Crazy Jeannie and Pleasant Terry finally got married again. Fair play to them. But, somewhere, somehow, along the way, in exchanging names twice, they confused each other’s nicknames, so that he, at last, found her, pleasant, and she, him, eventually, crazy. The actual details of how, or why, this confusion occurred are obscure. That’s … Continue reading Unexpected Butterfly.
She retreated an inch within and the piss porcelain and wet paper towels and the shit littered tiles and her size seven boot, printing damp jam to the door of the lavatory where she found herself, all seemed suddenly quite salubrious. But she wouldn't take a piss in there. Breathed out, rubbed her arms, rubbed … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [v]
It started to rain, so I dripped into The Eight Kings. The usual liquid-lunchers, afternoon boozers, the work-shy, the free. The knock-off merchants, too, and the old. The two-for-one crowd with the pushy pushchair. I could hear Snoyle laughing it up with the bookie boys behind me. They were playing a game of cards. Far too … Continue reading The Definitive Slide.
Each minute thumbed hours' rumour and into the numbered dark she tumbled. The tin boy rubbed his tin ribs until he tired of this, then he rose. He gave her the sleepy eyed fingers, as cast off, as discard, as hex. He wore penned pentagrams on his palm, shook his head on her and went. … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [iv]
He waited a while longer, but he saw no return. He got out from under and he went upstairs. He laid in the bath and rolled another cigarette from an ashtray collection. The mirror steamed and rain drummed the thin glass in the skylight. When the water lost its heat, he climbed out, dried himself and … Continue reading The Table.
It is a gorse-yellow and golden dawn over Penn Beacon. Fresh rush and suck of the shingle beneath the shallow lap waves as they reach, keel and recoil. We roll the boat from the low trailer into the sea. Ffooks and Farrow, his cousin, on one side, Sean and I on the other. When we … Continue reading Five in the lapstrake.
