WRITERS’ BLOC JOURNAL 23 REFLECTIONS
Welcome to REFLECTIONS, the twenty-third issue of the Writers’ Bloc Journal!
After a great team effort of folding, guillotining and stapling, there are (or should be, assuming everything went to plan following my final edit of this document) 100 copies of REFLECTIONS in circulation! This is because not only will the issue be distributed at weekly Writers’ Bloc sessions and in the Arts building, but it will also be available at the Creative Writing department’s Anthology Launch (Monday 4th November) and at the Grizzly Pear poetry night (Thursday 7th December). Many thanks to Elsa Braekkan Payne and Sean Colletti for inviting selected journal contributors to read their work at the launch. Huge thanks also to Luke Kurowski-Ford for his stunning cover design and insideillustrations which really bring this issue together. I made a special request for prose submissions this month, and I was not disappointed! This issue sees everything from a hilarious, absurdist gangster tale (The Way Life Used to Be), to a detailed and wonderfully unnerving depiction of an intriguing neighbourhood (The Meadows). There is also great diversity within the poetry submissions, with playful use of language and voice (Four Lips), brilliant experimentations in form (Stale Txts), and bold, relentless use of rhythm (Plane Mirror). If you would like the chance for your work to be showcased in the next journal, keep an eye out on the UoB Writers’ Bloc Facebook group or the weekly email newsletter for updates on the theme and submission window. For now, I hope you enjoy REFLECTIONS!
Editor Hannah Ledlie 2
Contents
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Meadows / Lara Wickenkamp
Plane Mirror / Lottricia (Lotty) Millett
Stale Txts / Alex Hamzij
Two Sides of the Same Coin / Kate Avetoomyan
Helen of Sparta / Megan Schlanker
Maybe / Sierra Malia Fransen
The Way Life Used to Be / Charlie Price
Prostitution / James Thorp
Four Lips / Chloe Bettles
Haiku and Six Word Stories
3
Meadows Lara Wickenkamp Oftentimes, on my way home from school, I’d see Mr Schulze standing by his fence. He would almost always lean on his elbow and he used to wear khaki shorts that reached down to his fat white calves. A yellow white-striped polo shirt would only cover so much of his stomach and his bellybutton stuck out in a weird way- it reminded me of a chameleon’s eye. A gold necklace lay between the sweaty folds of his neck and I always thought it gave him a touch of unexpected vanity, but the men here all wore jewellery like that. Were the rings in their earlobes, the silver wristbands clawing their skin, totems or keepsakes? I imagined they were passed down the generations just like their ideologies. I used to circle his lawn and the perfectly trimmed ankle high hedge, just looking at the bushes and the blatant magenta blossoms. His wife wore clothes that had equally gaudy colours and she seemed to really love leopard prints. She was always talking in fortissimo which I found bewildering, but it was the language you had to master if you wanted to be heard. All the women in town talked like her, it turned a trip to the butchers into a visit at the zoo. Hyenas and parrots and all kinds of big birds tried to snatch a pound of juicy gossip. It was not the place for chaffinches like me. Sometimes I’d see Mrs Schulze waddle across their lawn, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, coughing lackadaisically. I’d feel my stomach twinge. Their house was number twelve and it lay opposite number sixteen, our house. I have no idea why every street in town had a bird’s name, but they were home to bullfinches, swallows, blackbirds and nightingales. No chaffinch. The streets were the branches and the houses were nests. But the street we used to live on was the meadow. It lay in this little hamlet’s core, cradling cats and children on unicycles and gold necklaces and yellow chalk on its tar. Someone told me that the Schulzes were Prolls. But I only saw reflections of people like the Schulzes living up and 4
down the street. One time when I was walking home from school Mrs Schulze stopped me and said, ‘You know I’m your aunt?’
I didn’t until then.
‘I am your grandfather’s daughter, but you know he’s not your real granddad? He just married your mother’s mother.’
I didn’t until then. Her perfume bit my nostrils.
‘Well, you can come by anytime. There’s always ice cream in the house.’
I walked home clinging onto my school books like a shield.
They grew magenta coloured flowers in the beds encircling the house. I hate magenta. Some late summer evening I’d see them gardening together. Afterwards they would sit on the bench in front of their house, drinking beer in the tangerine light and Mr Schulze’s hand would lie on his wife’s thigh. And I’d feel my stomach twinge.
5
Plane Mirror Lottricia (Lotty) Millett I ask myself why I
Search and besmirch with my finger
The unreal glass of a
Plane, inane, inhumane
Mirror. Was this my idea?
For you're the critic of
The intangible surface of a
Virtual (Impermeable)
Image with its emotions that scrimmage
Across the toss of
Features of an imperfect creature that
Form the Impressionist storm of my
Face. A disgrace to symmetry; the
Reflection that needs your protection
From other imaginary wrongs
Which you and they and I bitch about
When we see them
Through the rough-hewed retinas that
Conceive a perceived facet of a
Being that has, in truly seeing,
Yet to be set
‘Right’ by an equally trite
Visual cortex. A self-induced hex to
Enable philautia to stay stable
Beyond infancy.
6
Stale Txts Alex Hamzij
When you told me
you loved me more
was when I fell for you
When you told me
you wanted me,
and couldn’t stop myself.
I could only handle
the truth while drunk.
When our texts became masterpieces of pixels
We really knew each other,
And the X’s you left after every text
Dotted on phone screens, I thought
Made me smile more than any time before it.
But good things weren’t built to last and bad things even less so.
In the end, you were just
another of my mistakes.
But I was blind to my
corruption and the
pain you handed me.
In the end, you were just
another ex for the list.
7
Two Sides of the Same Coin Kate Avetoomyan I sit cross-legged and look at the polaroid in my hand, brushing my thumb over the smooth but slightly wrinkled reflection. I look at the scar which marks my cheekbone, the only thing which tells us who is who. My skin is waxy-looking there. Scars are supposed to be imperfections, but I cling to mine as though it’s the only thing which separates us from each other.
In reality, there are a thousand other things which mark us as different – our music tastes, your hatred of dogs, my love of tomatoes. I’m glad you’re the one who ended up hating dogs because it divides too many people. Not that you have a problem with people disliking you, because you just tell them that you’re me. Maybe that explains the funny looks I got at school.
Even though I have a scar, people still get us confused. All they see is two identical figures, one set of two. But to those who can tell the difference, to those who really look, that scar which makes me imperfect, is perfect to me.
Whenever people ask me what it’s like to be a twin, they only ever want to hear the funny anecdotes about swapping clothes and mistaken identities. As tempting as it may have been to get you to sit an exam for me, I never really thought about swapping roles. We only ever wanted to be ourselves. I only ever want to be myself.
They never want to hear about how I’m constantly comparing myself to someone else, and what it’s like to have a mirror image of myself, who could easily be better. They don’t want to hear about how Mum gets us confused, even though she should be able to tell which daughter is which. Even she gets confused about which of us have scars.
They don’t want to hear about how you started to wear darker clothes, even though you always loved colour, but you thought it’d be a good way to mark us as individuals. Nor do they want to hear about how you moved away because you couldn’t take being called by the wrong name anymore, or 8
getting ten minutes into a conversation before someone realises ‘you’re the wrong one’.
And, as much as I miss you, I’m glad you did it, because it freed me too. Now we can both walk down the street, different streets, miles apart. We can now be ourselves, only ourselves.
Even though I don’t need to anymore, I still embrace my scar, in memory of you. In memory of us.
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Helen of Sparta Megan Schlanker I must make a small request,
I ask you to picture Ilium’s walls,
And the palace that sits inside them,
With corridors and with mighty halls,
And a girl, a woman, who shines,
Possibly blonde, certainly a beauty,
There’s fire in her eyes and her hands curl to fists
As a goddess tells her her duty,
Duty as a wife, duty as a prize,
And the rage inside of her burns,
But without any muse to sing of it,
She must learn not to speak out of turn,
For a mortal, and a woman at that,
The wrath of a goddess is fiercer than flame,
Perhaps her fierceness runs in her blood,
A Spartan woman should never be tame,
But the goddess of love can be terribly cruel,
And now Helen of Sparta goes by a new name.
10
Maybe Sierra Malia Fransen Maybe it’s possible you aren’t too good to be true.
I watch your shoulders shake, your breathing too.
It could be honeyed apricots and rose tea. Maybe.
I worry you become him when you see yourself in the mirror,
worry the stone in your throat makes you want to hurt me
for reasons you don’t even know or understand.
Maybe what I think you see says more about me. Maybe.
There were things I wished I could say,
but didn’t say,
but should have said.
That, maybe, one day, I’ll be able to say to you.
One day.
Without eggshell shoes.
Maybe.
11
The Way Life Used to Be Charlie Price Big Nath stubbed out the cigarette and watched the sparks fizzle and fade on the wet stone. Rain fell in vast grey columns, soaking his wide-brimmed leather hat. He shivered and pulled the collar of his shirt over his throat. Feral children marched up and down the damp, car-crammed street, kicking stones and empty lager bottles into the stagnant, gurgling drains.
He wiped the moisture from his brow, lurched to his feet and vomited onto the wet pavement. Grunting, he wiped his mouth with his tattered sleeve and descended the steps. The shadow of a huge black dog prowled the row of narrow, red-bricked buildings. Rain continued to patter his head and shoulders.
Big Nath wondered where he would sleep that night. There was always Mad Kerry’s. Mad Kerry had let him stay a week after he was released from Crutchfield. No – she was still mad about the seventeen-year-old prostitute who had bled to death on her favourite cashmere rug. Big Nath wondered where she dumped the body, or whether it was still there, festering in the living room that she spent so much time renovating. He wondered if she ever got the stains out of her rug and if she ever got those worms out of her boiler.
There was Martha – she was old and decrepit and lived alone in apartment by the docks – he could spend some days with her, sleep in the pile of dirty laundry she never touched and steal jewellery from her jewellery box. He knew exactly where she hid it: behind a loose brick in the kitchen by the radio set. But Martha had a son called Juni and Juni had a ferocious, wide-jawed mastiff called Juni Jr. and Juni Jr. had gnawed the end off Big Nath’s little toe and swallowed his last clean pair of socks.
That left only Tom, his elder brother. Tom was married to an Albanian. She carried a menacing, ivory-hilted Bowie knife everywhere she went – even in bed. She kept it ruthlessly clean. Tom didn’t mind. Tom had been stabbed 12
when he was seven by the Swedish plumber who had an eyepatch and an affair with his mother.
Big Nath and Tom didn’t get on well. Big Nath kicked the living shit out of Tom for forwarding his post to the wrong address. He never did get that postcard from Jodie.
Big Nath sniffed. He yearned for Jodie. Her fat thighs and her fat arms and her fat waist and her fat head. He yearned to bury his hands into her hideously distended stomach and massage her fat with his knuckles. It took a practised hand to massage Jodie the way she liked it; it was a refined skill, a form of art. Like kneading dough.
Big Nath wiped his brow with his sleeve and turned left, walking briskly over the wet leaves that stuck like playing cards to the pavement. The shadow of the black dog followed him, sniffing and snorting and snapping at his ankles.
It was then that he met Olive-Tree Teddy. Olive-Tree Teddy was wearing his purple trousers and his thick, goatskinned dungarees. He was trying to shield a large cardboard box from the rain with his tiny, blond skull. The box was filled with bulging green bags of fertiliser and thousands of loose olives stones – gnawed and stripped of flesh. Olive-Tree Teddy was in the olive tree business.
‘Big Nath, you look like shit.’ said Olive-Tree Teddy. His teeth were far too large for his mouth and his eyes blinked at an abnormally rapid rate.
Big Nath bowed low. ‘Olive Tree-Teddy – what a pleasant surprise.’ The shadow of the black dog settled beside his feet and started licking its genitals.
‘Pleasant surprise indeed – how’s the pissing?’
Big Nath stared at him, hands fidgeting. ‘Haven’t pissed for eighteen days.’
Olive-Tree Teddy tutted. ‘Not good for you.’
‘Nope.’
‘Lookin’ for work?’
‘Nope – just a place to sleep.’
‘I got a place to sleep.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Big Nath caressed his knuckles with his palm. He was thinking of Jodie.
13
‘What do you say, big man?’ Olive-Tree Teddy smiled. He smelt of battery acid.
‘Huh?’
‘You can use my place.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘You have to do this thing for me.’
Big Nath narrowed his eyes. ‘What type of rugs have you got?’
‘Rugs?’
‘Never mind.’ Big Nath looked at his shoes. ‘What’s the thing?’
Olive-Tree Teddy smiled, exposing his hideously misshapen teeth. ‘The thing involves you-know-who.’
Big Nath stopped rubbing his knuckles with his palm. ‘You don’t mean...?’
‘Oh, but I do.’ He started vigorously nodding. ‘She’s causing me a little difficulty with my…’ He leaned closer, still nodding. ‘...olive-related activities.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s preposterous. She’s sabotaging the entire operation. I can’t cultivate my olives without the big blue bucket. It’s essential for my work.’
Big Nath took a step backwards. ‘This is very grave indeed.’
‘I want you to take care of her.’
‘You’ll give me a place to stay?’
Olive-Tree Teddy nodded. ‘That’s the deal.’
‘What does she look like?’
Olive-Tree Teddy thrust a richly-freckled arm into the box and pulled out a photograph.
‘This is her. This is the bastard who stole the big blue bucket.’
Big Nath took the photograph, inspected it. ‘Where will I find her?’
‘She has a place near the tobacco factory.’
‘Got it.’ Big Nath bowed, doffed his cap. ‘Thank you for this opportunity, Olive-Tree Teddy.’
‘I knew I could count on you, Big Nath, I always bloody knew.’
14
Olive-Tree Teddy fluttered his eyelids for the last time and left Big Nath standing alone on the street corner, massaging his knuckles. He snied, wiped his brow with his sleeve, let the photograph fall, and walked back the way he had come, thinking of Jodie swinging on her voluminous wicker rocking-chair. The shadow of the black dog jumped to its feet and followed. Its black tongue lolled crazily from its mouth.
As the footfall vanished, the faded black-and-white portrait of the big blue bucket thief dissolved into the pavement. The last thing the thief saw through her damp eyes was the vast, cloud-dimmed grey sky and the rain, pouring.
Big Nath took the canal path heading west, climbing and then descending a low hill where the local youths assembled on summer evenings to smoke overpriced drugs and exchange war stories. The tobacco factory loomed massively over the canal, its narrow chimneys jutted from the 15
riot of industrial buildings below, belching out vast plumes of black smoke.
He found the house without difficulty. Life-like porcelain garden gnomes stood sentinel along the path that led to the front door. Big Nath rang the bell, took a backward step, and removed his hat. He had never ‘taken care’ of anyone before. He wondered how he was going to do it. Rain water trickled down his face. In you I put all my faith and trust
Nobody answered. He stood there for a while, massaging his knuckles, uncertain of his immediate future. He was about to turn and walk away when he heard the music – faint at first, then louder. It was somehow familiar.
Right before my eyes, my world has turned to dust
He pushed the door open and entered. The shadow of the black dog waited outside, head resting in its paws.
He found himself in a wide, open-plan room, crammed with ancient wooden furniture: chairs, tables, wardrobes, cabinets, benches, bookcases, drinks cupboards, dressingtables, shoe-racks, bedsteads. In the midst of this riot of furniture, there was a huge, cavernous wicker rocking-chair. Sat on the rocking-chair was Jodie. She was gorging on a triple-decker cheese-and-pickle sandwich, smothered in mayonnaise with the crusts cut off. Just like the cheese-andpickle sandwiches that he made.
After all the nights, I sat alone and wept The music was louder here, almost deafening. He wanted to block his ears with his knuckles and scream until his breath expired.
Jodie stopped munching, lowered the sandwich. ‘I’m sorry it had to end like this, Big Nath.’ Jodie’s mouth was a swirl of half-chewed bread and cheese. ‘I really am sorry.’
There was a flash of movement as another figure appeared from behind a cabinet. It was her. The woman in the photograph. Olive-Tree Teddy’s ex-wife. The big blue bucket thief. Diana Ross. Her black hair was curled into little sausages. Her lips were painted crimson. Her eyes were dark, imperious.
16
you
Just a handful of promises are all that’s left of loving
‘I don’t believe it.’ Big Nath said, bowing awkwardly to retrieve his hat. He looked at Jodie– she was taking another mouthful. ‘You were in on this, too?’
Jodie swallowed, nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Big Nath.’
Diana Ross stepped out from her hiding place and put her hand on Jodie’s enormous shoulder. ‘We’re in love, Big Nath. Your knuckle massages didn’t mean a thing.’
Big Nath lowered his head and wept. Diana Ross pointed the authentic Japanese Second World War Nambu pistol at Big Nath’s scalp and fired. Outside, the shadow of the black dog howled.
17
Prostitution James Thorp I still seek the acceptance of others from the ticking of
ethereal checklists
(that I didn’t write)
rather than from digging up the treasures hidden within earthly bodies.
(Who’d want that dirty old gold anyway?)
It was my money and I asked for this
but I do not consent.
My to-do list drives me to keep looking for peace in the skin
of others:
crawling on all fours into their bodies and sliding into pulsing
caves,
losing my head in familiar writhing warmth
to quieten the one voice in my head that is never my own.
Faux sweat. Fake toil.
The heat of the moment helps me forget that agony and
pleasure
are designed to exist forever,
unchanged by who we are and what we do.
What we are and who we do, more like.)
I’ve learned that a ‘yes’ said in desperation is a ‘no’.
This is my secret.
18
Four Lips Chloe Bettles Sometimes, she imagines shedding her skin
to the sound of trumpets. She meaning you? Yes. Sometimes the orchestra overwhelms
her so much she sees puddles where sand
used to be. And then there’s an umbrella, A raincoat stanza of blurred reflections Finding solace in the monsoon. Not quite,
More like an April shower, see she finds
Solace in the dictionary and puts it in her
Pocket. You don’t have any pockets. It’s not about
Pockets, it’s about philosophy. The romance
Of her and the trumpets –And the cinderblock? …Forget the water; it’s a parched desert now.
She invents the sea shanty with a dry tongue,
Her oblivion becomes limited. Her meaning you? Yes. What do you really want? Silence.
You’re lying, there are violins in the ends Of your smile. You don’t get it. See when
The orchestra stops, so does the applause.
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Haiku and Six Word Stories Megan Schlanker
Alex Hamzij
It’s dark already
All I can see is my face
Looking from the glass
University
Is a taxi ride you will
Never remember
Luke Newell My reflection is alien to me.
Ho Jia Wen I see my face in
The water, funny how it
Stares back, not drowning
Almost immortal
Mythical even, like a
Water nymph, framed by
Water Lilies, blue
Sky, white fluffy clouds, a stone
Hits, ripples, mars face
Alyx Hurst Once you have been shown
The blue fire escape line
Mirror mazes suck
I feel more like me
Whenever my reflection
Shows all my flaws