very faintly.

      the wardrobe in the corner, high, not quite to the ceiling. and, one night, napoleonic, a guardsman, there, crouched.   black boots to his chin. arms wrapped around his knees. brass buttons, gold braid, red tunic. dust marks brushed the evening.   sabre, trapped. scabbard, palmed and yellow skin. he is speaking the french language … Continue reading very faintly.

everything unpainted

  unfolded sheets and cornered pages, cobalt, rising from the blanket, found a world within the drawer -   everything unpainted.   the velour shadow of the curtain, quiet and thin and barely moving, bows before the wounded evening -   everything unpainted.      

Mirror 9 – JMW Turner [Shields, on The Tyne, 1823] postcard.

Lunch was a joyless chore in South Shields. The allowed hour was passed in that miserable and stifled staff room of P. Marsk Hairdressing, where the legend We Make You Look Good - that irritating and irksome italicised 'Good' - bearing down erroneously from the brown wall behind him, into him, through his thinning crown, his dimming mind, … Continue reading Mirror 9 – JMW Turner [Shields, on The Tyne, 1823] postcard.