writer | editor | artist
The advertisement called for a tall man, to work in a ‘small close nit cafe’. She imagined this lice-ridden giant reaching up to the high shelves in the café, and wondered who had put things up so high in the first place. Perhaps it was one of the curiously mixed gender staff – those polymorphously-perverse…
What are you doing this summer? I’ll be getting in some time on the beach: sun baking, swimming and surfing. I’ll also be facilitating an awesome 10-day short story workshop through the McGregor Summer School. Lots of workshopping of your stories! Writing races! Chocolate! Bunnies! Ok, so maybe not so much with the bunnies. But still –…
It was my sister who came, down from the mountain, when the rest of them refused. I hadn’t seen her in ten or eleven years, but she was largely unchanged. ‘Come home,’ she said, kissing my cheek. ‘I can’t,’ I said, kissing hers in return. My groom was sleeping by the fire. His long hind…
They stood just inside the doorway, wrapping themselves in coats and scarves. Finally, the grandmother grasped the young girl and pulled her close, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘One kiss is yours,’ she said. ‘The other is for your husband.”I don’t have a husband,’ said the girl. Her grandmother buttoned her coat and opened the door….
I met this girl in the library. I liked her instantly; of course I liked her! A girl like that is better than cake.Her father was ‘in real estate’, which at first I assumed meant that he was a realtor, but later realised meant he was rich. So rich he didn’t really work at all,…
If she was in the bathroom crying, well that was fine with him. The sound of the shower running was a soothing, almost complete one. It allowed him to concentrate on watching the eggs boil. What had he said wrong, anyway? That it was just as well. It was. The child had been … wrong….
There was no trace of their having passed. None of the obvious ones, anyway. No crushed circle of grass; no broken branch to mark the way. The trees bore no aura of attentiveness or alarm. There was, perhaps, a fraint trace of her perfume, already fading. The scent of rope and leather. A heated wash…
I wanted a wife and so, like a fool, I wished for one. I thought but did not say, even if she is a bird. Who is it that listens for the wish the heart makes, and skews it so? My wife, when she came, was, of course, a bird. I found her on the back…
When the war was over, I thought I was done with grieving. Don came home and, though he wasn’t quite the man I’d seen off two years earlier, he was still my Don. I just had to look a little harder to see him sometimes. Or tease him a little more before he’d shuck off…
She is at home now, trimming the hedges or raking leaves from the small, square lawn. She may be reading, or contemplating writing a poem. She may be tucked up on the green chair, headphones in her ears, fingerless gloves on her hands, working in her notebook. I like to think of her this way;…