Zombie
Zombie Don’t let the legends mislead you; we’re keen on personal hygiene. I shower every day, sometimes twice. I can tell you a thing or two about showers. I have eaten the flesh of millions, rejoiced in the sweet taste of blood, following orders from above, a mere instrument without guilt. Look, I am moving […]
Bloodline
Streaks across a porcelain sink; my father swears at the blade in the bleeding towel. He stands before a mirror, face silvered with soap while I blanch at carnage in the small kitchen. The Ascot roars in my head, fragments of voices, images. Mum tuts in her pinafore, comforts me with toast and tea. Alone, […]
Not Rocket Science
In another universe there may be answers to every awkward question she can ask but, closer to home, How do you really feel? Where were you when I rang? Why are you lying? are merely minor asteroids, conspiring to ambush the hormone-fuelled astronaut. Like a Flying Dutchman, he roams the cosmos looking for that soft […]
Mother Goose Flies to the Moon
After years of grubby underpants her menopausal yearnings turn to escargots. She wanders across France, drinks absinthe in the poshest bistros, squandering the kids’ inheritance. Father sullen in his garden shed meditates on worms and broccoli while Mother and her dodgy knees dance on table-tops to tarantellas twice a night in downtown Napoli. Partnered by […]
Slow Down the Years
Slow down the years. They fly as fast as arrows. Four score gone. And ten more winters swallowed by a past infertile with unanswered prayer. Savour those shining seconds when we share a breath. They fade so fast as age succumbs to death’s cold stare. Red-eyed with watching News at 10 we checklist errors from […]
Foreigners
The Russian trundles a wooden barrow through East End streets. I sit astride a hundred watches as down the narrow alley ways to Petticoat Lane, we ride the jarring cobbles. I remember my zada’s look of quiet pride. He lives with booba Sarah’s temper, their house a brick link on a bend opposite the church […]
Almost Extinct
Trotsky is living in my garden shed, a long trip from Mexico to Altrincham, a refuge from ice picks, machine guns, the persecution of Stalinists. Trotsky is pleased that Stalin is dead. The Miraculous Georgian was a pygmy, he says, the murderer of Bolshevism and World Revolution. Putin’s learnt a lot from him, he says. […]
Larkin About
Even so distant, I can taste the grief, a box of teak, a box of sandalwood, the eye can hardly pick them out down stucco sidestreets. What are days for? Like the train’s beat, the horns of morning, to wake and hear the cock. Within the dream you said They fuck you up, your mum […]
Beyond Here
Occasionally, dragons appear in the west blood red on flags as a symbol of defiance but, if only we could find just one bone, it might contain enough DNA to revive the entire species and claim independence. Of course, dragons do have a bad reputation, eating English maidens and such, deserving their gory dispatching by […]
Travel Brochure
I flick the pages, wonder if a tour of Hell with Virgil as a guide would go down well. A circle every day, full board, surprise old friends and chat; there’s nothing wrong with that. And all that suffering and shit! Better than a thousand sermons. Yes, a trip into the depths might do us […]