Apparently invisible to everyone but me and swinging a plastic shopping bag from Wong The Grocers, a large, dark-skinned, curly-haired man walked past me on a busy Lima avenue. He was naked. He was in no hurry. No one turned, the pedestrian traffic ignored him so completely he may well have been an illusion. The
garbage can juice smoky plastic blinds piled up on the sidewalk blood under an old trestle bridge graffiti the only positive color parking lots filled with mattresses broken baby cribs used condoms and baby shoes someone raked into a pile scattered bricks and plywood in the weeded lots dead animals decomposing tossed salads of grime
Cabin in deep forest home alone in upstairs flat. Final fifteen minutes midday movies creepy music. Young woman older guy or younger shonky lover the ending won’t be pretty. He arrives by car by lift by open window music heavy light but always ominous. The car gravels to the cabin door the upstairs door is
Standing at base camp in the dark of early night watching this huge cockroach not even donning an oxygen tank about to climb to the summit of Mount Everest and off it goes. Easily scaling the rough trunk terrain the breaks in the track the sudden death – to you or me fast very fast.
Hot sun, cloudless sky. As far the eye sees, flat empty plain. The track threads its lonely way to the shimmering horizon. The merciless sun drums the mulga bush. On one side of the endless track, a homestead slowly crumbling into dust. Roof long since caved in, snapped and rotten timbers for an occasional magpie
I was dapping through the archives 21st century, olden days, when I came across this cryptic note, ‘Seven thousand tigers left’. But before my birth they’d all been killed. Dad says, ‘Stick to generic brands, son’, so when the food tube came I read the label, what a shock, ‘Some ingredients are natural. ‘ I
Sun sets. Cloud tips gold. Silver exhaust jets upward through the blue. Sun’s rays fade. Nodding yachts silently dip their masts. Water surface scuds a fond farewell. Sea gulls almost now departed. Mum’s framed image propped up in the front seat, takes a gentle general salute. Shiraz, Fine Romance, Gemini 4, in place at berths,
Five children died one summer under this roof. Some epidemic—we don’t know. Cholera, Typhoid, scarlet fever, the ordinary Hard measles. Their small tombstones Up the road enclosed by wrought iron, Names eroding from granite. When the old rafters creak in winter storms Or the narrow stairs cry out beneath our footsteps, It might be the
He caught a snook on a line trailed behind our boat. It flailed in the cockpit bottom Airless, vacant-eyed but still alive. He bashed it with a winch handle. Its blood splashed his socks, the cockpit lockers. There is salt water in my eyes. I ask “Who is this man with the weapon?” He tells
home is where the psychologist asks I tap my chest the textbook answer a hollow sound an echo of furniture stolen when I wasn’t looking a problem of the heart the cardiologist says as I collapse upon the treadmill the echocardiogram detects rotting wood crumbling brick but what about those bumps in the night such
