Issue 06
THE JOURNAL
PAST/FUTURE
Writers Bloc
Welcome to the sixth issue of The Journal. This creative writing publication is by Writers' Bloc and is the third issue to appear on campus this academic year. There were a variety of different approaches towards the theme Past/Future which made reading the submissions interesting (and as always enjoyable). Thank you to everyone that sent their work in and well done to those who have made it into this publication. If you submitted but did not manage to get a piece in this issue please do not give up! I'm excited to announce the second Guest Piece in this young feature of The Journal comes from Richard House; lecturer at UoB, inventive screenwriter and published author. Look out for our posters, find Writers Bloc on Facebook or follow @UoBWritersBloc on twitter to follow updates and announcements for new issues throughout the year. Enjoy. Andy Cashmore, Editor
Special thanks to: Richard House, Deborah Clements and Louise Gessey 2
The Journal
Contents Richard House
Meat (Guest Piece) Samuel Parr
Little Angel
Charlie Dart
The Language of Birds (Feature Piece) Jenna Clake
Thunderstorms Elisha Owen
An Interview with a Child Prodigy Charlie Moloney
The way I see it John Pearson
Coleshill
Joseph Sale
Data Stream
4 8 9 10 11 12 15 17
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Writers Bloc
Meat
The opening to the novel 'The Massive'
Guest Piece
By the time he arrived at the Pioneer Residential Home in Normal, Illinois, Luis Francesco Hernandez (Santo) had discarded his full family name and much of his past. Throughout his final seven years at the home he never spoke about his family, his business, the time he spent with Rem Gunnersen at the burn pits in Camp Liberty, or his participation in two killings. Only once, in direct answer to a question, did Luis Hernandez admit that when he was thirty-two he had abducted a man from his home, drugged him with a horse tranquillizer, and abandoned him in a secure room without food and water. While he couldn’t be certain he’d caused the man’s death, he didn’t doubt that this had been achieved. For thirty-six years Luis suffered from psoriasis and crescent-shaped sores at his elbows and the base of his scalp which sometimes bled and set an irritation deep into his bones – about which he never complained. In the year before he died he lost his sight and became so absent that when residents spoke with him they expected no reply. The staff washed and dressed him, fed and managed him from room to room; in the afternoons they sat him in the parlour, where he leaned toward the window, his face turning to and following the sun. Everyone noticed in that last Fall less and less response. Luis died quietly, watched over by another resident, Dorothy Salinas, who’d known him from the day he arrived. And while Salinas could be counted as a friend, she knew little about him – except that he’d spent time in Montreal, and slept rough for a period before returning to the Midwest, where he eventually set up a smallholding in Lansing, to which he devoted the majority of his working life. In the month prior to his move to Normal, Luis signed his house and business over to his sons, who in turn sold up as soon as they could then moved their families out of state and did not stay in contact. Luis had no complaints. While preparing his body the funeral home found a tattoo on his right 4
The Journal shoulder, an eagle with a standard emblazoned with the word ‘Santo’. Luis’s family, his two sons with their wives and five children, drove from Florida in a shabby three-day convoy. On the morning of the funeral, under a clean winter sky, the attendants hid in the parking lot between the fat-backed pickups and smoked dope, and they were soon joined by Luis’s younger son, Rick, who spoke without emotion about his father. Luis, by his report, was a man who would not settle, a man agitated at life, deliberately at odds with everything about him. He’d lived with his father just long enough, then fled like his brother before him, because you can only spend so much time with a man who always seems to be in another room or another town, just someplace else. Although he knew that his father had spent time in the Middle East, he wasn’t sure in which country – the subject never came up. There were no stories, no accounts of service, nothing to help him admire the old man. The attendants shared their marijuana and dug their boots into the gravel as they listened. After two deep tokes Rick glanced back at the figures outside the funeral home and said that he should get going, yep, they were off already; then, to their embarrassment, he began to cry. He wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and said that he didn’t understand why he was crying because he didn’t, no, he never had loved the old man. It wasn’t either that he hated him. Luis was difficult to be with, difficult to like, difficult to love. And when you’re young aren’t you supposed to be unconditionally loved, just loved without having to earn or deserve it? Rick looked across the parking lot for an answer, and found a colourless prospect of tract houses, a scuffed sky, low-slung telegraph cables. When they drove away, he said, that would be it, finito: no reason to return. The attendants shifted back on their heels and said, yeah, they supposed it went something like that. Luis Francesco Hernandez was buried without the family in attendance. Before Luis, by eighteen years, came Clark, who’d had most of his tongue cut out and his voice box removed. Mathew Clark died unattended in a private room at 5
Writers Bloc the BVM Hospice in Albany. Allergic to penicillin, his throat sealed and he choked. A simple clerical error. Five minutes inattention. His funeral at the St Eustace Crematorium was small but attended by people who expected a more miserable demise and were now faced with something sudden and inexplicable. Clark’s daughter, Elizabeth, eulogized her father as an uncomplicated man, and passed over the details of his absences, how he would up and go without incitement, and how as a child she was convinced he had another family somewhere, another more fulfilling life. She did not speak about the cancer, about the lesions that peppered the soft skin on the back of his hands, his lower arms, his neck, behind his knees, and about how he often struggled for breath. Not many knew, she said, that her father was an artist. In Clark’s hands she tucked a photograph of herself taken when she was five: a small girl standing beside her mother on the banks of the placid Hudson. Her mother’s hand raised uncertainly to steady her hair or wave, clouds running wild in the sky behind them. She remembered that it snowed later that day, and there was something wonderful about how the photograph appeared so summery, when it was in fact her first memory of winter, her first remembered Thanksgiving. The photo was sent to him in Kuwait, or was it Iraq: the corners were blunt and creased, where the sun of that hard country, whichever it was, had bleached the colour to milky whites and yellows. Before Clark came Samuels, whose body was not discovered, and whose death went unrecorded. Two days before Christmas, Samuels bought a car with cash and a fake ID and drove from Illinois to Louisiana, joining Highway 1 0 at Baton Rouge. The last people he spoke with were a young couple from his hometown, Topeka, Kansas, he found loitering at the entrance to the services. For a moment he believed that they were summoning the courage to rob the diner, and when he realized that they were hesitating because they had no money, he gave them all the change he had, everything from his pockets, and they tried 6
The Journal fnot to stare at the eczema on his arms, at how he shed his skin in fish-like scales. The coincidence of meeting a young couple from his hometown confirmed the rightness of what he was doing, and with the simple gesture of handing over a fistful of coins he felt that he was handing something on. Samuels, who was always short of breath, sat in his car and thought about how perfect this was, of how endings naturally meet beginnings, then got right back out and returned to the restaurant and sat with the couple where he spoke for an hour, uninterrupted, about the work at Camp Liberty in the southern desert of Al-Muthanna. He spoke at length about a member of their unit, Steven Kiprowski, and how you know you should stop something but you don’t, and you know, even as you do nothing, that this will corrode through you, ruin your life. Unbothered about the proper sequence of events, or whether he was or was not making sense, he told his story in full. Thirty minutes after he was done talking he turned off the highway and tipped the car into a swamp, the small doubt occurring to him that this would not be easy. Four days after the mud had taken him, the upturned car was swept free and marooned on a high tide on the banks under the raised span of the highway. A storm hauled his body out into the Gulf, and Samuels came closer to what he wanted: to become unaccountably small, to disappear, dissipate, to become less than dust.
Richard House
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Writers Bloc
Little Angel I We tore through the chrysalises of the wrapping paper, while the tin foil angel looked on. You stood there, slightly slouched in an emperor-purple dressing gown, laughing as we hugged your belly, warm and wide like a hot water bottle. My brother accidentally rode his bike into the tree, the baby blue clashing with the tinsel. Two of the lights flickered out, fairies dying. Later we nailed poorly-made plaques to our doors, shouting our identity to each other across the stairwell
II When we got out the dinner plates one smashed: enamel smiles on pale linoleum. It was dark outside, the ash from our chimney had choked the sky. That year I gave you wrapping paper for your gift. You were going to give a lot.
III The bike matured into oxide orange. My brother winced at all the angles in his legs, soft as fruit pastilles. You walked past me and stroked the crown of his head, the tiny bald spot, pale as a blind eye. That was my favourite Christmas, watching you remind him of our plaques, all those years ago, seeing how he reached out and traced the certainty of his name, running his finger over that long, cracked ‘S’.
Samuel Parr 8
The Journal
The Language of Birds
Feature Piece
My father was a great man with a great beard in which birds nested, occasionally hopping up to whisper secrets in his ears as he sat reading in his library. The birds hear everything, see everything, and only my father understood their graceful words: he knew things about the world that I could never conceive of; they had taught him the secrets of the human heart and he looked straight through me. I tried listening to the birds on the Ash tree outside my window, but I could not translate those beautiful fluctuations of pitch into meaning. So every night I crept into my father’s library, searching for some hint, some clue that would teach me how to understand, in those crumbling, leather bound volumes, full with knowledge so arcane it was only found there and carved inside the tombs of ancient kings. And finally, after three years, when I had learned the name of Sleep so I knew how to avoid him, after three long years when I had the beginnings of a beard. I found the legend of Sigurd and I knew what to do. I spoke the name of the Shadows so that I could become one with them, slipping under my father’s bedroom door. Then, making no sound, I spoke the name of the Moon and she spun me a blade from her light that was so sharp it could not be seen. Svangr, it was called, and with it I stole my father’s heart and fled from the room. Outside, I spoke to the Ash and he sacrificed himself in flame, upon which I roasted the heart, listening to the fire spit warnings of eternal damnation without heeding them. When it was done I held my father’s heart above my head and watched the blood boil through the air and into my mouth where it opened my mind but scorched my tongue irreparably. Now I sit here, listening to the birds speak in verse, understanding the secrets of the human heart. I cannot tell them that I already know, as they hop up my great beard .
Charlie Dart
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Writers Bloc
Thunderstorms During thunderstorms, you used to run all the way to the top of the third floor with your father’s tape recorder, more excited than on Christmas morning – your parents never told you about Santa Claus. You would push the window open wide, hoping the lightning might strike and turn you into glass, because you had heard from your neighbour’s TV that sometimes it happens. Then you would press record, close your eyes, and hope you would have this lullaby for at least one night before the cricket match scores wiped it away.
Jenna Clake
10
The Journal
An Interview with a Child Prodigy I'm running five minutes late and she's sitting there in Reception, pristine as a new bar of soap. I salvage my notepad from my handbag and it's covered in blueberry muffin crumbs from two weeks ago. Edward's drawn a Crayola penis on the front cover and I quickly turn the page to reveal another penis and an Innocent Smoothie stain. She holds out her ten-year old gloved hand (for me to kiss or shake?) and whispers something about how she would hug me if she wasn't afraid my aura would affect her. A joke? She’s not smiling. I throw ideas of her lost childhood around like spitting lava but she doesn't flinch, merely sighs in resignation; an academic gadfly. I sense her pity and I cannot help but ignore every question my Editor emailed me that morning. I ask her about fashion, art, popular fucking culture. She pulls out the second edition of her 'History of Suppressed Women in Leningrad' and tells me how she's sending a copy to Jessie J next week. 'She really captures the modern feminist's plight.' Christ. She stands to leave, ‘I’m lecturing at King’s College in half an hour and I must prepare for tomorrow’s Radio 4 debate with Dr. Jacque Ibbotson.’ Then I sob loudly like I did when I realised I was getting married in laddered tights.
Elisha Owen
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Writers Bloc
The way I see it 'That’s fucked,’ said Sasha, as we observed a man, who had been trying to escape from the sinking ship, bounce off the colossal propeller blade of the Titanic, which was now reaching the sky. From the bottom left hand corner darkness was slowly creeping across the screen. I’m unsure of what that darkness was, probably where the screen was smashed or broken in some way, determined to slowly consume the rest of the pixels and leave me with an empty gaping void to look at. ‘That’s literally impossible. They can’t swim against the pull of the Titanic that just wouldn’t happen,’ I said in response to the moment when Jack and Rose managed to overcome the suction of the Titanic by swimming upwards, ‘That ship was so big and they just swim upwards, that’s so stupid.’ Sasha agreed, and for a moment we both sat in silence. ‘How is he supposed to know what to do all the time,’ I said, ‘He told her to swim, and he told her how to use the axe and he’s always directing her. The only reason she likes him is because he’s made out to be the ideal man. But why does she even like that because all he ever does is tell her what to do while she just cries.' There was a little silence after my outburst, until Sasha said, ‘yeah he probably wasn’t even like that, she just told the story to make him sound like he was some sick guy but actually he was just normal.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well like obviously this is just her story of what happened, like there are no recordings or footage of what happened so all we know about it is what she’s telling us.’ I brooded over this for a long time, and we both sat there as the passengers of the Titanic froze in the icy sea. ‘I’ve never thought about that before. Like when you watch the Titanic you 12
The Journal just think “yeah that’s what’s supposed to have happened in the world of the story”. But even inside the world of the story, what we see is actually another story, inside the main story. Like it’s more of a long flashback than the actual film in itself.’ Sasha remained silent. I was looking straight at the television, and though I looked calm on the outside, my mind had just seen come to the realisation of a great truth. Now that I knew, nothing would ever be the same again. I began carefully as I didn’t want to lose what was still a very fleeting shadow of an idea, but it was one which I knew I must give birth to. ‘That’s why in this film some of the scenes are so idealised. Like in the car when they have sex like it’s made to seem so perfect, like it’s really passionate. That’s why Jack is the perfect boyfriend who just loves her so much and all of the situations are really simple, like her husband is the bad guy and his little butler is a dickhead. Everything is so clear cut because it’s just a story which she is telling as an old woman. That’s why everything that she does in the film is like really selfless and she tried to save people and shit, because she’s just telling them exactly what she wants it to have been like.’ Sasha looked at me with serious eyes: ‘we’ve solved it.’ I put my head down, and ran my hands through my hair. ‘We’ve actually unlocked the secret of the Titanic.’ I looked back to the screen and watched a future Rose, withered with time; drop a necklace into the sea to honour Jack’s memory. ‘She conveniently gets rid of the necklace so there’s no proof,’ said Sasha, 'He didn’t exist; she just made him up as some old woman’s little fantasy.’ I was again pulled away by the strong undercurrents this epiphany had formed in my mind, into a new tributary of thought and swiftly thrown out into a sea of understanding. ‘That’s literally how everything is though. Things are always just what somebody said happened. Like even with video cameras it doesn’t matter, 13
Writers Bloc because two people viewing that footage will like remember two different things, like there is no one true past.’ I stopped to decide in which direction I needed to take this argument. ‘So that’s what the Titanic is really, like it’s not just something that happened. It is a film which is just showing one person’s perspective of the world. But that’s just what everything is; it’s just someone’s account of what’s happened.’ ‘That’s fucked’ said Sasha.
Charlie Moloney
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The Journal
Coleshill The route to school through frowning gulley, over-cast with scraggy cowlicks and lizard feet ends of lachrymose conifers, had us see, through syrup breeze, the spot where he forced down on her – rape as alley's eponym. He who goes to the local school learns enough his ear swells. Winter pulls the ground taught; the Cole in spring swells and we'd thrust wellied legs like plungers, like the cast of silent comedies; every muscle goes to too much effort. Aborted chicks mark spring's end and we sloshed beer against death-cooled slabs down the cemetery – dull cold like cramp from the sea – in the church demesne, where privet walls-in a sea of coarse sedge and crocuses exude ribbon swells of pollen; the florist's stocks run rampant down streets, all pungent drunks, perspiring stems. Cast against the vast bruise of night stretched end to end the thorn-crown clock-face droops; the bell goes. We've had weddings there: the whole family goes, And rustles in effort to stifle themselves in a sea of plumed swan pleats like waves meeting a frothy end as the curse of the bell riles up their giddy swells: muffled dangs in austral drawl. Effigies cast repressed shadows; Six-Fingered Caxton lays down 15
Writers Bloc his six-fingered shadow onto the worn down slabs like the clubbed fronds of some marine thing; goes and comes with sun, some thing of devolution. Cast guiltily peeking at it – he can't stand to see it – that hand, and from a bloody priest as well. I called it 'fossilised self-concern'. I loathed him no end. The history all looks down on you: it never ends. Caxton from the 1 4th feels cold like damp silt. Down he glances, misled through his gibbous iris swells, like the shark eyed stocks viewing anyone who goes to market square, scents held in burlap: wax and sea. Stocks from the 1 5th: black from use and iron cast. In the end anyone living down Coleshill, goes great lengths to see much entertainment, We found a bone as we cast about in the Cole's swells.
John Pearson
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The Journal
Data Stream Time records the occasion as they both stand in a concave, orange points of candles form a ritual backdrop their bodies black shapes painted on Plato’s cave. It is their joint 21 st birthday; he turns to take her hands, swivelling they face together like two statues on hinges; ceremonial against the glowing lights. Their eyes touch and then their lips. The data streams of Time’s computers pause: déjà vu, an anomaly, a patternI it begins to scroll forwards and backwards. It has seen this before. Open file source: ‘archetypes’ Boy meets girl in barI man dates woman in restaurantI lover kisses lover in bedroomI bride embraces groom at the altarI child and child play kiss-chaseI husband and wife take first lookI husband and wife take last lookI The ‘overload’ warning pops up, the system is confused. 17
Writers Bloc They are Pagan gods cradling the fertile darkness between them, they are Adam and Eve, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and JulietI The system files these dichotomies under ‘irreconcilable anomaly’. The data streams say that their love-making will make the universe begin; and that their look will be the last thing before there is nothing left to record. Their kiss is the first kiss of man and woman and it is the last kiss before humanity reaches the blank ellipsis of the continuum. Panicked, Time pushes ‘reset’ – It is their joint 21 st birthday; he turns to take her hands, swivelling, they face together like two statues on hinges; ceremonial against the glowing lights: as they kiss, strands bifurcate in the data streams – everything that was, everything that will be.
Joseph Sale
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The Journal
Feeling inspired? Add your own poem/story here.
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You can start submitting to the next issue now! Please send submissions to writersblocjournal@gmail.com Maximum two submissions per person, up to 1 500 words per prose piece and 50 lines per poem. DEADLINE: Sunday 24th March Thank you for reading.