distance Back While my little boat moves on its moorings,the day passes in mistand pine-green,and somewhere between the waterand the trees,childhood returns. The world is wide again.Trees grow touch-close to heaven, and in the crystal of the waterthe moon is comforted. There is wind in my earsand birdsfind their perches again, and for a…
