Issue 14 by Alliterati

Issue 14. Second Edition

Dear Readers, Welcome to the second edition of the 14th issue of Alliterati (we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think the last edit was up to scratch, since you ask). Times are changing here at Alliterati, with the disappearance of some of our veteran editors and the arrival of new editors. Preparations are now being made for the publication of our 15th Issue. Admittedly, we werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t at the top of our game in the last publication of the fourteenth issue. We misspelt names alongside a whole soup of formatting and editorial errors. Since then we have taken a little holiday which gave us time to restructure and refresh ourselves. This time around, we promise to do a better job in giving our artists and writers the quality coverage that they deserve. Needless to say we are going to strike back better than ever in the upcoming issues, so be prepared for a new era of Alliterati Magazine. Enjoy! THE ALLITERATI EDITORS Where to find us:

Facebook- facebook.com/alliterati Twitter- @AlliteratiMag www.alliteratimagazine.com Email: e d i t o r @ a l l i t e r a t m a g a z i n e . c o m

FRONT COVER ARTWORK: GARDEN (Photograph), By JUSTYNA BELKEVIC

MEDIUM 5 REBECCA FARR â&#x20AC;&#x153;My practice, on the surface plays upon strange collisions. The workings of the lens and the camera as apparatus is a recurring and important aspect that enables exploration into the complexities involved of taking on the role of artist, model and viewer at the same time. The presence of my own body within the work is crucial; allowing for experimentation of autobiographical material originating from a collision of Buddhist meditation experience, and my own religious upbringing and experience of death and grief. Not only challenging considered forms of performance, video and writing but also induces a strong enquiry into understanding the role of the female body and artist, and its ability to control, engage and impose on the viewer. Combining conflicting themes of sexuality and death whilst entering into, on a certain level, the ambiguous realm of private and public.â&#x20AC;? WATCH THE COMPLETE VIDEO:

https://vimeo.com/81381158

3. Garden, Photograph- Justyna Belkevic (ART) 4-5. Medium- Rebecca Farr (ART) 7-12. Confessions- Chloe Spence 13. Blind Man- J.S.MacLean 13. Vortex- Laura MacLeod 14-15. Mr Fox Series- Alice McDonald (ART) 16-23. The Earthworm- Rosemary Collins 23-.The 25th Letter- Changming Yuan 24-25. Untitled Prints- Maddy Venus (ART) 26. Rug- Mohan Rana 27. Why It Is Has To Be This Way- Steve Klepetar 28. Tilikum- Emma Whitehall 29. Lucifer- Leonidas Pollakis 30-33. Untitled- Javier Rodriguez Lozano (ART) 34-39. The Last Pie Champion- Nicola Owen 40-41. Untitled Pieces- Alice Jones (ART) 42. Apostasy- Paridah Agarwal 43. Vision Kiln- Steve Klepetar 44-45. Golden Inferno- James Linton 45. Working Class- Jessica Thompson 46. All Clear- Julie Hogg 47. Bird Festival With Brandi- Zachary Hamilton (ART) 48. Moth Nest, Sculpture- Hannah Scully (ART) 49. Winter in Damascus- Antony Owen 50. Untitled- Jessica Thorsby (ART) 51-53. Too Little, Too Late- Chloe Spence

CHLOE SPENCE I’m not writing this to prove my innocence.

I don’t need to. I know I’m innocent.

They’ll never believe me – and, even if they did, it wouldn’t help. They’d only send me back, back to where I was before.

The only thing I find more despicable than this – this place, this pathetic excuse for a life I’m living – is what came before.

I was imprisoned long before I was actually in prison. Here, at least, I know where I stand. That beats the illusion of freedom any day.

“This isn’t a prison, Emily.”

Prison guards in nurses’ uniforms, weariness masquerading as patience.

You don’t rise to the bait. They told you to write, so you’re writing.

From what I can remember, I’ve been in prison my whole life. I don’t know what I did to deserve this – to deserve them. All day, every day, they haunted me – sunrise to sunset, the breaking of dawn to sunlight’s final surrender. Often the only markers I’d see, shut up in that box of the room. Now, even they have been taken away from me, but at least I’m safe – safer, as safe as I can ever be on this planet. We have few windows in prison, as if physically removing us from the outside world simply wasn’t alienating enough. The pathetic little square in my bedroom serves only to show off yet more of the prison, to make it appear never-ending – grey upon grey upon grey.

I didn’t like my old room. Who would? It was dark and claustrophobic and reeked of damp. I didn’t want to stay there – closed off from the world, trapped so rigidly inside of myself. It gets lonely in here...I can’t even begin to tell you how lonely I was. How lonely I am.

But I had to stay put. It was safer that way – not safe (slowly but surely I’ve realised how inherently unobtainable a goal that is), but safer. Sylvia Plath was only half right when she wrote that the true incarcerator is not the room but the self. The whole world was my prison; only through the most soul-destroying solitude could I begin to see an escape route.

And, of course – like all great artists – Sylvia Plath was a hypocrite, urging her devotees to Get Out and Do Things while doing all she could – pills, car crashes and carbon monoxide – to leave the Prison of the Self via the Prison of the World.

CONFESSIONS

Ernest Hemingway, Anne Sexton and Kurt Cobain.

(You googled ‘celebrity suicides’ once; it was strangely comforting.)

I’m not sure what it is that any of us or our lives have in common, mind. They’re all crazy talented, but I don’t think that’s it. My exceptionality comes solely from my insanity; aside from that, I think I’m pretty average.

Sometimes I think everybody’s in prison, but some people are just too stupid to realise it. Brains and fame, Kate Moss’ face and Bill Gates’ bank account are all very well, but there are few people on this Earth I envy more than the truly dim-witted.

Your eyes skim critically over the last few paragraphs, and you draw a line underneath to signify moving on. This is meant to be about you, for goodness sake – not Humanity 101, the Emily Slater edition. (What a depressing read that would be.)

So. Moving on.

I may not like being here – understatement of the century! – but I did have to get out of there. They wouldn’t let me be.

Tapping away at your door, constantly – knock, knock, knock, nag, nag, nag.

“We’re worried about you, Emily.”

Like that’s supposed to change things somehow – like I’m not bloody worried about me too. You know they’re not bad people. You know they care. You just wish they wouldn’t bother. I have enough to deal with as it is without them throwing their whiny, disappointed little snipes into the mix.

“We just wish you’d talk to us.” “And I just wish you’d leave me the hell alone. Looks like we can’t always get what we wish for after all.” Like all great artists, she realised that the two are inextricable.

The sound of voices and movement distracts you, your head jolting up in surprise. It sounds alarmingly like the establishment’s awakening, the hustle and bustle of morning preparations growing louder and closer by the second.

Surely it can’t be time already...? You’re finishing last night’s diary entry, having pleasantly surprised yourself by actually managing to fall asleep halfway through it. Channelling heart and

CONFESSIONS

soul into paper and ink is tiring work, it seems.

You woke up probably half an hour or so beforehand, switched on the light and dived straight back into writing, paying no heed to the garish pink alarm clock on your bedside table. You assumed it was the middle of night – reasonably enough, given that you haven’t slept for more than two consecutive hours in years. Most nights, you’re lucky if you get half an hour.

8.32 am. As occasionally, inexplicably happens, you are swarmed by images of The Ordinaries – little children skipping to school while older brothers and sisters lumber lazily behind; teenage girls loitering in bus stops, giggling and chewing gum. Parents speeding off to city work in shiny cars, with shiny hair and big black bags under their eyes – or squeezing into claustrophobic carriages of trains, pounding heads and sweating palms, already longing for the day to be over. Books opened and headphones in, furiously tapping away at Blackberries and forcefully blocking out the outside world.

Well. Not that forcefully. You allow yourself a smile at that thought. You’ve seen better, for sure. On those relatively rare occasions you think of the Ordinaries, you are filled with a confusing concoction of emotions (pity, contempt, nostalgia, envy), that you don’t bother even attempting to make sense of. The therapists would have a field day, but you don’t bother telling them, either. You don’t care what the experts say – you are your mind, you are the ultimate expert on you, and you are surer than sure that some things are simply better left unexplored.

You think you were probably like them once, but it’s difficult to say now – difficult even to care, when you can’t see yourself changing back any time soon. Any time ever.

(Same thing, as far as you’re concerned.)

Once you’re in prison, I think, there’s no going back. It’s an irreversible change, like we learnt about way back in days of yore (early high school Chemistry, to be specific). Cooked eggs, rusting metal and whatever happened to me – whatever happened to Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, They really got to me that day. They didn’t normally (sorry, Mum, sorry, Dad; I do love you, I suppose, but parental disappointment tends to fade into obscurity when you can’t even draw the curtains without fearing for your sanity or your life). I don’t know what was different. I was feeling especially vulnerable, and especially tired. And especially bored – bored of being stuck, stuck in there and stuck inside myself, driving myself crazier and crazier by the day. It might have been safe(r), but it wasn’t healthy.

You needed to get out. You needed to find life, to find people – to find help. Small and insignificant it may be, but a part of you realised (realises?) that.

CONFESSIONS

I gave in. I left.

We all know what happened next. I’m not going to write about it. Not yet. Maybe on the last day, when the pain feels less raw – when the end is nearer.

I’m not writing this to prove my innocence. I’m not even writing this to make you understand, really. I don’t think you ever will. I’m writing this because they told me to write. Because it seems like the done thing – and even fucked up, psychopathic losers like myself like to at least kid themselves they’re trying to do the right thing from time to time.

I’m writing this because I’m bored. Because they told me to write, so maybe if I do, they’ll believe that I’m making progress; maybe they’ll be less inclined to talk, to try and ‘reach me’ if I make them think they already have.

And, honestly – while I’m totally at peace with the fact that I’ll be forgotten soon enough, that I’m not one of that tiny minority destined for Greatness or even for Good Things – I want to leave something behind. Disappearing without a trace might sound romantic, fanciful, but it’s not.

Your solemn soliloquy is rudely interrupted by a loud knock on your door that makes you jump, pen careering across the page and leaving a rather ungraceful line right across your work. You let out a loud sigh of frustration and pull out the last page, crumpling it into a ball and chucking it bin-wards. It reaches its destination just as the door swings open.

“Come along now, Emily.” This woman – Jennifer? You forget their names, would already have forgotten everything and everyone by now if they’d only let you – looks almost matronly, plump body enshrouded in a multi-coloured pinafore. Crazy curls exploding from her head and bouncing around her shoulders, she is wide-eyed and wider-smiled, inexplicably enthusiastic to an extent that seems both out of place and borderline unhinged. Not for the first time, you wonder about the kind of psychological testing people have to undergo in order to work here, and whether it is really vigorous enough. (Or maybe a little insanity helps, sometimes?)

“Come and have some breakfast, love,” she says. Her voice is soft, motherly, and also not for the first time, you feel sort of guilty for inferring she was insane – for projecting your own craziness onto anyone and everyone you meet, like some sick way of consoling yourself.

CONFESSIONS

apparent concern.

“Are you ill, pet?” “Is that a trick question?” Probably Jennifer laughs at that. “Come along now, chuck. If you’re well enough to be smart with me, you’re well enough to eat.” When you still refuse to budge, she switches to Concerned Guardian Mode. “You barely ate any tea either, love. We can’t have you wasting away in here – don’t think Mum and Dad would be too pleased with us if we did, do you?” She doesn’t mention the (only) other person affected – the only one you can actually bring yourself to care about, on those increasingly rare occasions you can bring yourself to care about anything at all.

Figures, you think, presumably even she isn’t stupid or ambitious enough to pretend like his life isn’t a million times better without me.

“Mum and Dad don’t give a shit,” you speak louder than intended and a pair of younger kids being led to breakfast turn to gawp at you, giggling through their fingers. “Language, Emily.”

“They wouldn’t fucking hear it if you’d close the fucking door and leave me the fuck alone,” you point out – reasonably enough, you think, though the look on PJ’s face suggests that she begs to differ. You stare silently at each other for a while, before she loses face and opts for a different tack – The Friend.

If there’s anything more inevitably doomed to failure than the Concerned Guardian, it’s The Friend.

“How’re things with you, Em? I see you’ve been writing in your journal,” she says, tentatively gesturing to the notebook you carelessly shoved to the side on her arrival. The latest addition to your work may now be binned (though, come to think of it, you should really shred that; this kind of place, chances are they wouldn’t even think twice about looking through your rubbish) but it’s still opened a few pages in, revealing your furious scribbles from the night before. You know there’s next to no chance she’d actually read it – she’s too far away, your handwriting’s awful, and she has to at least pretend to honour all that patient confidentiality crap. (And, hell, she only even asked as an excuse to change the subject; you were making her uncomfortable, all that swearing-andstaring stuff.) That doesn’t stop you from shooting her a glare as you reach out and pointedly flip the notebook closed, picking it up and clutching it defensively under the covers.

“Sorry, sorry!” she says quickly. The laughter is forced and nervous now, and you can tell she’s

CONFESSIONS

just dying to check her watch, but she’s still not angry.

God, you wish she was angry.

“It’s private,” you say shortly, and bury your head back under the pillow.

For now. It’s private for now, you add silently. A secret and surprising smile plays upon your lips at the thought. You’ll all get a good long read soon enough, don’t you worry about that.

Probably Jennifer stands and talks to the air for a little while longer. You are aggressively unresponsive, and eventually she leaves. For a long time after that you continue to lie motionless in the dark, hearing nothing but the steady rhythm of your own breathing.

(When you live in a mental hospital – sorry, a children and young person’s therapeutic and psychiatric rehabilitative centre –, you get pretty damn good at blocking out extraneous noise. That or go even madder.)

Only when you are entirely, 110% sure that she is gone and not coming back – until lunchtime, anyway – do you finally resurface, still focusing on breathing in a probably futile attempt to calm yourself down. (Human contact never did bring out the best in you.)

You pull the notebook and pencil from your bedside table, flick to the next page and write today’s date. You don’t bother to salvage the binned ramblings of before. No point; you were getting too off topic anyway. Time to focus.

23.01.2013. Not long now, then.

With a slow, steady inhale and a smile, you underline the date, adding a countdown tally in small letters underneath.

Then you sharpen your pencil, tuck your hair behind your ears and resume your suicide note.

POETRY

Vortex

Blind Man (Thanks to Lucille and Otis Spann)

He listens to wine

Blowing the bubble

for tales of roots

through the ribbed hoop, an expansion,

and scents wet clods

a wobbly blotch parading the vision.

thrown by hooves. Till the burst, a shut eye, a squint, He stares

and one by one the imaginary needles prick

into the wind

and diminish the ascendance.

for the tears and taste of roads.

A hazy rapture of childhood addiction, like skimming stones. To perfect

He wonders

the momentary ebbing strips of circular colours.

what pattern music might shape

The flattened wake surrounding toes

on a warm silk shirt.

and dust, collecting a slippery carpet treading carefully in-between and out.

J.S.MacLean

Laura MacLeod

ROSEMARY COLLINS

Mobile. Antibacterial gel. Apple. Simon tucked the fruit, its waxed red surfacing gleaming in his hall light, next to the other loose items in the inner pocket of his briefcase, and checked the time. He’d impulsively bought a numberless watch for his twenty-ninth birthday present, intrigued by the small challenge of working out the time from the angle its black hands were splayed at on its steel-tinted face. He particularly liked it when they told him it was ten past eight and he was well in time for work. He took his car keys off their hook, set the alarm and stepped out into the soft rain. It splattered on his dark blue jacket as he hurried to his car.

He was glad he’d allowed the extra time when he got stuck in a traffic jam on the main road out of town. The column of cars stretched in front of him like one solid steel block. Realising he wasn’t going anywhere for a few minutes, he allowed his attention to switch from driving to actually understanding the Today programme as it streamed out of his radio. The rain was gushing down now. His wipers beat across the misted-up screen, opening a clear streak in their wake. Two girls, around fourteen years old and wearing matching grey uniforms, flew through it. They must have decided to chance running across the road, since the cars weren’t moving. He could see the first girl’s mouth stretched open in laughter at her own daring, but the drumming rain and the radio drowned her out as if she were gagged. Her hair was blonde, not black, but long enough for the wind to blow it about, like it used to do with Laura’s.

The memory jabbed at his heart, and he forced himself to picture his work: the row of screens and the whiteboard on the left wall. I’ll wipe it clean, first thing. He’d erase yesterday’s figures in one smooth movement like the swish of his windscreen wipers and know that he was OK. He longed for his desk the same way he used to long for his clearing in the wood.

He’d needed the clearing particularly badly that day. And it had started off so well, because he’d got to practically sit next to her in Maths. When he saw the desk between Claire and the aisle was empty, and Laura was sitting next to Claire, he’d wanted to sit there, then thought he’d better slink into his usual place by the window, then felt ashamed. How pathetic are you? You can sit anywhere in this classroom. Go on. Do it. Laura hadn’t said hello or seemed to notice him – although Claire had stared at him and moved her pencil case so it didn’t cover the crack between their desks – and when Mr. Gregory had finished demonstrating how to calculate a circle’s circumference, they’d both joined in the low static of chatter in the classroom. He’d written answers without caring if they were correct, while straining to hear what Laura was talking about. But Claire was in full flow – “I can’t believe she’s set us an essay already.”

THE EARTHWORM

“Don’t forget to write the number of the exercise at the top and underline it,” Mr. Gregory called, lifting his head from his marking. “I shouldn’t have to remind you. You’re in Year 10, for God’s sake!”

The static faded while he spoke, then rose again. Claire picked up her monologue as if she’d never been interpreted. “Oh my God, she is such an old witch.” He realised he was running his thumb over a swollen acne spot on his jaw. Stop that. Don’t call attention to it. He leaned forward.

“Laura?” He almost choked on her name. She didn’t turn around. “Laura -” he leaned over Claire – “do you want to borrow my ruler?”

“I’m OK, thanks.” She twisted round to face him but kept gazing at her blank exercise book page. She ran one hand over her long black hair as if she was trying to smooth down the loose strands. “I mean, he said we should underline -” “She said she’s OK,” Claire snapped. Laura giggled.

He didn’t have any other classes with Laura, but for the rest of the day, he heard that giggle in his head. It jabbed at him, and he could only soothe the pain by imagining his clearing, where he could sit on the earth and concentrate on the silence until it was inside his head and blocked out the memories – of the way his Mum slumped on the sofa all day watching the shopping channel and didn’t even look when he thrust his GCSE options form in front of her to sign, of Darren pounding him on the head with his own book bag and crowing “Nerd!” When he headed through the gates at the end of the day he kept his gaze on the trees on the pavement. They looked like half-starved animals in their council cages, but they reminded him of the trees in his wood, which grew tall and thick enough to hide behind.

Simon hurried forwards. Everyone around him was groaning at the cold. He didn’t know why he was the only one wearing a coat. Coats were forbidden - it was one of those rules that everyone except him knew without them being written or spoken. As usual no one said goodbye to him. As he walked further away from school, the tide of teenagers thinned out into little gaggles of friends, then a few solitary walkers who kept as far apart as possible, then just him, turning right into the industrial estate. “Simon!”

Her voice was like an electric shock running through him. He jumped and spun around – like a total nerd - and saw Laura. The wind was snatching up her long black hair, her 5p sized hoop earrings were swinging as she ran, and he could see a row of perfectly white teeth as she smiled.

THE EARTHWORM

“Hey, Simon.” She came to a stop beside him. Her face was flushed from running, covering her usual freckles.

“Oh. Hi, Laura.”

“Look -” her hand touched his coat sleeve so lightly that it didn’t reach his arm – “I just wanted to say, I’m so sorry about Maths.”

“What, this morning? That wasn’t your fault.”

“Claire was being really rude.”

“It’s fine.” Then why didn’t you tell her that? Why did you giggle? He tried to ignore those thoughts – after all, she was saying sorry, she was here, talking to him. Don’t mess this up. Say something clever to her...

“Where are you going, anyway? I thought your place was in the other direction.”

“Just going for a walk.” He didn’t mean to tell her about it, but he was desperate to say a full sentence to her and it was all he could think of, so it spilled out. “There’s a wood up that way, well a bit of a wood, I like going to.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. Going for a walk? How middle-aged is that? She thinks you’re weird. But then Laura said “Cool,” with a trill in her voice that didn’t sound sincere. It was better – a sort of cheerful insincerity that was almost flirting.

“D’you want to come?” he blurted out. “Sure.” That trill stayed in her voice. She followed him past the newly opened computer store. Its front window was covered in ‘Massive Christmas sale now on’ posters. In the gap between them stood a tree, its white plastic bristles sticking out like those of a scrubbing brush. Laura gave the same giggle as she had in Maths.

“What?” Is she laughing at me?

“Not much point in that, is there? Getting a computer for Christmas this year?”

“What do you mean, not much point? I’d want one.”

“You know. They’re all going to go mad with the Millenium bug, aren’t they?” “I don’t know. I mean, the programmers wouldn’t exactly leave in a bug that can make planes fall out of the sky.” They went round the back of the computer shop, past metal doors with a green Fire Assembly Point sign on them.

“So what, we should just trust the people in charge to get everything right, and we don’t need to do anything? Because that always

works out so well, doesn’t it?” Her voice was back to normal. He wished it wasn’t.

THE EARTHWORM

“I just meant -”

“Oh, it’s fine.” They turned down a rough dirt path, with a wall of trees on one side and steel railings, their spear-sharp ends designed to rip into thieves’ hands, on the other. “Are there any animals in here?”

“Err – sometimes I’ve seen birds. Don’t know what kind.”

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed, and they were both silent as the path wound away from the fence into the woods. The coppery tree leaves were rotting on the ground, squelching under their feet, leaving every twig on the trees visible. They were tangled together, so complex yet precise that they looked like a geometric diagram inked onto the solid grey sky.

They came to the clearing. The path didn’t continue at the other end. Instead the trees crowded together, blocking the way. “Is this it?” “Yeah.” “Why’d you come here?” “For the quiet.” “Oh.”

Normally he’d sit down, his back resting uncomfortably on the big chestnut tree’s gnarled bark, but he didn’t want to make himself shorter than Laura. She was watching him. He’d always thought her eyes were green, but now he wondered if the colour was closer to grey. He stared so long at them, trying to decide, that she turned away, gazing absently at the trees. She raised a hand to smooth her hair.

“Remember primary school? Looking for bugs?” He bent and turned over one of the shoe-sized limestone rocks that sat on the ground. “Yeah.”

There was an earthworm coiled under the stone, its ridges like copper rings. He’d once read that an earthworm has ten hearts, working together in five pairs. He didn’t know how reliable that was. “Eeewww!” Laura looked down at the worm and crinkled her freckled nose in disgust. Simon thought of a way to make things right again. He stamped down and swiveled his foot. When he raised it the earthworm was a brown splatter.

“How’s that?” He tried smiling at her. Her nose was still screwed up.

THE EARTHWORM “No, that’s even grosser.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He tried to force a smile at her over his growing panic that things were going so badly, but she looked away, still smoothing down her hair, even though it was smooth and glossy. “It’s – uh, it’s OK. I’d better go home, though.” “Really?”

“Yeah. Homework. And it might rain. Er- thanks.” She was already turning and heading back up the path, with the same walk she had when she was late for class but couldn’t run in corridors.

After she’d gone he noticed for the first time that he could still hear the traffic sounds from the main road, like the roar of waves on a beach, and that there was a cigarette box half buried in the earth, with only its mud-smeared label visible.

That evening he sat at the desk, surrounded by a golden circle of lamplight as perfect as the ones in the textbook. It lit up his homework and held the bunk beds and the torn-out Page 3s Robbie had stuck on their walls in shadow. He traced a circle with his compass. That giggle had come back, running round and round his head, but when he tried to imagine going to the woods to escape it, he couldn’t.

He heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and Robbie burst into the room. “Hey, asshole.” He punched Simon on the shoulder, making his compass streak across the page so the circle had a balloon string. Simon dug the eraser out of his pencil case and rubbed at it, watching grey dust fleck the page. “Why’s the light off?” “I’m doing my homework.”

“Do you have to see in the dark for that? Christ, I’m glad I gave that shit up.” The last words were muffled as Robbie pulled his Nirvana T-shirt over his head. His shadow flickered crazily on the wall. Simon stared fiercely at his homework to avoid looking, but he still seemed to see his brother’s chest, so much hairier than his. Pi equals 3.14. Not exactly – he wished they were allowed to use calculators. “It’s not shit.”

“You can be bored in school for nothing, or you can go to work, earn money to be bored, and spend it getting laid.” He was searching through the dirty clothes which spilled all over the floorboards. “I know which one I like better.” He picked up a white shirt. “Me and Shannon’re going to see a movie tonight. Fight Club. Love a girl who loves blood and guts. Wanna come?”

“I thought it was a date.”

THE EARTHWORM “Ah, you can tag along, squirt.” He was buttoning up the shirt now. “Seriously, better out there than in here tonight. Dad’s pissed off. He found out about the money.”

“I’m fine.” “You sure?” “I’m fine.” “OK, okay. Sheesh. Well, see you.”

He headed out, the floorboards creaking under his feet, leaving the door hanging open behind him. Simon ran to close it and sat back down. 2 x 3 x 3.14 = He could hear the bathroom tap running and Robbie whistling tunelessly, then yelling “Fuck!” as he cut himself shaving. Then his Dad’s voice started below, rumbling like the traffic roar, like the chatter in the classroom, over his mother’s mewls of protest and the shopping channel’s bouncy music. He switched the light off so he was completely in the dark, and tried to go back to the wood. But he couldn’t. Instead of seeing the bare twigs, he saw the cigarette packet. Instead of feeling chestnut tree’s bark, he felt the crush of his boot against the worm. Instead of hearing the quiet, he heard the traffic and her wobbly-voiced Thanks and her giggle. It was the one good thing he’d had and it was spoiled, she’d spoiled it. He clenched his hand hard around the compass. He had to un-spoil it somehow, had to get it back, had to get her back.

As the compass point dug into his palm, he knew. And he knew that, for sneering at the thing that mattered most when he tried to show it to her, for laughing at him, she deserved it. *

Corporal Simon Davies adjusted his headphones as a crackling voice listed numbers in his ears. The screens in front of him, arranged in two rows of five, showed maps, blue lists of statistics. Everything that wasn’t already calculated could be worked out on the clean whiteboard. There was no mess here.

No need to run excuses through his head like the stories at the bottom of the TV news screen, each sounding weaker and more obviously fake than the last - Do you want to come back to the wood? I found this cool thing in the wood. Come with me to the wood – before he’d finally settled on I’ve found a fox den in the wood, d’you want to see it? No glancing anxiously at the computer shop window as they walked past, hoping that no one was watching them from behind the sales signs, while hiding his anxiety from her. He gripped the plastic controller, so much smoother than the limestone rock. Its ridges and cracks, moving so slowly that he could study them all his lifetime and not see them change, had pressed into his skin as his fist tightened around it in the moment of hesitation before he slammed it down into that black hair.

THE EARTHWORM

“Ah, you can tag along, squirt.” He was buttoning up the shirt now. “Seriously, better out there than in here tonight. Dad’s pissed off. He found out about the money.”

“I’m fine.” “You sure?” “I’m fine.” “OK, okay. Sheesh. Well, see you.”

As the compass point dug into his palm, he knew. And he knew that, for sneering at the thing that mattered most when he tried to show it to her, for laughing at him, she deserved it. *

THE EARTHWORM + POETRY It had taken four blows. Odd that he could remember the precise number, but not any sounds. There must have been screaming, but in his memories it was as silent as the black-and-white image of a shoebox-shaped house on the screen in front of him, and as the room itself. Not even Barker was breaking the hush – he was sitting next to Simon, but was too absorbed in his own screen to taunt him - “If you’ve never flown in a machine, you’re not really in the Force.”

In the quiet, he could stay alert but relaxed. No need for the pounding heart, the worry about whether he could hold his face in an expressionless mask, as he passed the two policemen outside the school office and the four reporters holding cameras and microphones in the school car park. Not that it had even been necessary, in the end. They’d interviewed Claire four times, but never him. The house was now garlanded in the white sight lines of the drone’s optics ball. He jerked his controller forward, knowing that there would be no flowers left at this house, and so no need to buy a blue teddy bear with a white heart on its chest and drop it among them.

He took the antibacterial gel from its place next to his apple in front of the screens. He squeezed a transparent blob onto his palm and rubbed his hands together until it disappeared and they were damp and smelled sharply of nothing.

THE 25th LETTER

You are literally haunted by [y] Yes, simply because it contains all the secrets of Your selfhood: your name begins with it You carry y-chromosome; you wear Y-pants; both your skin and heart are Yellowish; your best poem is titled Y; you seldom seek the balance between Yin and yang; you never want to be a Yankee, but you yearn to remain as Young as your poet son; in particular You love the way it is pronounced, so Youthfully, as a word rather than a letter to Yell out the human reasons; above all Your soul is a seed blown from afar, always Y-shaped when breaking the earth to greet spring

Changming Yuan

UNTITLED PRINTS 24

MADDY VENUS 25

POETRY

Rug (For Mother)

Dust, the dust of ages – Which I never stopped to count – Has covered the rug, a membrane Turning transparent in light And without retrospection I gaze on the past Without a memory, not even yours On some sunlit corner

On that dust gathering rug The embroidery alters The colours are bleached and muddy pale The breath of autumn’s eternally withering elms Vanishes In those dying impressions the shadows of streets From the past, have risen No more a rug, it has become my diary And thus have I lived my life Tied to a day, a revolving ring

Now it is no more a rug It has become the soil My mother says so

MOHAN RANA Translation from Hindi by Arup Chatterjee

POETRY

Why It Has to Be This Way

Because somewhere drums are beating on a hot night with no stars. Because you have lost the thread of your mouth and your sighs are trapped in the hollows of your thin cheeks. Because the doctor is waiting with his hair combed back, because in Africa the children are still starving, because those rights are enshrined in the Constitution, because the football team needs those days for practice. Because in fifteen minutes, your next appointment will appear brimming with some crazy hope and eyes that juggle the light. Because someone will lie down beside you, even in the cold, even if your back continues to ache. Because this might be a contradiction in terms, because anything multiplied by zeroâ&#x20AC;Ś well, you get the idea, because poverty needs incentives, because wealth rains down from a mountain of salt, because of nothing, because of fish, and oil and baleen whales. STEVE KLEPETAR

POETRY

TILIKUM.

The applause fades behind me, the doors boom shut, and I am alone again, in my little metal-and-water prison. All is dark.

I drift aimlessly on currents that do not exist outside of my own mind, buffering gently off the walls, before coming to a slow stop; breathing in the stale air. The long hours begin.

My captors only open my door these days for me to take to the stage - to dance and jump and bow for my supper - before ushering me back into this box as quickly as possible. Even the ones that once made small, faltering attempts at communication no longer make so much as eye contact. They are wary. I do not blame them.

I would say I am in disgrace, but they disgraced me long before I disgraced myself.

I honestly have no idea what joy my captors get out of the games we play - a youngster would be embarrassed to be seen cavorting in such a way. Yet they bare their teeth and honk their commands day in, day out. You can never tell what goes on in their little pink heads.

The water feels flat. Dead. Everything is dark in my banishment, dark and lukewarm. Yet, in these long hours spent floating in space, a memory flickers at the back of my mind. Of the moon reflecting off dark waves - waves of fresh, living water that rushed past you, cold and endless. Of other black-and-white shapes that nuzzled and dove beneath you, propped you up for your first breath - that didn’t scream at you in foreign tongues, didn’t tear and batter at you and stain the water with your blood. I remember my mother. I remember her love, her shape, her call. At the last, I remember her screams.

Then I remember fear, pain, hunger, humiliation, and loneliness…anger. An anger that spends days, weeks, months, years boiling deep in the pit of my stomach like bile, but sometimes…sometimes. I remember. My captors abducted me, imprisoned me, starved me, patronised and commanded me. But, in the end, they are only dumb animals. And they are so, so tiny. I am suspended in shadowy water, alone. Staring at water lap off the four walls. The mind wanders. I bide my time.

EMMA WHITEHALL

*Tilikum is a male Orca kept at SeaWorld, Florida. As of February 2010, he is responsible for the deaths of three people.

POETRY

LUCIFER The city lights of Pireaus die like embers scattered on the floor; dying in their pseudo-light upon the morning’s door. Across that gulf of wrinkly sea made from Aegean tears, we hear the city of the morn mourn of chanticleer.

And yet the bells strike in threes and seven, and lo and behold! their hell and their heaven awaits.

The sun breaks out from the east through the green-grey of the Hymetean peaks; and, peaking from the silken covers of its slumber, it peers, smoldering, all-round with an interminable hunger and, boiling from its insatiate need, its molten orange seeths into a heady flame, casting itself out unto the mundane for nothing more than to stampede into ether, from the nether, for its passion to sustain— stretching out rays of warmth for lunar beauty to attain.

Lucifer is borne upon this world thus: with envy etched upon his heart, he is thrust, with arms outstretched like a hound after a rabbit, snapping and clenching just so he might catch it. But his hunt is all in vain, for though he Dianna doth claim, His heart shrivels to ashes and darkens like the swollen cloud, Becomes black as pitch and is buried in a shroud, Once he, with sweet caress and tenderness reclaims His prize—his half-self—his ethereal silvered twin; For once he does, he dies—and thus can never win, But be reborn, and relive his torture once again.

Mankind is also borne upon this world thus: Gilt avarice doth their minds infect and rust; Robotic they bustle with the rising sun and hunt the entire day For acceptance, love, and a steady pay; And then, at night, tired and blighted by the fight, They howl at the moon like wolves on a hilltop in the woods, Wailing an ‘if only’ in solemn plaint to their silvered dreams, ideals and goods; But, even with a reply, their hearts peter out in the plight Like embers whose glowing red within wilts into grey and ash without. And, but for the mounting of the sun, would have been snuffed all out.

And yet the bells strike in threes and seven, and lo and behold! their hell and their heaven awaits.

LEONIDAS POLLAKIS

JAVIER.R-L

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION

Nicola Owen

A Monologue for a Mature Lady to perform in the Theatre As She Sees Fit.

Character List MARGARET, a woman in her late sixties. A kitchen table centre stage. MARGARET enters. She is dressed in a simple, elegant black cocktail dress with a fascinator pinned in her coiffed hair and a beaded handbag. She also wears a purple satin sash bearing the legend ‘LORD OF THE PIES’ in gold lettering. There is a healing bruise around her left eye.

MARGARET I see the wind’s getting up again. All it’s been lately is gales and showers. I can’t remember the last nice bit of weather we had. The lawn’s a sea of mud and the only good thing about the winter nights coming in is that Strictly’s back on the telly again. Oh I love a bit of Brucie, I do. I followed him ever since he was at the Palladium. What do points make? Prizes! What do pounds make? Poor people rich! Terry could never abide him and I could never get Terry to dance with me. I always used to have to dance with the kids when we went away. Terry said he never deserved us. He meant it that way. We never had much of a budget on account of Terry’s intermittent appetite for work. Still, I’d get dolled up in me best polyester jumpsuit with me Farrah flick bouncing over me sweaty face and bop on the dance floor while he sat necking his pints and eyeing up the barmaids. There’s nothing says family holiday to me quite like the sight of running mascara. I turned a blind eye, pretended not to notice. That’s what makes a good wife you see. What’s that famous bit of advice again? ‘Maintain dignity in public with your husband. Loud talk or laughter, pointing, running, allowing your skirt to drag or sucking on your parasol handle all show bad manners.’

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION There, the onions scattered over the base and the meat goes over the top. He liked a plain cook did Terry. Frozen pastry, none of that homemade tat. That was his mother’s influence. She told me the night before our wedding that she wouldn’t have him coming home for his lunch or dinner or back under her roof at all so I’d better treat him right or I’d turn out a scorned woman. Well, I was a blushing young bride, almost twenty years old, cherry as yet un-popped. I knew nothing about mothers-in-law or scorned women or Finders frozen foods or murderous, venomous hatred of the human race in general. Only thing I knew how to do was make a nice steak and kidney pie for tea.

He wanted a woman that’d stay at home and take care of him, that made him feel useful as a man. If you’d have met his mother you’d have understood why. So I folded his shirts and ironed his socks and cooked his meals and raised his kids and never asked too many questions.

When your bed of roses becomes a bed of farts all you can do is hold your nose. That’s what my Nana told me.

The kids these days, they haven’t got a clue. In the old days if your telly broke you went and got it fixed. These days they just chuck it out and buy a new one. And he refused point blank to wear a wedding ring. Over my dead body, he said, it’s like putting a collar on a dog. Oh, I knew all this when I married him and on the whole it was a canny, little life. A canny, little life for canny little folk like us.

He’d never indulge my little whims, that led to a few sleepless nights. At one time I remember I had this thing about watercolour painting – because I’d got good marks for art at school - but he just laughed us out of the idea. You’ll never be a Van Gogh, he said, what’s the point? Well, I couldn’t argue. He was very persuasive when he wanted to be, said I had the girls to bring up and I couldn’t be messing on brushes and easels and evening classes and stuff.

The match on Saturday and the pub on Sunday - that was Terry’s idea of a good weekend. I occupied myself well enough. I got a part time job on the sly. Three hours in the corner shop doing the video rentals while he was at the club licking marshmallows off the stripper’s tits all the while thinking muggins here was slaving away over a hot stove. Silly bollocks, he used to call us. That was his pet name for me.

Plenty of salt, no pepper, no spices, a dash of Worcester sauce. Humble pie, that’s what Terry called it. He wasn’t one for irony, poor fella. He was the big man, the pie champion who could down twenty at a time at the local fair to the crowd’s delight. They even got him this sash but it’s been years since he could fit into it. He paid for his exploits with his cholesterol and at the end he couldn’t walk far without having to have a sit down but it made him famous round here and he liked that. “Ey up, Terry,” they’d shout at him, “Ye fat bastard.” He loved it. He felt appreciated. They’ve knocked that on the head now, nobody’s bothered about coming out. It’s a shame.

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION

About the time Terry was living the high life as the Lord Of The Pies I fell off my high horse. It was a knock at the door that did it. I was up a height because Terry had come in pissed and then gone off to a darts match without even giving me a slap on the arse and suddenly there he was, the Ringtons tea lad with his peroxide mullet and his wicker basket brimming full of goodies and a cheeky leer on his face. Want to know what’s in my mystery box, Meg, he’d say. Well, we were never out of teabags and biscuits for a good while after that. And coffee beans and tea caddies and marshmallows and hot chocolate.

Even his mother mentioned it when she lowered herself to call round. Only bit of praise ever passed her lips about me. Do you go to the Kwiksave for these, she says, squinting at a ginger snap, you’re never short of a nice bikky. I get a big package twice a week, I told her, special delivery. It didn’t last long. He was too young and I was too

I was too

He was too young, anyway.

I remember when we used to court. Me and Terry in the Anglia laughing and joking, while his hand was twiddling me nipple like he was trying to tune in The Archers but it never went further than that. Not until you were married anyway.

My eldest, Ruthieie, says to me not long ago, Ma, have you ever felt like you missed out, being married in the sixties and that. I said to her aye, sometimes. I could never, ever have said anything like that to my mother. We were dressy up dolls to her. As long as we smiled and kept it shut we could have what we wanted but one word out of place and there was a riot on.

Then this other day my youngest one Clarice turns round to me and says, “Mam, I’m going to be a burlesque dancer.” “Like a stripper,” I says. “No,” she says, “It’s classier.” “Do you take your clothes off in front of a paying audience?” I say and she goes, “Aye, but tastefully. And my fanny’s mostly covered in sequins.” goes, “Aye, but tastefully. And my fanny’s mostly covered in sequins.” Well, I was dubious but off we go to see the show and our Clarice climbs into this gigantic cocktail glass and starts splashing around and stripping off and I’m praying that there’s no one here that knows us and finally she finishes off by chucking her ouverts into the crowd and flashing her spangly merkin and I find I’m standing up cheering and applauding with the rest of them. I says enjoy yourself while you can because once you’ve popped a couple of kids out ...

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION

She just laughed and said, “I’m doing it for you, Mam.” It’s because of them I’m on the YouTube and the twitter now. Look for blackwidow47. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we’re having a girls night in and watching this documentary, which was a bit blue I have to admit, and then out of nowhere our Ruthie goes, conversational like, I never spit, I always swallow. I says, good for you hinny and I change the channel. I don’t understand modern sex. I don’t know what our kids are doing with it. It’s all fornication and flaps and coming in your face. Then they go, Mam, you should come to a pole dancing class with us. It’ll be a right laugh. I says, are you mad. You don’t know what you’ll catch off them things. Besides, it’s immoral. Our Ruthieie says there’s no such thing these days. I says, well what’s to stop you doing what you want then? Going round robbing and stealing if there’s no morals and our Clarice just smiles and says, Mam, people just know right from wrong these days, you don’t need to go to church to understand the difference. They get that from Terry, that heathen streak. I always ended up on the end of the pew with Glynis Fowler and Alfie Burns crammed in next to me with their shuddering hymn sheets clutched in their claws and overwhelmed with the fumes of piety and halitosis and gin and wondering what the bloody hell I was doing there asking for penance all by myself when I was supposed to have a husband and a family to support me.

I’m a bit of a hypocrite, you see. And finally the lid, not too thick, not too thin.

I always made Terry a pie to eat in front of the football highlights. Last week he was late. I waited up. He came in pissed, face like a wet tomato, all riled up about something. Where’s me tabs, he says. I says, I haven’t got your tabs. You live with someone long enough you know how they tick. He was full of hell, Terry, that night. It wasn’t the first time he’d give me a clip either but for some reason, this time, I didn’t like it.

I runs to the top of the stairs howling like a banshee and rips all his clothes out the wardrobe and tells him to fetch his suitcase down from the loft. What I’ve done for you, he says. What I’ve done for you, I repeat. He came up the stairs, slow, heavy breathing, taking his belt off and wrapping it around his fist. That soft, old, peeling leather belt with its scuffed brass buckle tight against his knuckles. He was old school, Terry. And to be fair to him he never sent us out with a bruise on my face if he could help it. He started lashing me. Left hook, right hook, working the upper body, the ribs. I hold it in, roll with the punches. Jab, feint, shuffle the feet. A touch of Ali, a touch of Rocky Marciano, he loved the legends. I was always a good wife to beat. Never made a squeak. Hair yank, kick, kick, stamp. I was seeing stars and disco lights, as dizzy as a bat, my head ringing. Usually it would be uppercut and KAPOW! I’d be out for the count, it’s all over folks, Terry the Tiger wins again. But this time it was different. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure.

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION Something ... ... rose up inside of me.

Maybe we both had a bit of the Devil in us that night.

I picked up our wedding photo. The one in the heavy silver frame. The one his mother gave us. I clashed him over the head with it and the frame shatters into a hundred shards. Silver, my arse. Cheap old skank. He looked so surprised I laughed at him. Laughed and laughed even when staggered back and caught that top stair edge. The one he always promised he’d fix. His arms started windmilling and his eyes were so wide. He looked like a little boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin.

I couldn’t move him after he’d come to rest. It would’ve needed ten strong men. I got the old hacksaw out of the garage. I closed the curtains and I put some bin bags down and made sure the deadbolts were on. Afterwards I sat down and pressed my hands in my lap and I closed my thighs over them to stop them shaking. After some thinking I decided I’d let it be known he’d run off to Estonia with a prostitute he’d met down the Legion. Nobody questioned me. Not one eyelid batted in any household in this village.

Then I get the letter from the bank. We are sorry to hear you have closed your account.

All our savings gone. Pissed up the wall or down the bookies or blown on tarts in bars or loaned out to mates who’d come to the shop when I was struggling to make ends meet and ask if the family was alright and spend Terry’s money in front of me. It was my fault. I thought if I turned a blind eye and carried on like nothing was happening then no-one would realise. It would have been our 45th wedding anniversary in November. We were catching up with the Queen.

I remember when we used to sing along to Neil Diamond covers in a sherbet lime coloured Cavalier on the way to the caravan. Them days were always gilded with pollen and sunshine. I can still smell the sweating tarmac, the threadbare tyres crunching. Cut grass and barbeques. Bergasol and BO. Me and Terry in the front and the girls waving their arms in the air in the back seats. MARGARET sings a few lines from GOD ONLY KNOWS.

Terry died the day before Sunderland won the derby. He would have been over the moon. It’s the village fete tomorrow. Someone’s decided to reboot it. It’s got a sponsorship from Tesco Express. Well, I’m jumping on the bandwagon and going into business. I’m setting up a stand between Alice’s Cupcake Munchathon and the Vicar’s Vintage Tombola. It’s called ‘Terry’s Champion Pies’. Homemade, 100% free range heart, liver, lungs, spleen and kidney. There’s even a haggis, oh I believe you should eat from nose to tail. Nothing should go to waste. Then it’s off to Venezuela - one way ticket – pink sunsets, endless sapphire sea, tango lessons with Enrique and a perfect, deserted, sandy beach. Hola, buenos dias, encantado, mi aerodeslizador esta lleno de anguilas!

THE LAST PIE CHAMPION

And tomorrow, for the very last time, all the folk who come along and glance sideways at me and give me their little false grins. All them two faced liars who knew what Terry was up to all this time and never said a thing. All the backstabbers who tell me they never got to say a proper goodbye.

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be getting more of him than they think. MARGARET puts the finishing decorative touches to the pie: perhaps a few pastry leaves and an egg wash. Enjoy your pie, Terry, love.

MARGARET wipes her hands clean and removes her apron. She arranges the sash around the completed pie. MARGARET picks up her bag and exits leaving the pie in a narrowing spotlight.

End.

UNTITLED PIECES ALICE JONES

POETRY

APOSTASY

This becoming is known to all.

To the refugees who were the broken-hearted loyal servants of mad royals,

To I a beggared and false-hearted follower who took a small exodus from my faith,

To a careworn city set ablaze

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; becoming of the vertigo and of these ruins

PARIDHI AGARWAL

POETRY

VISION KILN After TyRuben Ellingson’s high fidelity digital print on hand prepared paper

Yes, here at the vision kiln we keep them coming. Largely a matter of heat and dreams rising out of river mud – red clay oozing through knuckled hands. It’s cool then, pleasant to palms and fingertips, sticky and wet as forms blossom on the wheels. Then it’s all prophets and wild hair, women wailing to the bleeding moon. Hands and snakes seeking the darkest holes, that sudden descent into shadow and mist.

Back here the machines run hot, fire fed by rocket fuel and after images, those retina-burned ghosts. Visions whir along conveyor belts spilling stardust as they tumble toward flame. Above, turbines whine and visions harden into shapes: fists and mouths and staves bursting with vine leaves and trembling into flame.

STEVE KLEPETAR

JAMES LINTON Cars roared below the narrow ledge Niall McCormack was standing upon. Planes growled above him. It was all endless noise for the forty year old sales executive. For five years he had worked on the twenty-second floor of the Exeter building – a tower block of offices in central London. The sandy-haired Bristollian looked across the city he called home. A billion lights glimmered in the darkness; some isolated, like a lonely lighthouse. Some were huddled together in groups for warmth. For protection. This no longer mattered. In a few minutes it would be all over for Niall. Soon he would jump. He turned his head and looked through the window, behind him. Orange fire reflected in his eyes. Who knew where the blaze had broken out? Who knew how it had exploded out of control? Who knew if anybody was coming to help him? Fire engines, ambulances, police officers had all been called out. However, they were travelling across London in rush hour. For now Niall was all by himself. Surrounded by flame and bodies. He knew it would be a shame to end everything, in this way. His life hadn’t been impressive or glamorous, but it belonged to him. He thought of his wife: his gorgeous Rose waiting at home, for her husband. Praying. In silence. Niall hoped she wasn’t watching the TV. He didn’t want her to see his splattered remains across the cold, concrete ground. He hoped that the cameras wouldn’t broadcast his blood and bones scattered across the pavement below. Something crackled behind Niall and he immediately swung his head round. He couldn’t see anything. It must have been his imagination. The room had completely filled with an impenetrable cloud of smoke, as black as hell. Was there anybody still alive in there? Could someone be struggling to breathe? Impossible. If anyone was still there, they would have suffocated long ago. He was the last one left. Niall remembered when everybody else made their decisions. Who knew how long ago this was? Up on this window ledge, a second lasted as long as an eternity. Some of Niall’s colleagues decided that the only way to escape this chaos was to jump. One by one, each office worker stepped off the window ledge to meet their sudden, sharp deaths. Were they brave? Niall knew this to be true. They possessed a great deal more courage than he could ever hope to muster. Were they stupid? No. The stupid were the ones who believed that somebody was coming to rescue them. They were the ones who stayed behind. They were the ones who died slowly. Painfully. Agonisingly. He couldn’t stay there any longer. Niall gently lifted one foot off the ledge into the empty air. He was about to shift all of his weight forward, when his mobile phone screamed into life. The glaring ringtone rang out in the quiet darkness. It suddenly reminded Niall of where he was and what he was about to do. He instinctively pulled his body away from the desolate void before him and against the brick wall behind him. He flinched, when he felt how searingly hot the wall had become. Niall shivered, as the fire’s yellow tongue licked his back. His phone was still chiming incessantly away. Niall held it up to his ear and pressed the answer button.

THE GOLDEN INFERNO + POETRY “Oh my gosh! Niall! You’re alive. I don’t believe it!” Screamed the hysterical voice of Niall’s wife: Rose. “I’m the last one left, sweetheart. I don’t have much time. I’m sorry.” Rose tried to make sense of her husband’s words. With a gasp, she realised what he was about to do. “Don’t do it, Niall. Please, don’t jump! Don’t leave me. Stay where you are. The fire brigade are only two floors beneath you. They’ll keep you safe. You’ll be fine.” “They’re too late. Too late to save me.” The smoke had started to seep through the window and Niall was finding it difficult to breathe. He didn’t have time for an emotional good-bye. “Please don’t do it. Wait a little longer.” “I’m sorry. Don’t look, Rose... Don’t look.” With that last word, Niall disconnected the call and slipped the mobile into his shirt pocket. He took one final glance at the office he had worked in for the past five years. It was now completely hidden behind a barrier of thick, toxic smoke. Summoning the last of his courage, Niall took a deep breath and followed in the footsteps of his courageous colleagues before him.

WORKING CLASS

Smoking is a working class disease They said; he smiled at this. Lean in body and broad of mind With shirtsleeves rolled, A modern man’s philosopher Who stuttered over the words Like his fingers did over her chassis Detroit rolling iron beneath his palms Grease and lubricant under the nails. The cigarette cherry glows in the dark Giving him a hard edge aura The gloaming settling into the lines Of his work-worn face

JESSICA THOMPSON

POETRY

ALL CLEAR Thank you. You helped me find where I was and started there. You understood when no-one else could.

You knew that however hard I tried I would feel shabby, pieces of my essence had gone.

There were no guarantees. Crushingly vulnerable, I was thoroughly exposed to blind faith

in you. Hope shattered through the impact and I kept control of my dignity as we talked

about something else. I wanted to say “take care of me.” You wanted to reply “I will.”

Humbly we surrendered our independence in a fragile duty, a moment. Ten years,

all clear? It was always clear to me that you knew how to save my life, I’m alive, Thank you.

JULIE HOGG

POETRY

WINTER IN DAMASCUS

The secret music has started; a bow of blackbirds strum sky, plectrums of elm busk in the gutter.

The savagery translates us; snails migrate leaving maps, hauling silver and shells of home.

This could be winter in Damascus, swallows hang like half notes from pylons their altered song of yeast and sarin.

A Mother breast-fed her niece the slate grey eyes of her son stared from burkhas of tarpaulin.

The secret music has ended; Syria leaves in the swallows of Spring they will arrive here before refugees.

Our savagery translates them their nests hidden in our dead factories,

ANTONY OWEN

CHLOE SPENCE Sophia,

I’m a writer. It’s what I do - what I’ve always done, the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted to do. Ever since I was a little kid it’s been the one thing to come naturally to me, the one thing I could rely on if and when all else failed. And with all that well and truly taken into account, it’s kind of hard to explain why writing this is so damn hard for me.

I guess it’s just because it means something, writing to you. All the stories and articles I’ve ever written have had such abstract foundations, rooted either in entirely fictional concepts or in those so very detached from everyday life that I never even dreamed I may have to face them head on. And it’s liberating – to know that something only exists and will only ever exist in the theoretical. It allows you to witter away for hours, and it may be well-structured wittering with all the right language and grammar, may even be deemed ‘profound’ and ‘insightful’ by every posh literary critic in town, but the words are just words and the ideas just ideas, and none of it really matters.

I just know you’ll be shaking your head at this, smiling and rolling your eyes at my ridiculous scepticism, and you’ll ring me up or just turn up on the doorstep and tell me to stop being such a cynical old bastard. You’ll say that what I write does matter - of course it matters, if not to me then to someone else, and undoubtedly, undeniably, to you. You’ll say that words and ideas are the tools with which we are equipped to shape our world, to get things from the way they are to the way they should be, and that with every word I am creating the foundations on which future generations will be built. You’ll throw in a quote from William Shakespeare or Nelson Mandela, or maybe just The Simpsons if you’re feeling lazy, and then when I’m satisfyingly speechless and you’ve finally run out of things to say - if such an atrocity should ever occur -, you’ll invite yourself in for a drink or ten and we’ll sit by the fires watching EastEnders while I make an utter mockery of every minor plot hole or unrealistic character development and you slap my arm and call me a stupid twat, trying not to laugh as you do.

Scepticism - and EastEnders - aside, all of that may well be true; of all the people I have ever met, you are the only one who I have never been able to out-argue, and I do not deny that that must count for something. That doesn’t matter (and no, this is not a prompt for you to start yet another of your ‘everything/everyone matters’ rants); what matters is that this single, silly, ultimately insignificant little letter means far more than all my other works combined, and that’s a considerable burden to bear.

You see, the thing is, while I’ve always been so very good at writing, I’ve never been even half so productive when it comes to actions. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever I write now, I won’t be able to take back. I will have to put these words into actions, and that’s what scares me; that’s what’s been scaring me for so, so long now. But I think I’m ready for it now - in fact, I know it, more clearly than I’ve ever known anything else in my entire life. I am ready for this. I am, I am, I am. I am ready for

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

You’re unhappy. I know that. I know that it feels like everything is over, like nothing will ever be okay again, but I promise you, from the very bottom of my heart, that it will. Things will be alright, more than alright; they’ll be brilliant, and all you have to do is be your wonderful, wonderful self. I’ll take care of you - don’t laugh. You might hate being taken care of, but you need it right now. We need each other.

I promise I’ll do all those silly, cliché things, like giving you my jacket when it’s cold and refusing to be the one to hang up the phone (you can pay my phone bill, mind) and cuddling you in bed, and you’ll pull a face and tell me not to be ridiculous when I’m shivering as it is, and to stop wasting all your fucking credit and hogging the bed, but I’ll do it anyway. It’s the thought that counts, right? I’ll do the harder, more important stuff, too. When things get hard and you can’t sleep I’ll sit up with you, all night, every night, and we’ll talk about the past and I’ll tell you stupid, inane stories from my youth until you finally forget and fall asleep, curled up in my arms. I don’t care if I’ve got an early start the next day, I don’t care if we’ve been fighting and I don’t care if I have any other commitments, because there is nothing I am even nearly as committed to as you. When things are at their worst and you’ve lost all sight of any kind of light, I can drive you to the hospital or to your sister’s or all the way to that spot where we first met, where we can lie on the cool, sandy beach and feel the soft breeze and the rushing water as it envelopes our feet, sending us way, way back to better, simpler times (things were never really simple, though, were they?). Whatever I do, whatever we do, I will make sure you are never, ever alone. You will never be alone again, and things will never get as bad as they were. I won’t let them. I’ll hold you when you cry, until the tears dry up and you are finally yourself again, when happiness stops shooting by like some ultimately desirable and utterly unattainable brand of living, slows right down and allows us to climb aboard and immerse ourselves in the realms of all that life has to offer once again, genuine contentment no longer any more than a smile or a whisper away.

Remember when you first met my parents? I was still living with them, still living in that silly little cottage I grew up in, and they were horribly strict and you were my first proper girlfriend and I just remember being so damn nervous I couldn’t breathe, waiting for you to show up while they tutted and sighed and made stupid remarks. Then you got there, and you just...you blew them away. You were so confident, so sure of yourself, of everything, and so utterly charming that even they failed to find fault with you in spite of their best efforts. You just strode right in, looking natural and laid-back as anything, and within two minutes the three of you were chatting away like old friends. I was gobsmacked - completely, utterly gobsmacked, and I think that was the night I realised I was in love with you, even if I couldn’t put a name to it right then.

Unsurprisingly, my parents weren’t best pleased when we broke up - not the first time, nor any of the others. They couldn’t understand why I kept messing it up, why I wasn’t making the best of what I had when what I had was so bafflingly brilliant, so much more than I deserved. Truth be told, I couldn’t either. You were and are the best thing I have ever had, and the only excuses I can offer are that I was an idiot - still am, probably - and I was scared (which I’m not, anymore; I promise you, I’m not). Scared of the way you

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

much better than to be dragged down by a silly middle-aged man and the remainders of his childish dreams. I suppose this is a love letter - how I would’ve laughed if anyone had suggested writing one of them in the past! -, but my love for you is not the most important thing in this. You are, and if there is just one thing you take from the entirety of my ramblings, let it be this; you are amazing, and you are so very, very strong. I need you to know how strong you are. You are the strongest, smartest, most utterly beautiful person I have ever met, and you can get through this. I know you can.

Yours forever, John

He drops the letter off that night as the sun begins to set, sits amongst the fireflies and wishes this was as happy an occasion as it should be.

(It’s not enough, it’s not enough.)

He reads it over and over again, trying to stay focused, but his eyes keep drifting to the words of the inscription In Loving Memory of Sophia Rose - Beloved mother, daughter and friend.

(Nothing will ever be enough.)

THE LOST SHOE SILVIA CARRUS

THE EDITORS OF ISSUE 14 LITERATURE-

Fay Codona

Felecity Powell

Samantha New

Sophie Whitehead

Kat Zufelt

ART-

Maria Abbott

James Ricketts

CORRESPONDENTS-

Aimee Vickers *Magazine formatted by J.Ricketts